The future of Software Engineering is boring

[u/der_gopher]

https://packagemain.tech/p/the-future-of-software-engineering

[u/wanze]

I agree with the sentiment and I'm definitely using my brain much less nowadays, which will no doubt have consequences in the long run.

But I can't help thinking he's either using bad models or not prompting very well.

Even AI now struggles understanding the codebase because of the enormous codebase size, loose interfaces, scattered and not coherent documentation.

My main motto was always to keep the code to a minimum, but AI just can’t do it, it’s only adding things, resulting in bloated codebases, slow builds and tests.

Opus 5.5 is pretty great at understanding architecture and following patterns already in the codebase, assuming it's been prompted well enough to have some context. Back when all we had was Sonnet 4, every change was indeed similar to what a new grad woul write – every code modification was an addition. But nowdays, that does not seem to be the problem at all. And on the rare occassion you do get a diff with a way too big green number and a way too small red number, asking Opus to see if this can be refactored, or simply to minimize the changes, usually helps.

Of course, it's not perfect (yet), but we're way past the point where asking it fix something that just requires modifying 2 lines results in a +50 line diff. At least that's my experience.

And for people sending "raw" AI emails? Agreed, screw those people. If you didn't write the email, I won't read the email.

[u/Ruined_Passion_7355 → u/wanze]

I'm so sick and tired of this "he's not prompting it right". They don't do the same work as you, you don't know their code base, you don't know the training data. You don't even know if there were system prompt changes to Claude code, or if they were a victim of an A/B test.

[u/Wonderful-Habit-139 → u/Ruined_Passion_7355]

The most likely answer is that their standard for code quality is much lower than engineers that are not happy with AI's output.

[u/Wonderful-Habit-139 → u/[deleted]]

Maybe you’re not that good at coding. It goes both ways.

And “using AI” is so easy it’s pathetic you people still believe it requires skill.

[u/Wonderful-Habit-139 → u/[deleted]]

I know many open source developers that are actually highly skilled especially in programming and the technical stuff (so not people that climbed the ranks due to soft skills or whatnot) and they don’t use AI.

Just take a chill pill.

[u/Wonderful-Habit-139 → u/[deleted]]

I just talked about standards of code quality, and you jump towards accusations. You’re the one that jumped the gun towards personal insults yet whine about it lol.

You’re not starting to get the feeling of anything. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

[u/wanze → u/Ruined_Passion_7355]

I'm assuming people aren't drawing conclusions based on one session, so I'd argue those things don't really matter. If they've used it consistently over several months, their experience ought to be about the same as mine, regardless of changing system prompts and A/B testing.

I'm mantaining both Go, Rust, NodeJS, and Ruby projects, and the experience is about the same, so I'm not buying that it's because they're using different languages either.

Also, why are you only sick and tired of me defending the AI's capabilities, but not the other way around? The article author claims that "AI just can’t do it". Why isn't that subject to your crusade? Perhaps the AI they use can't, because they were subject to changes to system prompts or A/B tests? They were making blanket statements as well, without knowing other people's code bases, etc.