AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder

xyzsparetimexyz

I feel like there's a market out there for a weekly newsletter that summarises all the AI takes like this and collects the one meaningful snippet of insight (if any)

zackify

I've always been motivated by making simple solid foundations in my code the fastest way possible. So for me being able to have AI wrote certain things extremely fast with me just doing voice to text with my specific approach, is amazing. I am all in on everything AI and have a discord server just for openclaw and specialized per repo assistants. It really feels like when I'm busy I can throw it an issue tracker number for things. Then I will ssh via vs code or regular ssh which forwards my ssh key from 1password. My agents have read only repo access and I can push only when I ssh in. Super secure. Sorry for the tangent to the article but I have always loved coding now I love it even more.

simianwords

The post is right superficially. It made being an engineer harder because it took away the easy parts that anyone can do and it forces engineers to think of the hard ones. No jobs get easier with automation - they always move a step up in abstraction level. An accountant who was super proficient in adding numbers no longer can rely on those skills once calculator was invented.

_pdp_

I'm not sure if it's made engineering harder, but it's certainly changing what it means to be a good engineer. It's no longer just about writing code. Now it's increasingly about having good taste, making the right decisions, and sometimes just being blessed with the Midas touch. In any case, I think we should start treating the majority of code as a commodity that will be thrown away sooner or later. I wrote something about this here: https://chatbotkit.com/reflections/most-code-deserves-to-die - it was inspired by another conversation on HN.

smokel

The author introduces the term "Supervision Paradox", but IMHO this is simply one instance of the "Automation Paradox" [1], which has been haunting me since I started working in IT. Interestingly, most jobs don't incentivize working harder or smarter, because it just leads to more work, and then burn-out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation#Paradox_of_automati...

zzzeek

I still feel like I'm writing code. I tell Claude what to write and I am very specific about it. There's still tons of problems for which Claude has no particular solution and it's on me and other humans to figure out what to do. For those cases where I tell it to just go off and write a whole script that I'm not even looking at, those are throwaway / low-value cases I dont care about where previously I'd not have even taken on that particular job.

Spide_r

Its worth mentioning that this essay has some signs of being either partially AI generated or heavily edited through an LLM. Some of the signs are there (It's not X, it's Y), With the blog having gone from nearly zero activity between 2015 and 2025 to have it explode in posts and text output since then also raises an eyebrow.

oytis

> you are not imagining things. The job changed. The expectations changed. And nobody sent a memo. Looks like something AI would say. Regardless of how it really was written

randomtoast

> This is not a contradiction. It is the reality ... > That is not an upgrade. That is a career identity crisis. This is not X. It is Y. > The trap is ... > This gap matters ... > This is not empowerment ... > This is not a minor adjustment... Your typical AI slop rhetorical phrasing. Phrases like: "identity crisis", "burnout machine", "supervision paradox", "acceleration trap", "workload creep" These sound analytical but are lightly defined. They function as named concepts without rigorous definition or empirical grounding. There might be some good arguments in the article, but AI slop remains AI slop.

agentultra

It might be worth mentioning studies that show the lack of productivity gains from LLM usage. These posts take it as an unequivocal given. Management might still have the expectations that certain tasks are faster. But they aren’t always connected to reality because they’re not thinking as engineers.

mads_quist

AI made programming A LOT MORE FUN for me. What I never enjoyed was looking up the cumbersome details of a framework, a programming language or an API. It's really BORING to figure out that tool X calls paging params page and pageSize while Y offset and limit. Many other examples can be added. For me, I feel at home in so many new programming languages and frameworks that I can really ship ideas. AI really helps with all the boring stuff.

RivieraKid

Regarding expanding role: The scenario I'm somewhat worried about is that instead of 1 PM, 1 designer and 5 developers, there will be 1 PM, 1 designer and 1 developer. Even if tech employment stays stable or even slightly increases due to Jevons paradox, the share of software developers in tech employment will shrink.

Twey

Previous: https://www.ivanturkovic.com/2026/02/25/ai-made-writing-code...

tamimio

Not really, I disagree. The article did slightly touched on the real issue on why people enjoy writing code, a “craftsmanship”, yes, coding is NOT engineering, it is writing, and the people who enjoy doing it are actually writers not engineers, and I always keep mentioning that. With AI however, those writers have to be doing the engineering work: the goals, architecture design, managing blueprints, process design and refining, among many other things, and that job is not easy hence why engineers are “supposedly” paid well, AI now took the writing role, and you have to do the engineering one.

Jasonleo

AI may have sped up coding, but it also exposed that real engineering is about judgment, trade-offs, and responsibility—not just producing code.

nemo44x

Developers will become admins. Responsible for supervising and owning the outcomes of increasingly agentic engineering outputs. Trust is the most important thing in business and it’s worth more than ever.

baxuz

Pangram detects this as a 100% AI generated article. Downvote this hustling slop to oblivion. Also, check out the dude's linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanturkovic/

ralferoo

This section very much resonated with me, even though I still haven't tried any of the AI tools: ... most software engineers became engineers because they love writing code. Not managing code. Not reviewing code. Not supervising systems that produce code. Writing it. The act of thinking through a problem, designing a solution, and expressing it precisely in a language that makes a machine do exactly what you intended. That is what drew most of us to this profession. It is a creative act, a form of craftsmanship, and for many engineers, the most satisfying part of their day. Actually surprised none of the other comments have picked up on this, as I don't think it's especially about AI. But the periods of my career when I've been actually writing code and solving complicated technical problems have been the most rewarding times in my life, and I'd frequently work on stuff outside work time just because I enjoyed it so much. But the other times when I was just maintaining other people's code, or working on really simple problems with cookie-cutter solutions, I get so demotivated that it's hard to even get started each day. 100%, I do this job for the challenges, not to just spend my days babysitting a fancy code generation tool.

cheschire

AI made it so individual developers can outsource their work, not just companies. Maybe there are some lessons to be learned from companies that manage outsourced work successfully.

ahokay

This article is obviously written by ai and it’s just painful for me to read ChatGPT’s writing style day in and day out