If you want to create a programming language, create one. Do it because you enjoy it and because you have to answer a burning question. Learn how to formalize a language. Decide on whether to do that with operational or denotational semantics. Understand IR, optimization pipelines, and all that. Every moment spent on acquiring this knowledge is not lost and the time is not wasted. You’re enriched by it!
There are other people out there doing the same thing. Share with them. They’re more than happy to find like minded people.
Choosing to give up is not the answer. Claiming that engineering is, “solved,” is promoting a false narrative. It’s almost nihilist. Defeatist at least. Don’t even admit it or repeat it. It’s just not true.
All of the crypto bros told us how inevitable their technology was. We didn’t have to argue. Their constant chirping just got annoying and now look. They’re basically gone having exhausted the well.
A lot of LLM technology is in the same boat. You have a bunch of noisy people lying and hyping up the technology to line their pockets. History will sort them out too. You don’t have to give bad arguments space.
I think the worst effect AI has had on our industry is this malaise that has settled in and convinced so many people to give up, stop contributing, and accept the future that the hype bros have made up. They’re the ones getting rid of jobs, telling everyone they’re gonna get replaced, that there’s no need to learn programming or how to do software engineering.
Software engineering is going to be more important than ever. Despite the astonished claims of the intermediate beginners that Claude one-shotted the app they couldn’t be bothered to learn how to build for six years… it doesn’t magically generate good software. It can do a lot but at the end of the day it still needs a human operator to understand its output and direct the harnesses.
The thing to watch out for is people giving up on engineering as a profession. Software has barely entered that arena. But if we start vibe coding air traffic control software, it’s probably time to stop flying.
The point of software engineering hasn’t been to generate code. It’s to understand what the heck we are building. To develop the processes, techniques, wisdom, and knowledge to direct the work. To bounce between theory and application and back again. To better ourselves and make computers do useful things.
There are other people out there doing the same thing. Share with them. They’re more than happy to find like minded people.
Choosing to give up is not the answer. Claiming that engineering is, “solved,” is promoting a false narrative. It’s almost nihilist. Defeatist at least. Don’t even admit it or repeat it. It’s just not true.
All of the crypto bros told us how inevitable their technology was. We didn’t have to argue. Their constant chirping just got annoying and now look. They’re basically gone having exhausted the well.
A lot of LLM technology is in the same boat. You have a bunch of noisy people lying and hyping up the technology to line their pockets. History will sort them out too. You don’t have to give bad arguments space.
I think the worst effect AI has had on our industry is this malaise that has settled in and convinced so many people to give up, stop contributing, and accept the future that the hype bros have made up. They’re the ones getting rid of jobs, telling everyone they’re gonna get replaced, that there’s no need to learn programming or how to do software engineering.
Software engineering is going to be more important than ever. Despite the astonished claims of the intermediate beginners that Claude one-shotted the app they couldn’t be bothered to learn how to build for six years… it doesn’t magically generate good software. It can do a lot but at the end of the day it still needs a human operator to understand its output and direct the harnesses.
The thing to watch out for is people giving up on engineering as a profession. Software has barely entered that arena. But if we start vibe coding air traffic control software, it’s probably time to stop flying.
The point of software engineering hasn’t been to generate code. It’s to understand what the heck we are building. To develop the processes, techniques, wisdom, and knowledge to direct the work. To bounce between theory and application and back again. To better ourselves and make computers do useful things.