Josh CollinsworthI have a lot of thoughts on AI.
I've been working on this post for a couple of months now. It's very personal, characteristically lengthy, and sure to be at least somewhat controversial. Take it (or don't) as you will.
jnkrtech@collinsworth incredibly well written, comprehensive, and brutal. I really appreciate you talking about the personal aspects of this.
Cody Casterline 🏳️🌈@collinsworth Excellent post. Thanks for sharing!
re: "frontend code" – I don't find things more promising as a backend developer.
One thing I'd previously jotted down for my own post on AI: There's this idea that "we'll just get better at providing context/specification for the AI to properly program things".
But as a SWE, I'm already providing that specification in the most precise way: an unambiguous, deterministic programming language! (Or any number of DSLs for schema, querying, etc.)
My value is not the number of lines of code I generate, but the thoughtfulness with which I apply my experience.
"Ah, you said X, but do you mean X, X', or X''? Those distinctions matter because…"
"In this case it would be simpler AND more flexible to generalize to…"
Do employers value the difference?
Will they learn to, before their codebase is so full of vibecode that they need to hire a code exorcist? 🤷
Hidde@collinsworth thanks for writing this, it resonates a lot!
David Fleetwood - RG Admin@collinsworth Thank you for this. You summed up my feelings and observations on this more coherantly than I've been able to and I appreciate it.
@collinsworth This also resonated with me:
"I like using my brain [and] the process of ideating, building, and creatively solving a problem."
Agreed! And I like helping my coworkers use their brains. When I'm reviewing code, I often think "Why would they write it like this?" If I can't find the reason, I'll ask. Sometimes there's a good reason for us to capture in comments. Other times, it's code that can be improved.
"Because AI did it" is a code thought-terminating cliché. 😞
Kevin Renskers 🇺🇦🇪🇺@collinsworth it’s like you’ve read my read and wrote it all down, way better than I ever could. And holy shit I 100% recognize the feeling about the GitHub roast thing.
Sam Van Horne, Ph.D.@collinsworth @DataAngler I think this articulates well why my boss, whose job is secure, is such an evangelist and why I am constantly trying to improve my skills
Andreas Schantl@collinsworth Thank you for taking the time to write this blog. I cannot agree any more.
Johnny ‘Decimal’ Noble@collinsworth I'm reading this and enjoying it immensely but tangential to the content just wanted to say that the way you highlight footnotes is just beautiful. It perfectly draws the eye to the thing you indisputably want to be seeing, without being overly distracting. Lovely work.
Nils 'Kojote' Hitze@collinsworth it is a very good article, thank you