I originally posted this post on my blog.
Anita asked if AI, given all the hype, will take her job.
Here:
Short answer: Not yet.
Sure, we code daily and AI shines at spitting out code. But most of our work is balancing expectations and handling risk.
Apart from coding, we as coders have to deal with:
- Inter-team planning
- Brainstorming sessions
- Putting late sprints back on track
- Designing requirements and user stories
- Decomposing a full project into milestones
- Scoping tasks with Product people
- Reviewing architecture designs
- Negotiating deadlines
- Talking to clients
And that involves a lot of human interaction. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a coder will spend more time in meetings than coding on a normal day. And AI can't replace that human interaction yet.
But sure, our job as coders will change. Even if we're skeptical about AI, we can't ignore it. We can only assume AI will generate code faster and cheaper than any of us. We have to adapt.
We won't be code monkeys anymore, cracking lines of code in exchange for bananas. AI will handle that. And if AI will change everything, let it at least kill dumb SCRUM ceremonies.
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My experience at this respect is... bad. I've written about it, for instance, about the quality of the code (with one of the codes, it even run with trivial errors), and even about suggesting code.
It's true that we can't ignore it, but at this moment awakes more my curiosity than any warnings about taking over our jobs. In fact, if I were to use IA-generated code I'd have to recheck it, so it would mean double the effort. Not worth it.
People is very eager about calling the end of... all kind of things. One of those things was precisely my job as lecturer. "Nobody will need a teacher anymore." Bold words that could only be true if we were taking into account self-teaching capable people, which is not the average case.
IA is just a tool. And unless its training sources become curated, not a very good one, at least with that big dreams of substitution in mind.