The Software Engineering Identity Crisis. \ stacker news ~devs

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The Software Engineering Identity Crisis.annievella.com/posts/the-software-engineering-identity-crisis/

1523 sats \ 5 comments \ @co574 25 Mar devs

166 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 25 Mar

I love Cursor because I hated the constant googling api docs and stack overflow to figure out proper usage of esoteric things I rarely touch and don't care to know more about. AI is great at being an auto-complete for those things in small chunks.

But it's still completely retarded if not micro-managed, you still have to know how to go about solving your problem and architecting the solution. You then review everything to make sure its done that way and no wrong assumptions were made by the auto-complete.

With all the vibe coding hype I should start taking screenshots of the stupidity so non-devs realize you can't push this stuff blindly. Some dude on twitter was just griping about his keys getting leaked and a bunch of other issues from exposing a vibe-coded CRUD app to the internet... fortunately I think most people get stuck and give up before getting that far.

Just last week I working with middleware and out of he blue it made the token verification client side. If you don't know what that means, or wouldn't have caught it yourself in the diff, you should assume vibe coding is just for play only and can't produce anything more useful than a landing page or simple script from scratch.

35 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 25 Mar

Perhaps the most valuable skill in this new landscape isn’t prompt engineering or systems architecture, but adaptability - the willingness to evolve, to learn new skills, and to find your unique place in a rapidly changing field.

Adaptability always seems to be in play. The only constant is change as they say. I suspect it'll outlive death and taxes.

The GitClear analysis is super interesting.

A 26% increase in code churn, with 5.7% of all code changes being revised or deleted within two weeks.

I kind of interpret this as AI generated code is so relatively cheap, it's relatively worthless, and that's what makes it valuable. It's kind of like most plastic goods - valued for their disposability.

My biggest problem with embracing vibe coding is I can't stand when the results are wrong. It's often frustrating enough that I'd rather step in and do it myself. On the other hand, it's perfectly suited to tasks that only need to be approximately correct. My biggest success vibe coding is writing scripts where I'm the only customer.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 25 Mar

disposability

I think part of this is fewer deps, in many cases its now quicker to accept a module or function inline diff than to find and evaluate a new dep.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 25 Mar

Very true.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 25 Mar

Let’s be honest about what’s at stake here. Many of us don’t just write code - we love writing code. Our identity is woven into every elegant solution we craft, every test we make pass, every problem we solve through pure logic and creativity. It’s not just work, not just a craft - it’s who we are.

Think about those moments of deep satisfaction: when you finally track down that elusive bug that’s been haunting production, when you work out how to optimise that slow algorithm and watch response times drop from seconds to milliseconds, when you transform a maze of legacy code into something clean and maintainable. These aren’t just achievements - they’re expressions of who we are as engineers. They’re the moments that remind us why we chose this path.

Now imagine AI taking over these moments of craftsmanship. The creators of these tools paint an optimistic picture - they say we’ll spend more time on defining intent, high-level architecture, and systems thinking. But listen carefully to what they’re really saying: we’ll become overseers rather than creators, managers rather than builders.

Ehh... I'm not sure I agree.

I'd wager that this person doesn't write in assembly.

I'm sure there were joys to be had in writing and debugging assembly.

There will be future joys in getting an Ai-driven workflow to work as well.