In a way it is cheating, as it is all built on countless copyright infringements and non-consensual use of other people's works.
Only that businesses have decided it is OK as long as they are benefitting to steal from everyone else, and basically force us to be the acting hand in all of it, or threaten us with starvation (no job, no income).
Exactly this. I got into this field because designing programs and writing code is enjoyable. I'm probably behind on using AI and need to get more up to speed, but I never want to stop coding by hand.
> I'm probably behind on using AI and need to get more up to speed
Same.
My difficulty is that for the past 8 years I've been working for (tiiiiny) SaaS business where I don't have anyone I can simply ask in-person "hey, can you show me how to 'do' all this newfangled AI agentic team coding?"; so my only direct-exposure is with the painful Copilot sidebar chat, which I now find myself allergic to.
So let's see elsewhere: while searching online for some (reputable) "agentic coding courses" my results are for the same kind of people who used to run those dodgy coding-camps from 10 years ago. I'm having difficulty finding resources for practicing SWEs like myself wanting a continuing-professional-development course experience, not a get-rich-by-buying-my-course video library from a contemptable AI booster
Even more surprisingly, my local major university (UW.edu) doesn't seem to offer any certificate courses for getting into agentic development either[1] despite offering courses on C++, Six Sigma, and actual ML/AI courses. It's maddening. I can't be the only one with this problem...
I don't understand this. A skill critical to software engineering is learning how to learn. Just download Claude Code (or open alternative) and try to make things.
See how it fails or succeeds. Look at the supported features, try them out, think about how you might use them in your workflow.
I'm not anxious about my codebase; I'm anxious about all the fun parts being sucked out of my job as though I'm being promoted from IC to management - and given the inevitability of progress I can see how my new role as an agent shepherd, too, could be obsoleted in the near-future.
...so I've been avoidant of the whole thing ever since 2023, burying my head in the sand to avoid those feelings of anxiety and uncertainty-about-the-future, and it now makes it difficult for me to engage with the topic head-on.
Burke Holland has a few good videos that helped me. For example this on agents[1]. He uses Copilot but the principles are similar for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other harnesses:
So far in the LLM coding revolution I still feel like it's software development. I just work with systems on the level of features and architecture instead of flow control statements. Some day we might lose that too, but I think it will take a while.
> I just work with systems on the level of features and architecture instead of flow control statements.
That's kinda at the level I enjoy though - where I get to think-through things when figuring out exhaustiveness and correctness; introducing refinement-types into a codebase that's previously nothing but ints-and-strings; and trying out new and cutting-edge language-features directly.
I know I can prompt Claude etc into trying to do those things, but from what I've seen from other people doing it the result is somewhat of a mess - or just plain inelegant.
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May I ask how well Claude/Copilot/etc works with FP languages instead? So far - and back in early 2024 - I've only messed-around with asking ChatGPT to generate Haskell programs and the results were hallucinated gibberish.
Can't comment on FP, haven't touched it since SMLNJ in the late 90s. I fear my mind is now congealed in OOP paradigms and the threshold to FP is too high.
Anyway I can say this - the free web interface to ChatGPT in 2024 vs what you get with agent harnesses and the latest large models now is like comparing a wombat fetus to a college graduate.
Get one of the 20 or so dollar subscriptions, install Claude code, codex or similar and start by explaining what program you want to make and which language you want to do it in. Have it make a plan first, and do some back-and-forth to refine it until you're ready to let it implement.
If your experience is from ChatGPT two years ago I think you will be floored by the results, even in Haskell.
If you're also happy getting paid for it, then the company will just stop paying you. If you rely on such income to have a visa, you'll 100% sure to accept that you're forced into this and you will give up coding, or else.
One of the things businesses tend to not understand is, that if you take the fun out of the activity, you also lose the passion of the people performing the activity, no matter how many times actors at the job fake passion in front of higher ups. If you lose the passion, what you will be left with it mediocre development and shoddy software.
Maybe that's "enough" for the business to survive. But it surely won't be the reason it succeeds. It can still succeed for other factors though, but the business has given up on one path to success, which is making better software than the competition.