Software engineer for multiple decades here. None of the AI assistants have made any major change to my job. They are useful tools when it's time to write code like many useful tools before them. But the hard work of being a senior+ software engineer comes before you start typing.
I will admit, if I need to do some one off task and write a quick python script to do something I will likely go to Claude or something and write it. I am talking 20-40 lines. I think it's fine for that, it doesn't need a ton of context, it's easy to test, easy to look at and understand, etc.
But outside of that, beyond needing to remember a certain syntax, I have found that any time I tried to use it for anything more complex I am finding myself spending more time going back and forth trying to get code that works than I would have if I had just done it myself in the first place.
If the code works, it just isn't maintainable code if you ask it to do too much. It will just remove entire functionality.
I have seen a situation of someone submitting a PR, very clearly copying a method and sticking it in AI and saying "improve this". It made changes for no good reason and when you ask the person that submitted the PR why they made the change we of course got no answer. (these were not just Linter changes)
Thats concerning, pushing code up that you can't even explain why you did something?
Like you said with the hard work, sure it can churn out code. But you need to have a complete clear picture of what that code needs to look like before you start generating or you will not like the end result.
I am not a software engineer and these tools allow me to make a giant mess of an app in a weekend that kind of does what I want but I only get that weekend. Once I come back to it after any length of time, since I have no idea what I am doing or what is going on it is impossible to update or add to the app without breaking it.
Now I have all these new ideas but I am back to square one because it just seems easier to start over.
I look forward to more powerful models in the future but I do wonder if it will just mean I can get slightly farther and make an even larger mess of an app in a weekend that I have no way to add to or update without breaking.
The main utility seems like it would be for content creation to pretend I made an app with all these great features as a non-software engineer but conveniently leave out the part about it being impossible to update.
They help me most when using a framework, API, or language I'm not super familiar with. Beats stack overflow for that stuff.
But it's weird to me seeing people talk about these changing their jobs so much. Maybe I'm holding it wrong but I'm almost always bottlenecked by "big picture" challenges and less on the act of actually typing the code.
My GH copilot kept recommending incorrect things when I use it along side common libraries and frameworks, I don't know, I just don't really find it very useful.
That's because programming isn't just about syntax. The real difficulty lies in the problem solving. Sure AI can help with that, but the problem still largely rests on the programmer, as AI won't do anything unless prompted to.
I think the non obvious benefit is using LLMs nudge you into putting your thoughts in narrative form and training that ability, something that someone with more experience does subconsciously.
