Upon reflection, I’ve come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it. There’s an ineffable aspect to my favorite pieces of software where I don’t think of it is as feature matrix but rather as an interface made by a human for humans that’s a joy to use. And when you build software with AI, it leads to worse software. Sure, it’s faster to build initially, but I think to the detriment of the quality of the code and the user interface and the user experience.
Wow. This was a great read and I feel reflects what many people are thinking right now. The author talks about using AI for non coding purposes, even medical questions. This is where it gets dangerous.
Anecdotally at work I have several team members who are junior/mid level (non software dev roles). Last year they were just keeping the lights on, not doing much coding and rarely providing feedback on architecture, design, or even technical merits. Now they run everything through an agent, regurgitating the output for someone else to read.
When asked in a meeting about their comments, it is like they never said it. They have no idea what they pasted. Their understanding of the topic is shallow. Yet they are being promoted to staff level for using AI and contributing more.
More and more, I see tech workers becoming meat proxies for AI agents, and it sickens me.