[idiotsecant]

I think history will prove that this is a less nuanced view than is required to accurately describe the situation. Abandoning human agency through the use of generative AI harms us all. Using AI as a force multiplier to implement human agency helps us all. It's possible to recognize that asking AI to do everything results in a poor product and brain rot for the humans. It's not at all clear that this is the case for using AI to build boilerplate, help with tests, etc.

[prerok]

I've always felt we somewhat failed as engineers (I included, of course) when I was doing boilerplate by hand. We should have taken the time to get those autogenerated. But... it takes time and the generator is always more complex than the produced code, sometimes even by a few factors, so it also takes an expert to maintain.

As for tests, I've seen LLMs produce good ones as well as useless ones. I guess it's all about instructions... sorry, prompts... no, sorry, prompt engineering to get it right and done properly.

That said, I am also very concerned with brain rot. Engineers nowadays can commit code they don't understand without a blink of the eye. Slowly, the knowledge may get sparse if we are not careful about it.