zaikunzhangThe threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing
The thing is, agents aren’t going away. So if Bob can do things with agents, he can do things.
I mourn the loss of working on intellectually stimulating programming problems, but that’s a part of my job that’s fading. I need to decide if the remaining work - understanding requirements, managing teams, what have you - is still enjoyable enough to continue.
To be honest, I’m looking at leaving software because the job has turned into a different sort of thing than what I signed up for.
So I think this article is partly right, Bob is not learning those skills which we used to require. But I think the market is going to stop valuing those skills, so it’s not really a _problem_, except for Bob’s own intellectual loss.
I don’t like it, but I’m trying to face up to it.
> So if Bob can do things with agents, he can do things.
Yes, but how does he know if it worked? If you have instant feedback, you can use LLMs and correct when things blow up. In fact, you can often try all options and see which works, which makes it ”easy” in terms of knowledge work. If you have delayed feedback, costly iterations, or multiple variables changing underneath you at all times, understanding is the only way.
That’s why building features and fixing bugs is easy, and system level technical decision making is hard. One has instant feedback, the other can take years. You could make the ”soon” argument, but even with better models, they’re still subject to training data, which is minimal for year+ delayed feedback and multivariate problems.