You’re being hired as one, so I don’t understand what all this contempt is for. I didn’t realize you hated your profession so much.
Lmao.
Yes, I hate software engineering because I don’t derive spiritual fulfillment from manually performing every mechanical step involved in producing software artifacts.
Do you compile by hand too, or is there an artisanal exemption for that?
I like the part of my profession where I solve problems. I don’t need to cosplay as a 14th-century fucking stonemason every time a rectangle needs moving.
If you spend only 30-seconds looking at my 20-line changes, I’m just going to skip you and hit the merge button myself. What value add are you possibly providing. A check mark?
This is incredible.
Do you believe code review has a minimum billable duration?
If you change a conditional from && to || and I understand the surrounding code, how many minutes must I stare at it before my review becomes artisanal enough for you?
Should I set a timer?
“Sorry guys, found the bug after 17 seconds, but Dave says recognizing correctness faster than producing it is impossible, so I’m going to stare at the diff for another 14 minutes to add value.”
You are once again accidentally demonstrating the exact distinction you’re arguing doesn’t exist.
You did not mean that the AI would discover these connections for you
No, you absolute turnip.
And notice how you’ve quietly changed the argument again.
The original claim was that sufficiently describing an output approaches the effort of producing it.
Now apparently AI only saves time if it discovers information I don’t know.
Those aren’t remotely the same claim.
Also, why the fuck would my prompt be:
Service A connects to service B. Service A connects to service C. Service B connects to service D…
I can point the agent at the fucking codebase.
“Trace the request flow starting at this controller and produce a Mermaid sequence diagram. These five services are relevant.”
There. Done.
Then I read the diagram and compare it against a system I already understand.
Sometimes it’ll find something I forgot. Sometimes it’ll fuck something up. Sometimes I’ll correct it. Sometimes I’ll throw the whole thing away because the output is garbage.
This really isn’t the metaphysical crisis you’re desperately trying to turn it into.
This has been my experience every fucking time.
OH.
There it is.
After all the topology and continua and grand theories of craftsmanship, we’ve finally reached the actual argument:
“I tried AI tools, they produced results below my standards, and correcting them took me longer than doing the work myself.”
That’s completely reasonable!
Seriously. That’s a perfectly coherent reason for you not to use them for those tasks.
You could have said that about six comments ago and saved us both the TED Talk about the ontology of requirements.
Where you keep disappearing up your own ass is taking “this tool does not produce useful results in my workflows” and promoting it into “therefore anyone getting productivity from it must produce shit work and doesn’t care about their craft.”
Maybe your tasks are different.
Maybe your standards are different.
Maybe the tools work better on my codebase.
Maybe I’m better at identifying tasks where they’re useful.
Maybe I’m better at operating them.
Maybe I’m producing absolute dogshit and haven’t realized it.
All of those are empirical possibilities.
But you’ve somehow excluded every explanation except the one where you’re an artisan and everyone getting value from the tool is a lazy philistine destroying software engineering.
I would ban you from my repos so fucking fast.
Oh no.
Anyway, while you’re guarding the sacred garden from the buzzards, I’ll continue doing the intellectually demanding work myself and automating whatever boring shit I can get a machine to do reliably.
If it produces garbage, I don’t use it.
If it saves me 30 minutes, I do.
It’s called using tools.
You somehow turned it into a fucking personality type.
Lmao.
Yes, I hate software engineering because I don’t derive spiritual fulfillment from manually performing every mechanical step involved in producing software artifacts.
Do you compile by hand too, or is there an artisanal exemption for that?
I like the part of my profession where I solve problems. I don’t need to cosplay as a 14th-century fucking stonemason every time a rectangle needs moving.
This is incredible.
Do you believe code review has a minimum billable duration?
If you change a conditional from && to || and I understand the surrounding code, how many minutes must I stare at it before my review becomes artisanal enough for you?
Should I set a timer?
“Sorry guys, found the bug after 17 seconds, but Dave says recognizing correctness faster than producing it is impossible, so I’m going to stare at the diff for another 14 minutes to add value.”
You are once again accidentally demonstrating the exact distinction you’re arguing doesn’t exist.
No, you absolute turnip.
And notice how you’ve quietly changed the argument again.
The original claim was that sufficiently describing an output approaches the effort of producing it.
Now apparently AI only saves time if it discovers information I don’t know.
Those aren’t remotely the same claim.
Also, why the fuck would my prompt be:
I can point the agent at the fucking codebase.
“Trace the request flow starting at this controller and produce a Mermaid sequence diagram. These five services are relevant.”
There. Done.
Then I read the diagram and compare it against a system I already understand.
Sometimes it’ll find something I forgot. Sometimes it’ll fuck something up. Sometimes I’ll correct it. Sometimes I’ll throw the whole thing away because the output is garbage.
This really isn’t the metaphysical crisis you’re desperately trying to turn it into.
OH.
There it is.
After all the topology and continua and grand theories of craftsmanship, we’ve finally reached the actual argument:
“I tried AI tools, they produced results below my standards, and correcting them took me longer than doing the work myself.”
That’s completely reasonable!
Seriously. That’s a perfectly coherent reason for you not to use them for those tasks.
You could have said that about six comments ago and saved us both the TED Talk about the ontology of requirements.
Where you keep disappearing up your own ass is taking “this tool does not produce useful results in my workflows” and promoting it into “therefore anyone getting productivity from it must produce shit work and doesn’t care about their craft.”
Maybe your tasks are different.
Maybe your standards are different.
Maybe the tools work better on my codebase.
Maybe I’m better at identifying tasks where they’re useful.
Maybe I’m better at operating them.
Maybe I’m producing absolute dogshit and haven’t realized it.
All of those are empirical possibilities.
But you’ve somehow excluded every explanation except the one where you’re an artisan and everyone getting value from the tool is a lazy philistine destroying software engineering.
Oh no.
Anyway, while you’re guarding the sacred garden from the buzzards, I’ll continue doing the intellectually demanding work myself and automating whatever boring shit I can get a machine to do reliably.
If it produces garbage, I don’t use it.
If it saves me 30 minutes, I do.
It’s called using tools.
You somehow turned it into a fucking personality type.