Feeling sad about AI
Simon Willison argues developers disheartened by AI coding agents should move past existential crisis and refocus on broader engineering problems.
In a comment on a Hacker News thread titled 'Feeling sad about AI', Simon Willison reflects on the discouragement engineers feel when AI coding agents complete in an hour work that previously took a week. He notes that translating an exact specification into decent code is no longer a unique skill. He counsels that engineers who accept this shift can apply their experience to the larger set of problems they still face.
- AI coding agents now produce in an hour work that once took developers a week
- Writing code to an exact specification is no longer a unique differentiating skill
- Engineers experience an existential crisis phase but can come out the other side
- Remaining engineering problems remain abundant for experienced developers
From the original article
My comment on Feeling sad about AI — Hacker News. I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side. The initial reaction, when some coding agent does a piece of work that would have taken you a week in an hour and does it well , is to be very disheartened by it.
simonwillison.net
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.