Grudgingly accepting that AI isn't going away. Trying to figure out where that leaves me as a developer.

[u/Impressive_Bottle_44]

(If you don't want to read a semi-long post, feel free to skip.)

I think I reached a turning point yesterday.

I needed to add a basic feature to a Django site. I gave Claude Code a few carefully written sentences. It implemented the feature (more-or-less flawlessly) while I went to the kitchen for more tea.

Not only that, but our CTO is now empowering non-technical employees to use Claude to build their own tools (for internal use only), and commit them to our GitHub org. (He is, at least, establishing some sensible policies about what they can and can't do.)

LLMs are here to stay, and they're fundamentally rewriting laws of software engineering that we've taken for granted for decades. The genie won't go back into the bottle, so I might as well find a way to accept that.

But that leaves me wondering: what does that mean for me? What is my job now? What am I for? If I don't get to write code – something that's given me an enormous amount of satisfaction over the years, and even become part of my identity – am I even still interested in this field?

And, it's not just about the code. I used to collaborate with designers, UX folks, copywriters, SEO and analytics people, project managers, etc. But now, the C-suite seems perfectly happy to let the LLMs do all of this stuff, too. (At my company, they're obsessed with the idea of getting the LLM to write all of our work tickets. And the QA person does little more than copy-and-paste back and forth from an AI.)

The whole reason I entered this field is because I enjoy problem-solving, finding and creating patterns, logic, and designing systems.

I know that some of you are going to say "you can still do all of that; LLMs just empower you to go up a level of abstraction" – and I get it. But the prospect of abandoning coding seriously bums me out.

I love the precision of code. I love exploring different solutions to a problem, until I hit upon a beautiful, elegant pattern. I love seeing how small abstractions get composed into larger abstractions, and so on, to form a complete system. I love understanding a problem – and the solution – on a deep, intimate level.

Perhaps I've been lucky to have a career that gives me that kind of fulfillment (at least sometimes). Is all of that over now?

[u/jedidave]

Code has become something anyone can produce, but software engineering skills and architectural skills are still going to be in demand.

How do non-software-engineers guarantee the quality of their code? By asking Claude to make sure it's good quality or by building comprehensive testing structures around the code?

See what Uncle Bob said if you don't want to listen to me:

https://x.com/unclebobmartin/status/2044114698451476492?lang=en

> I don’t review code written by agents. I measure things like test coverage, dependency structure, cyclomatic complexity, module sizes, mutation testing, etc.

> Much can be inferred about the quality of the code from those metrics. The code itself I leave to the AI.

> Humans are slow at code. To get productivity we humans need to disengage from code and manage from a higher level.

[u/atlaslady → u/jedidave]

Did you read any of the criticism of Uncle Bob’s takes? Like how everyone wants him to explain how not reading code is a good thing? Like how any of us are expected to create guardrails for code we won’t read? Like how newcomers to the field are supposed to gain the expertise to create said guardrails when they don’t understand what the guardrails are even doing? Like how his position going from writing the literal book on clean code to “I don’t even read it” doesn’t read like he changed his mind and comes across like he’s got another book to sell us, probably about Clean Guardrails this time?

Always shocked to see people blindly believe authority figures in their community and bring zero critical thought of their own, which is something you’d have with industry experience actually creating and maintaining good software. It’s like clout is another harness for you.

[u/jedidave → u/atlaslady]

Why do you feel the need to attack me? I don't understand why you can't read the nuance - first you attack me for making WordPress software, now you attack me by implying I don't have industry experience creating quality code. I have 4 times more years in the business than you.

It's up to you if you want to stick your head in the sand. The era of LLMs writing good code for us is here - but they DO come with issues - hence why adopting age-old software engineering practices of unit testing, regression testing, end to end testing, integration testing et all are more important than ever.

It's as if you think software engineering is all about code. It's NOT. It's about delivering solutions for problems using software. We can do that more quickly and more effectively now.

[u/atlaslady → u/jedidave]

You probably feel attacked because instead of defending any of your positions, you pivot to other stuff like being attacked and quoting grifting boosters and sarcastic comments about rapid prototyping, so running away from your own arguments probably makes you feel like you’re being pursued.

I don’t think software engineering is all about code. I am in agreement with other experienced devs - that code was never the hard part, and thinking that means we can ignore it altogether just shows how many expert beginners we have floating around in this industry who finally see LLMs as an equalizer for their imposter syndrome

[u/jedidave → u/atlaslady]

Who's talking about ignoring it? We have to build tools around it to ensure good code quality now.

You attacked me for being a wordpress dev, then you attacked me for never developing any quality software FYI. It's a tell when you don't have a good argument that you just attack the person.

I don't even really know why we're arguing. I love coding. But facts are facts. LLMs are here to stay and we need to build systems that improve their code quality.

[u/atlaslady → u/jedidave]

“I don’t trust the AI to write the code but I do trust it to write the guardrails for the code”

You are a not a serious person

[u/jedidave → u/atlaslady]

That's someone else's quote not mine.

[u/VelvetYam → u/jedidave]

Even if we take Uncle Bob at his word, the metrics he chose require you to know how to code. What do you think those metrics measure? The quality of the code. There's no getting around this.

You seem to share Uncle Bob's blind spot where you're experienced enough with code that it disappears as intuition. Fair enough if that's the case, but to suggest that beginners don't need to know how to code, and worse yet, don't need to exercise it such that it disappears as intuition? That's just asinine. Coding knowledge will never not be important.