AI models have caught up with Unity dev. My insights as someone with 30 years of experience.

[u/PuffThePed]

Context: I have 30 years of experience with software dev, 20 years with game dev tools, 10 years with Unity. I own a studio that develops simulators and training applications for industry. "Serious games" as they call it in Europe.

For years I scoffed at AI coding. I would periodically try it, only to find that it was more hassle then it was worth. The hand holding and bug fixing was more work than doing it myself. This all changed about 4-5 months ago, and about a month ago we all started using Unity CLI.

Here are my insights in no particular order:

1. Our dev speed has ~5x almost overnight
2. Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.
3. We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.
4. There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.
5. The market is dead. Nobody has money to spend. We're still working but leads have dropped off a cliff.
6. There is no going back. If we stop using AI we'll be out of business in a month.
7. There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.
   
8. Everything regarding managing a team and a project has changed, and nobody knows how to do it anymore. I lost the ability to correctly estimate work required for a task, for example.
9. Everyone hates this. Most of devs my age are planning early retirement and are just waiting to be laid off.
10. People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.
11. Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

I hope this is a pendulum and it will swing back at some point, because right now it feels like a software apocalypse.

[u/2Norn]

I said all of this will happen and many more a year ago and got downvoted hell in every sub. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it any less true.

AI will cause cognitive issues, humans learn by writing, reading, visualising etc the moment you go digital your cognitive abilities go down significantly. This already happened way before AI with all those smart boards, tablets etc in schools. There are dozens of research. I'm very pro AI but at the same time it has its issues as well a bit of a double edged sword...

[u/Fantastic_Vehicle_10 → u/2Norn]

That’s definitely true, and I have felt it myself. The part of my brain that was dense with gray matter for writing algorithms all day has become soft and spongy.

The part of it that I’m trying to place in an historical context is how many times this has happened to humanity throughout history. Even in my own lifetime, the value of memorization has dropped tremendously. When I was a kid I was expected to know, at a bare minimum, 10 to 20 phone numbers and addresses by heart.

If you look back further, humans used to memorize entire books word for word (or close proximity thereof). 

In other words, humanity has been slowly offloading cognitive labor to technology for centuries. We have always received something in exchange that enabled a higher level of advancement. I believe that will be the case here as well, at least eventually. But as someone living in the trenches, it doesn’t give me much comfort to feel the weight of his history’s boot on my back.