The grief when AI writes most of the code

I’m coming to terms with the high probability that AI will write most of my code which I ship to prod, going forward. It already does it faster, and with similar results to if I’d typed it out. For languages/frameworks I’m less familiar with, it does a better job than me.

It feels like something valuable is being taken away, and suddenly. It took a lot of effort to get good at coding and to learn how to write code that works, to read and understand complex code, and to debug and fix when code doesn’t work as it should.

It’s been a love-hate relationship, to be fair, based on the amount of focus needed to write complex code. Then there’s all the conflicts that time estimates caused: time passes differently when you’re locked in and working on a hard problem.

Now, all that looks like it will be history.

Early in my career, I helped start a company that conducted autonomous vehicle research. As increasingly complex driving tasks were able to be automated, I’d think about how this technology would one day render truck drivers useless. Which quickly turned into wondering when this tech would make me useless.

There’s no sitting still when it comes to software engineering. Every ten years or so, a new breakthrough comes along and requires folks to make a decision: do I evolve my engineering practice to stay up with the modern times, or do I double down on my current practice and focus on the fundamentals?

The choice comes down to what you value. Are you someone who enjoys artisanally crafting code, painstakingly optimizing each line to result in a beautiful tool? Are you someone who smashes things until they make the shape of a tool that helps someone accomplish a task?

When it comes to our economic structure, however, it doesn't matter what you value, it matters what someone is willing to pay you to solve their problem.

Some employers will value bespoke, artisanal ("clean") code, but I bet most will not care about what the code looks like. They will want whoever can quickly smash something into the shape of the tool that gets the job done.

As they say: don't hate the player, hate the game.