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Comment by g42gregory | Hacker News Reader

Yes, you could write the code yourself, but keep in mind that this activity is going away for most engineers (but not for all) in 1 - 2 years.

I think a better advice would be to learn reading/reviewing an inordinate amount of code, very fast. Also heavy focus on patterns, extremely detailed SDLC processes, TDD, DDD, debugging, QA, security reviews, etc...

Kinda the opposite advice from the blog. :-)

Edit: Somebody pointed out that, in order to read/review code, you have to write it. Very true. It brings a questions of how do you acquire/extend your skills in the age of AI-coding assistance? Not sure I have an answer. Claude Code now has /output-style: Learning, which forces you to write part of the code. That's a good start.

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> keep in mind that this activity is going away for most engineers (but not for all) in 1 - 2 years

sure thing. we've been '6 months' away from AI taking our jobs for years now

Not saying AI will take anybody's job. It's just that the nature of the job is changing, and we have to acknowledge that. Will still be competitive. Will still require strong SE/CS knowledge and skills. Will still require/favor CS/EE degrees, which NVIDIA CEO told us not to get anymore. :-)

Also, it looks like the OpenAI and Anthropic has completed their fundraising cycles. So the AGI "has been cancelled" for now. :-)

>Yes, you could write the code yourself, but keep in mind that this activity is going away for most engineers (but not for all) in 1 - 2 years.

I'm not saying that it definitely isn't going to happen, but there is a loooong way to go for non-FAANG medium and small companies to let their livelihoods ride on AI completely.

>I think a better advice would be to learn reading/reviewing an inordinate amount of code, very fast. Also heavy focus on patterns, extremely detailed SDLC processes, TDD, DDD, debugging, QA, security reviews, etc...

If we get to a point in 1-2 years where AI is vibe-coding at a high mostly error-free level, what makes you think that it couldn't review code as well?

I can't see into the future, but I think that AI, at any level, will not excuse people from the need to acquire top professional skills. Software engineers will need to know Software Engineering and CS, AI or not. Marketers will have to understand marketing, AI or not. And so on... I could be wrong, but that's what I think.

AI-assistance is a multiplier, not an addition. If you have zero understanding before AI, you will get zero capabilities with AI.

Nobody has any idea what will happen in 1–2 years. Will AI still be just as incompetent at writing code as it is today? Will AI wipe out biological humanity? Nobody has any idea.

Very true. One thing we could do it to take a positive/constructive view of the future and drive towards it. People can all lose their jobs, OR we could write 1,000x more software. Let's give corporate developers tools to write 1,000x more software, instead of buying it from the outside vendors, as a way of example.

It might work!

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