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Some thoughts on AI (I'm resisting writing a blog post because I have nothing of great value tbh, but it is a hard force to resist): I understand a bit better people who say it's fun to use. It kind of is if you have something you want to build and if there is a lot of boring code to get there.

6/5/26, 8:35 pm2 reposts14 likes

nrc

@ncameron.org

6 May

I still don't get how people are vibe coding or even letting the AI go off and write code based on a loose design. I find I have to spec the work carefully, generate small-ish chunks of changes and interact a lot, and spend a lot of time reviewing.

nrc

@ncameron.org

6 May

It's getting better so quickly! Even compared to a few months ago, it is significantly better at coding. It is surprising how good it can be and occasionally surprising how stupid it can be. It seems hard to have a good intuition for when it will do well and do badly.

nrc

@ncameron.org

6 May

It makes the 'fuck around' stage of software development much quicker, but makes the 'find out' phase much slower (although it does help there too a bit). Overall, I think it makes development quicker, but not as much as it feels, especially if you value quality of the output.

nrc

@ncameron.org

6 May

I'm more worried than ever about the junior to senior engineer pipeline. It seems clear to me that SWE with AI still requires a lot of experience to do well, and I don't see how new engineers are going to get that experience in industry.