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I've been starting to think of it like this: Great Engineer + AI = Great Engineer++ (Where a great engineer isn't just someone who is a great coder, they also

I've been starting to think of it like this: Great Engineer + AI = Great Engineer++ (Where a great engineer isn't just someone who is a great coder, they also are a great communicator & collaborator, and love to learn) Good Engineer + AI = Good Engineer OK Engineer + AI = Mediocre Engineer

geodel 1y ago
Not Engineer + AI = Now an Engineer Thats the reason for high valuation of AI companies.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Of all the things I would absolutely not trust the stock market to evaluate, "technical competence" is either near or at the top. The people deciding how much OpenAI is worth would probably struggle to run first-time setup on an iPad.
  - geodel 1y ago
    I agree. Seems like people took my comment above as my opinion. It was supposed to be argument of Linkedin type AI hype generators.
    - kentm 1y ago
      It seemed like a normative statement, to be honest, so I misunderstood your point.
- phyzome 1y ago
  "Engineer" and "someone who can produce code" are not the same thing.
aydyn 1y ago
Is there a difference between "OK" and "Mediocre"?
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  “Ok” I generally associate with being adequate but could obviously be better. “Mediocre” is just inadequate.
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    “Mediocre” is one of those words where common parlance doesn’t quite line up with the textbook definition. e.g. from the Oxford English Dictionary: “Of middling quality; neither bad nor good...”
  - furyofantares 1y ago
    Some synonyms for mediocre: decent, middling, ordinary, so-so. It can mean inadequate, but it can also mean adequate.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      I’m just talking about how I view/use it.
    - rerdavies 1y ago
      Another common synonym for mediocre: has no place on a software development team. Not technically correct, admittedly, but that's how I read that word in an software engineering context. Adequate is not good enough.
- btucker 1y ago
  I probably should have written it as “OK Engineer--“
biophysboy 1y ago
I sort of think of it in terms of self-deskilling. If an OK engineer is still actively trying to learn, making mistakes, memorizing essentials, etc. then there is no issue. On the other hand, if they're surrendering 100% of their judgment to AI, then they will be mediocre.
- QuercusMax 1y ago
  The same people who just copy-pasted stack overflow answers and didn't understand why or how things work are now using AI to create stuff that they also don't understand.
  - biophysboy 1y ago
    And for low-stakes one-time hobby projects, they're correct to do so!
  - rerdavies 1y ago
    lol. I am SO glad I don't have to go to StackExchange anymore. There is something toxically awful about using advice from a thread that starts with "Why doesn't my code work?".
QuercusMax 1y ago
I recently watched a mid-level engineer use AI to summarize some our code, and he had it put together a big document describing all the various methods in a file, what they're used for, and so forth. It looked to me like a huge waste of time, as the code itself was already very readable (I say this as someone who recently joined the project), and the "documentation" the AI spit out wasn't that different than what you'd get just by running pydoc. He took a couple days doing this, which was shocking to me. Such a waste of time that would have been better spent reading the code and improving any missing documentation - and most importantly asking teammates about necessary context that couldn't just be inferred from the code.
- stocksinsmocks 1y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but this guy probably wasn’t working at all. That sounds like a pretense to goof off. Now I could believe an intern would do such a thing. I’ve seen a structural engineer intern spend four weeks creating a finite element model of a single concrete vault. he could have treated the top deck as a concrete beam used conservative assumptions about the loading and solved it with pen and paper in 30 minutes.
  - QuercusMax 1y ago
    Well, said engineer is no longer working at my company. He wasn't exactly the best developer...

geodel 1y ago

Not Engineer + AI = Now an Engineer Thats the reason for high valuation of AI companies.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
Of all the things I would absolutely not trust the stock market to evaluate, "technical competence" is either near or at the top. The people deciding how much OpenAI is worth would probably struggle to run first-time setup on an iPad.
- geodel 1y ago
  I agree. Seems like people took my comment above as my opinion. It was supposed to be argument of Linkedin type AI hype generators.
  - kentm 1y ago
    It seemed like a normative statement, to be honest, so I misunderstood your point.
phyzome 1y ago
"Engineer" and "someone who can produce code" are not the same thing.

aydyn 1y ago

Is there a difference between "OK" and "Mediocre"?

Forgeties79 1y ago
“Ok” I generally associate with being adequate but could obviously be better. “Mediocre” is just inadequate.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  “Mediocre” is one of those words where common parlance doesn’t quite line up with the textbook definition. e.g. from the Oxford English Dictionary: “Of middling quality; neither bad nor good...”
- furyofantares 1y ago
  Some synonyms for mediocre: decent, middling, ordinary, so-so. It can mean inadequate, but it can also mean adequate.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    I’m just talking about how I view/use it.
  - rerdavies 1y ago
    Another common synonym for mediocre: has no place on a software development team. Not technically correct, admittedly, but that's how I read that word in an software engineering context. Adequate is not good enough.
btucker 1y ago
I probably should have written it as “OK Engineer--“

biophysboy 1y ago

I sort of think of it in terms of self-deskilling. If an OK engineer is still actively trying to learn, making mistakes, memorizing essentials, etc. then there is no issue. On the other hand, if they're surrendering 100% of their judgment to AI, then they will be mediocre.

QuercusMax 1y ago
The same people who just copy-pasted stack overflow answers and didn't understand why or how things work are now using AI to create stuff that they also don't understand.
- biophysboy 1y ago
  And for low-stakes one-time hobby projects, they're correct to do so!
- rerdavies 1y ago
  lol. I am SO glad I don't have to go to StackExchange anymore. There is something toxically awful about using advice from a thread that starts with "Why doesn't my code work?".

QuercusMax 1y ago

I recently watched a mid-level engineer use AI to summarize some our code, and he had it put together a big document describing all the various methods in a file, what they're used for, and so forth. It looked to me like a huge waste of time, as the code itself was already very readable (I say this as someone who recently joined the project), and the "documentation" the AI spit out wasn't that different than what you'd get just by running pydoc. He took a couple days doing this, which was shocking to me. Such a waste of time that would have been better spent reading the code and improving any missing documentation - and most importantly asking teammates about necessary context that couldn't just be inferred from the code.

stocksinsmocks 1y ago
I hate to break it to you, but this guy probably wasn’t working at all. That sounds like a pretense to goof off. Now I could believe an intern would do such a thing. I’ve seen a structural engineer intern spend four weeks creating a finite element model of a single concrete vault. he could have treated the top deck as a concrete beam used conservative assumptions about the loading and solved it with pen and paper in 30 minutes.
- QuercusMax 1y ago
  Well, said engineer is no longer working at my company. He wasn't exactly the best developer...