Even though I'm not a web developer I resonate with this a lot, but in the more generic way of "Does understanding the code even matter anymore ?". And it makes me kind of sad.
I just graduated (and was very lucky to get a junior job), and I'm someone that likes to dig deep when I'm having issues with a software. I care about correctness, I prefer to use strongly typed languages, I never used Haskell professionally, but I do all the advent of code with it. I like reading precise documentation.
But yesterday, my father showed me an app he made using Mistral's Vibe and android studio. He's in IT support, he knows computer science even though he never learned Kotlin or anything, but he was able to "make" an app, and he was excited, and I was happy for him as well, but only happy because he was happy basically.
I used this opportunity to ask him lots of questions about how he approached it, does he care that his only source for "how the code works" is the AI's own explanations. And basically we ended up at "if it's not critical" (it was just a launcher app for his phone) "it's fine".
But then, even though I myself never "vibe coded" an app or anything, I feel like I am always underestimating what AI can do now with all of the projects popping up. It seems almost magical, because I have no idea of the process behind it.
And it makes me think about when (not if) we'll just stop reviewing the AI code collectively, like 90% people stopped verifying compiler outputs except in very special cases.
I don't like the non-deterministic/fuzzy nature of AI coding, and I can't really bring myself to use it more, and I don't like the fact that I'm kind of drifting away from the software development scene.
But maybe I'm thinking about the future too much, I'm selfishly hoping we will hit a bottleneck, and it's not right to be selfish about something like this.
I just graduated (and was very lucky to get a junior job), and I'm someone that likes to dig deep when I'm having issues with a software. I care about correctness, I prefer to use strongly typed languages, I never used Haskell professionally, but I do all the advent of code with it. I like reading precise documentation.
But yesterday, my father showed me an app he made using Mistral's Vibe and android studio. He's in IT support, he knows computer science even though he never learned Kotlin or anything, but he was able to "make" an app, and he was excited, and I was happy for him as well, but only happy because he was happy basically.
I used this opportunity to ask him lots of questions about how he approached it, does he care that his only source for "how the code works" is the AI's own explanations. And basically we ended up at "if it's not critical" (it was just a launcher app for his phone) "it's fine".
But then, even though I myself never "vibe coded" an app or anything, I feel like I am always underestimating what AI can do now with all of the projects popping up. It seems almost magical, because I have no idea of the process behind it.
And it makes me think about when (not if) we'll just stop reviewing the AI code collectively, like 90% people stopped verifying compiler outputs except in very special cases.
I don't like the non-deterministic/fuzzy nature of AI coding, and I can't really bring myself to use it more, and I don't like the fact that I'm kind of drifting away from the software development scene.
But maybe I'm thinking about the future too much, I'm selfishly hoping we will hit a bottleneck, and it's not right to be selfish about something like this.