This frames the argument like a dichotomy. And to be honest, using the Social Media "vibe-coding" as a strawman risks anchoring against something that's a mirage.
There are plenty of good engineers getting good results whilst accepting code-ownership as a continuum.
> If Claude goes down tomorrow, can you still do your job?
This is a valid counterpoint, but doing software is already a tricky set of dependencies. The answer here isn't automatically "you need to be able to do everything". It could simply be also use Codex.
I think the overall point is well made, I just don't agree with the absolute framing. There are things you can hand over AI safely. Even if you start small and increment it'll have a decent impact.
Developers often depend on external libraries like things for Image processing, Numpy, etc. Do they have to "own" the code in those external libraries and review them, in the same way people sometimes insist you have to review all AI-generated code? Do developers have to be able to recreate Numpy by themselves, even if their field isn't necessarily numerical optimization etc?
Those seem like very high and unreasonable bars.
Yeah, I get that it means “you’re responsible for it”, but the phrasing irks me.
It's not a strawman. A lot of people are doing it.
While I agree with the sentiment I fear this won’t last long. I already find myself, when Claude goes down for 15 minutes due to whatever, kind of throwing my hands up and taking a walk assuming it’ll be up by the time I get back. Usually it is.
If it went away for good I’d be able to code, but would I want to? I’d be kind of bummed in a way. Which is odd because I used to tout myself as someone who like programming but I think what I’ve discovered is I like building.
We all know it's such an insanely gameable metric you'd be insane to actually use it...
Aside from that (and assuming a large enough sample size) I think it's a safe experiment to at least bet on finding profitable use cases. In 1-2 years, after this experiment runs its course, not everyone will have "unlimited" usage.
Absolutely yes.
> You must be able to do your job if your AI tooling disappears
Absolutely not.
Look, I'm an alright programmer. Not good, far from great. Interpreted languages work for me; add all that strong typing and compilation and it starts to go beyond what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, pre-AI, I have shipped many very functional, production-grade applications for many companies.
Now, I can write stuff in Go, and Rust, and it's fantastic. So much faster. The AI likes the strong typing, the test-ability, predictability, it all makes total sense. I'm using this stuff all the time, but I have not learned any Go; I'm too busy focusing on the parts the AI cannot do for me, like real requirements gathering, architecture, fit and finish, engaging stakeholders, etc. that still require the human touch. Maybe I could have learned some Go using that time, but at the end of the day my employer is paying me for results, not for my edification!
There are now huge parts of my job I cannot do without AI. Sure, it's like 800-1200 bucks a month of extra cost; ok; but with that extra low-5-figs a year of cost I am a much better employee in terms of my capabilities. It's easily delivering ROI for me, and therefore for my employer. Instead of sitting around wishing I had a Go developer to ask for help implementing a simple feature in a Terraform provider, I can just fork it and add what I need, try to submit it upstream for inclusion, etc. and the lack of language specific skills is no longer holding me back.
Take away the tool and I can't do that part of the job anymore, sorry. I can still do a lot, but slower, and honestly it would feel like going from a car back to walking, now; walking's fun, I do it recreationally for the sheer joy, but when there's hundreds of kilometres to cover in a short amount of time, the car is clearly the correct choice. So too is it with AI: we've invented the car for computers and only a fool would pretend he can do everything the same without it now.
Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.
"but when there's hundreds of kilometres to cover in a short amount of time, the trebuchet is clearly the correct choice."
you point it in the rough direction and distance you want to go, pull the lever, see if you hit your mark, adjust, pull the lever again, etc.
And once you have dialed in the variables for that particular piece of rock that one time, you write it down in a "skill.md" file and announce to everyone on the team "this trebuchet has been carefully calibrated. Trust it with your other rocks too."
Unless you're working in a coding sweatshop, I don't see why you need AI to do what people have been doing for decades just fine without breaking a sweat.
What are you working on?
You are obviously unaware of what the silicon valley companies are asking for and commiting to.
Imagine reading that version as someone who doesn't know how big companies work. "But then they'll just fire all the mid-level managers, since they don't do any of the actual work!" Haha, boy would you be wrong.
https://dora.dev/capabilities/clear-and-communicated-ai-stan...
