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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.

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.

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.

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.

I hate reviewing AI-generated code (including the code I prompted). I still get annoyed waiting for the AI to 'think'. Too short to context switch, too long to stare.