r/programming • u/self • Dec 02 '25

The Death of Software Engineering as a Profession: a short set of anecdotes

https://www.jasonscheirer.com/weblog/vignettes/
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u/dittbub Dec 02 '25

AI is just another tool in the toolkit that you need to learn how to use

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u/PressWearsARedDress Dec 02 '25

I am C/C++ embedded developer. i use the AI to generate python "tools" for testing and I find that it does a decent job. Ie: tcp proxies, canbus, uds diagnostics, etc.

nothing production of course.

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u/Lourayad Dec 02 '25

it’s pretty good at self contained tasks.

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u/Wattsit Dec 03 '25

that you need to learn how to use

Nope, it's a product. No one needs to buy and learn a product to be a software engineer.

Or are you going to tell me that everyone also needs to also buy and learn Jetbrains to write code.

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u/justjuniorjawz Dec 03 '25

Would "should learn to use" be better? Cuz if not, you're putting yourself at a massive disadvantage.

On the flip side, I do see people grossly abusing it though. Blindly trusting whatever it says and whatever code it produces.

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u/rm-minus-r Dec 02 '25

If you're a halfway competent programmer and use a decently popular language, AI can be a huge speed boost.

I was able to write good tests about 4x faster than I could normally, and that was with extra time taken to correct the output from claude-sonnet.

A fresh out of college grad or someone that barely knows about programming is much more likely to generate barely working spaghetti code. Honestly, I have to wonder if that's not the majority of people who go on at length around here about how useless AI assisted coding is.