Engineers who dismiss AI

Summary

I refuse to use AI coding tools. I don’t need to try them to know they’re garbage. I have instincts. I tested ChatGPT in 2022, and asked it to write something. It (obviously) got it wrong; I don’t remember what exactly, but it was definitely wrong. That was three years ago and I haven’t looked back. Why would I? It’s not like there was anything meaningful that changed about AI tools, right? My coworker uses Claude Code now. She finished a project last week that would’ve taken me a month. I told her she’s “cheating.” She doesn’t understand that some of us have principles. Some of us believe in doing things the hard way (even when the easy way produces identical results). “The code AI writes is full of bugs,” I always say. Unlike my code, which is also full of bugs, but those are artisanal bugs. I copy from Stack Overflow constantly. That’s different from AI, though. The distinction is clear (well, at least in my head). Will AI ever be good enough for me to try? Maybe. When it can read my mind, never make a single mistake, and personally apologize to me for threatening my sense of identity. Until then, I’ll pass. Okay, let me drop the act. Last week I wrote AI Can Write Your Code. It Can’t Do Your Job. The thesis was that: AI is changing some things, but the job isn’t going anywhere. Programming is a task; software engineering is a role. To be honest, I was expecting some controversy. I figured people would push back on the optimistic part. “You’re naive, AI will replace us all!” That kind of thing. That’s not what happened; the backlash came from the other direction. Engineers got mad at the “AI can write your code.” part, which was shocking to me. Here’s what I got: “Hardly. It can assist a bit under constant supervision.” “(…) it can’t write my code either.” “AI can write my bugs for me.” “Only if my code is supposed to be a hallucinated 5 unnecessary layers of abstraction that have 10 security holes.” “Not really… most of what AI writes is trash…” “It can maybe wr...