Also I suggest giving it low-level instructions. Its half-decent for low level stuff especially if it has access to preexisting code. Also note that it does exactly what you tell it to do like a genie. I've asked it to write a func that already exists in the codebase and it wrote a massive chunk of code. It wasn't until after it was done that I remembered we already have the solution to the problem done. Anyhow the hype is unreal so tailor expectations accordingly.

I also find it kind of funny that the only perspective on AI is about being laid off. This says a lot about who's writing all these articles. But beware the cobra effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive . If the AI boom allows a company to lay off a large amount of its engineers the engineers can also simply band together and as-easily become a competitor unburdained by legacy code resulting in profits going down for existing businesses. Alternatively they can simply join the customers of various SaaS businesses and roll their own solution with same net effect.

LLMs are more like a lightning fast pseudo-random text generator at this point. To see that though you'd need to run it a few times, test it and understand the output. Something that's a bit beyond the casual amateur ability. Maybe what we need is the AI bubble to burst first.

Its sad that we've gotten here though. Every tried having a coffee with your preferred AI as opposed to doing it with a highly motivate junior? Maybe you're not even going to get a chance to experience this.

Nowadays the main issue for me is that there are too many people in the room. Pick any social network and forum and you're an immediate misfit there. Make one edgy statements and trolls, flamers, live streamers will tear you apart. Not to mention AI tech advancements are making a not-great situation slightly worse. The internet is no longer a happy place. Its a good question if it ever were.

I did find they very useful when writing completely new stuff (things like "write a It'd be nice to hear in detail how its been useful for other devs. There's too much propaganda around on how amazing it is and not nearly enough use cases.

Otherwise the guy doesn't seem to be having a crisis at all. The problem is he's been doing business for the past 10 years. Likely put in a lot more hours than needed. Now business is all he knows and catching up to doing something more meaningful is hard.

I really dislike the entire narrative that's been built around the LLMs. Feels like startups are just creating hype to milk as much money out of VCs for as long as they can. They also like to use the classic and proven blockchain hype vocabulary (we're still early etc.).

Also the constant antropomorphizing of AI is getting ridiculous. We're not even close to replacing juniors with shitty generated code that might work. Reminds me of how we got "sold" automated shopping terminals. More convenient and faster that standing in line with a person but now you've got to do all the work yourself. Also the promises of doing stuff faster is nothing new. Productivity is skyrocketing but burnout is the hot topic at your average software conference.