conqrr

>> we are coming back to what software engineering really is: understanding a problem and building a good solution.

I wish this were true, most of the people I work with now don't understand the problem, don't know the implementation and definitely don't build a good solution. They appear to be doing everything but poorly. Excellent at check boxing everything for performative performance.

Meaning they realized they hit a wall. The next new model isn't that much better than the last in quality.

Coding is not just the program running in memory, its also the process of distributing the mental model of understanding among the team.

If humans increasingly are kept out of coding, then who holds the mental model?

If AI holds the mental model, by definition human prompts will be over lossy channel. This is true without AI too. Software quality is directly dependent on good devs that translate from business/PM speak to technical decisions.

So is coding solved now? it was already solved decades ago.

I actually enjoy herdr a lot, and not just for agent management but the whole multiplexer is plenty powerful defaults and easier than tmux.

At some point though, it's too much information for my tiny human brain to process, even more than 3 agents is hard to manage and context switch. What is the point of managing herd of swarm of whatever I wonder?

Does a burger flipper enjoy flipping burgers all day? - Not unless you're a robot. But Making a Gourmet burger without time pressure? - yes No it is not enjoyable if you have enjoyed coding by hand earlier and like your craft. Maybe for some grunt work or work that you could never do it is great. I've given up trying to enjoy at professional work.

This is it. Sustainability. Not everything has to be about more money quickly. You don't even need VCs for that. More win to bootstrappers! I see a lot of folks bootstrapping in the LLM era, but that can be defeaned in the VC noise.

I do have lots of hobbies, but none would pay a wage. Maybe open a small business of some kind. Surf shop or bike rentals. How does one break into being an electrician? I do like electronic repairs, but not mechanical ones like cars

Sorry to hear. Repairs do sound fun if you're physically inclined

Very cool and definitely useful. I'm not the audience but I'll say: I like my ereader to just have books that sync. That is all. It's my library room and peace time, the last thing I need is Claude to distract me.

Unit tests are core. Of course depending on project size things change. I'm talking about just myself managing a large project gets difficult to do everything

This article hits very close to what I have come up with myself and its good to see others thinking the same lines.

  Core modules: Coded by myself, AI reviews and AI to discover/learn.
  Stuff I don't care about Craft: API layer, CLI layer, Smoke tests, Integ tests - Dial AI heavy, and lighter human reviews accordingly

Obviously takes a lot of patience and very easy to sin, but on good days, its doable.

Agreed with Reading! This alone isn't enough though. PreLLM too it wasn't just reading code to review. Someone did the hard work or crafting the code and each unit test would tell you the weird corner cases to deal with and factor that into changing your code. One person owned a part of the codebase and was an expert. Not to mention reading isnt easy when the velocity of code pumping in is 3-5x more. Its exhausting and reading becomes skimming.

If only agents had a face that can give you more communication range like expressions and feeling so you can trust them more. And if they were cheaper. Oh wait, that's humans, we don't want those.

Agree with this fully, I'm sure a lot of software engineers do too. Yet software is dominated by the valley. It's funny how easily money and greed manipulate the narrative while the majority suffer.

  Location: Relocating to EU
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Go, Python, Rust, Ruby on Rails, AWS stack 
  Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e8NeL7z7Gg3616-yTuismdd3c41fjD8Q/view?usp=drive_link
  Email: in my profile

I have a decade of experience in Infra and platform teams at AWS and Salesforce. I love building platforms and systems, dev tooling, cloud etc Apart from my skillset, I'm generally highly motivated to solve problems and a reliable worker. I'm looking to relocate to the EU and work remotely. Pls don't let my previous FAANG experience make you think I'm only chasing high pay or large companies. I'm more than willing to learn and get my hands dirty in the right environment.

Well we can go a step further and say Devtools must not be VC funded too :) Till date, the best and greatest dev tools I've used have not been influenced by VC decisions.

Nice! I've always wanted something like this clubbed with Coupons, Offers and combos that can be a steal deal sometimes.

If there is a place that is hiring and cares about Software Quality, I'll take a 70% paycut to work there.

Yeah, AI works great for everyone in vacuum, but works for no one in a group.

> My tinfoil hat says that this is what tech CEOs want. They want workers that are low skilled and can be paid less. Guess it worked then. I'm happy to take a paycut to never deal with vibecode and toxic environment where every estimate is borked due to agentic coding.

This hits so hard. I used to admire Senior developers who would do this. Now, I find myself in a place where there is no one to do this, and I've taken up to playing this role. It is the hardest job, but I cannot do any thing else as my team is committed to just non-stop slop thanks to management directives. I realize all the time I spent admiring, and now I have become.

All this debate around use LLM or not is tiring and just black and white thinking.

Can I use agents to code a SWE project? yes, with nuances.

Can I write code for a SWE project? yes, with nuances.

Its more options now, I'll write code about projects I deeply care and will use llm at work where its shared slop and forced usage.

3 AI related articles on the front page, but one is busting slop. I'm hopeful.

Shameless plug. But poor Indie hacker's log store based on similar concepts. Write logs to durable s3/r2 in parquet and querying with duckdb: https://github.com/amr8t/blobsearch

No expensive indexing or compute needed.

The big one that's missing as cost cutter. If you are a programmer, stay as close as you can to the code. Define the interfaces yourself and the core logic. You will know exactly what changes you want and know what tier of model to use.

Until Claude Sonnet 4, it was Meh no big deal. 4 onwards and Opus was when I was really surprised by the ability. But nowadays, I'm more convinced than ever that using AI for all code is a mistake. The sum total of productivity, although hard to predict, from anecdata seems to be a net negative if AI is blindly used everywhere. Using it at the periphery, observing, debugging etc is excellent aid. I use it at the day job I hate and at personal tasks that I don't have time for. But for personal projects I love, zero.

Coding was never the blocker and was a natural enforcer of quality. Healthy teams with strong opinions on quality will win eventually. I'm more hopeful after the bubble burst, companies will come back slowly to sanity.

For a bootstrapper's computeless log search solution using Duckdb and s3 compatible store, use Blobsearch (https://github.com/amr8t/blobsearch)

Looks really slick! I've been using Obsidian with git, and am thinking of moving back to the OG solution of simply using a text editor with a git repo. I'm wary of using cloud like google drive or dropbox for sync, especially if I'm using both phone and mobile to edit the same file throughout the day. I doubt using an external cloud really takes care of consistency and there's a possibility of losing data. Me being a developer can take the pain of a button click to git pull and resolve occasional conflicts. To me this is fully solved solution for note taking with tools I already know and trust. Having said that, I'm gonna try Files.md for some inspiration on what I could be missing.

Have you tried freelancing? Curious if that has seen an uptick or fall.