A field guide that also covers why we need to rethink our expectations, and what software engineering really is. A guest post by software engineer and engineering leader Addy Osmani
The idea that junior devs will go away is a lie theyll feed us till the end. My job is to dictate how these tools should be used for hundreds of employees and there’s a huge clash in expectations vs reality.
The AI slop should help the juniors, make them more useful “out of the box” by essentially rewording and customizing a google search answer, and save time for seniors explaining. Even the best models are lying and cannot efficiently have all this context, not any time soon. It currently takes enormous amounts of power to do what a brain can do with the energy equivalent of a peanut. That’s just not cost effective.
The only reason they are able to do it is because they are dumping stolen profits disguised as investments and “a bad economy/inflation”. Theyre essentially doing this off the back of tax payer. Once electricity starts costing what it should cost right now without the massive investments, it would never work. The current elite will take us for a ride until the next schtick though, and we’re all worst off for it. Senior engineers are just doing 1.25x the work and C suite is lying about AI.
The idea that junior devs will go away is a lie theyll feed us till the end. My job is to dictate how these tools should be used for hundreds of employees and there’s a huge clash in expectations vs reality.
The AI slop should help the juniors, make them more useful “out of the box” by essentially rewording and customizing a google search answer, and save time for seniors explaining. Even the best models are lying and cannot efficiently have all this context, not any time soon. It currently takes enormous amounts of power to do what a brain can do with the energy equivalent of a peanut. That’s just not cost effective.
The only reason they are able to do it is because they are dumping stolen profits disguised as investments and “a bad economy/inflation”. Theyre essentially doing this off the back of tax payer. Once electricity starts costing what it should cost right now without the massive investments, it would never work. The current elite will take us for a ride until the next schtick though, and we’re all worst off for it. Senior engineers are just doing 1.25x the work and C suite is lying about AI.
Let’s hope it does a metaverse / web 3