I had my AI "oh f***" moment and I'm a student, now what?

> There was some stuff it couldn't do, mostly choking on big error traces and incremental build bugs (thanks gradle), and sometimes I needed to point it in a better direction architecturally

so that's what your part is

> all I did was direct composer to do what I was thinking of

yes.

> fresh grads and interns aren't seen as idea guys that can get stuff done, they're seen as useless ticket monkeys to be herded by seniors.

only if that's what you are

> Now Cursor Composer is the ticket monkey presumably to be herded by a senior, not me

wait, so you just "successfully" herded that ticket monkey, so why not by you? seniors are just juniors that haven't quit yet for longer than you.

here's my take: say you lived before levers were invented. you train and train to be strong enough to lift 200lb blocks of stone by brute force.

levers are invented. now everyone, even puny weaklings, can now lift those 200lb blocks faster and without getting tired. did you waste all that time training to lift 200lbs?

or do you just start lifting 2000lb blocks now?

it's just an inanimate lever. it does not reduce or increase "work" (F x D) or "power" (W / t).

so what do you do? the same thing that every good engineer has ever done - be a good engineer. that's what isn't going to be replaced. being a code monkey is probably going to be replaced, but that was never what you should have been in the first place.

in your view, a code monkey is a tool that seniors used to use to get stuff done and multiply their force. now they can use the new lever of composer and AI instead. so what? code monkeys are being replaced by AI composers, not engineers.

engineers are those who, regardless of seniority, understand how things work and the best technologies at the moment, trade approaches, make intelligent choices, and then make it happen. new tech like AI is just something new to understand and add to the equation.

i think the problem is that in recent years, the economy has favored and conflated code-monkeys with engineers and tried to train and pay them as such. well, that crap was going to end anyway.