> I think I’ve leaned too far into AI, partly because I’m a lazybones and am kind of burned out already.
I've been doing systems / backend programming since I was 10 (in C in those days), so I was burned out by the time I was 20, and I'm now 40. The temptation to trade on that knowledge in a very short-term way is strong, but I know where it leads -- to the rot you describe.
This is rotten but I'm secretly glad that Claude et al are metering by the token.
I'm not sure that folks realize that the purpose of software engineering is to program in a way that doesn't just function, but optimizes for future readability, maintainability, and behavioral change in line with product requirements.
There's a reason why programmers are not paid "by the line", and it's because LoC as an incentive structure is a disaster that leads to brittle and verbose slop code -- and we knew that even before LLMs.
So I'm glad that the (long-term) economics mediate against token-hogging software by making it literally more expensive to deal with.
I just hope that managerial types are smart enough to realize that "time to understand/upgrade/change a codebase" still matters, whether that's expressed in terms of SWE work hours or LLM tokens.
I would not bet on the managerial types responding to anything but (a) blunt monetary incentives and (b) the latest buzz from other people in their general professional category, e.g. at the country club.
I've been doing systems / backend programming since I was 10 (in C in those days), so I was burned out by the time I was 20, and I'm now 40. The temptation to trade on that knowledge in a very short-term way is strong, but I know where it leads -- to the rot you describe.
I'm not sure that folks realize that the purpose of software engineering is to program in a way that doesn't just function, but optimizes for future readability, maintainability, and behavioral change in line with product requirements.
There's a reason why programmers are not paid "by the line", and it's because LoC as an incentive structure is a disaster that leads to brittle and verbose slop code -- and we knew that even before LLMs.
So I'm glad that the (long-term) economics mediate against token-hogging software by making it literally more expensive to deal with.
I just hope that managerial types are smart enough to realize that "time to understand/upgrade/change a codebase" still matters, whether that's expressed in terms of SWE work hours or LLM tokens.