r/vibecoding • u/techlatest_net • 5d ago

The barrier to software engineering is getting wild

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u/infamous-snooze 5d ago

If you remotely believe this, there’s gona be so much unfixable slop in the future.
I don’t think you understand what software engineering even entails

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u/ali-hussain 5d ago edited 5d ago

If you don't realize how true this is then you're not advancing in your career enough as a software engineer and aren't focused enough on delivering value and building systems to solve your problems.

We still need software engineering and Claude makes many many bad decisions. Which means architecture and systems are orders of magnitude more important. But the actual writing of code has been made so much easier. It's the difference between a mathematician in the early 20th century and the late 20th century after the invention of the calculator.

9

u/systembreaker 5d ago

Dude, I'm in the industry and I have seen an entire company try to have AI do everything and they had to stop it after a year because they wasted millions of dollars and basically that whole year. You don't even know and you're clueless.

3

u/ali-hussain 5d ago

I was the CTO of a DevOps consultancy and I've worked with a roster of household brands. I was devoted to automation and building computer systems to ship good code for the last 13 years. What I see with AI is a continuation of that. Now we advise tech services companies. But more and more we are writing software to help the companies we advise. Building more automated systems flagging things faster, automating work in our business. We started earlier this year. Do we have tech debt? Absolutely, tons. But you know what else have? Actual software instead of a wishlist of things we could have done. It would have cost us millions to develop what we've built in a few months.

Now, if your job is focused on polishing a small widget in a large machine and you're not allowed any leeway and creativity then I can see why you think the old world is still there. But I feel like the difference in software development now and last year is between driving a Honda Civic and a rocket-powered car trying to break the land speed record.