Software engineer, tinkerer, filthy casual. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
Sydney, New South Wales
Joined December 2011
- Tweets12.7K
- Following346
- Followers188
- Likes8K
Yoann Celton retweeted
Most software engineers are facing an identity crisis bordering on depression.
As CTOs aggressively evangelize tokenmaxxing, a class divide ensues.
The lazy. The lazy push code. They don't write it. They don't manually test it. They don't even read it. They're on autopilot. See Jira ticket, prompt for task, submit code. Many of them are barely on their computer the whole day. A comment on the PR asking why they did this? The lazy ask AI. A Slack message? The lazy ask AI. Need to prepare for standup? The lazy ask AI. As long as it sounds enough like them and isn't detected. Some of the lazy are even overemployed, and work multiple jobs. The lazy smart ones get away with this, and even rewarded. After all, software engineering for the lazy is just a dance to convince your colleagues you're smart and hard working.
The craftsmen. The craftsmen are tired. Very tired. 15 PRs in queue. Slack blowing up. The entire burden of review falls on the craftsman. The burden of understanding. They try. They work their way through the code, thoughtfully commenting to improve what ships. The response? A lazy: "That's a clever idea! You're absolutely right." with an incorrect change. It's fine, the craftsman says. I can fix them. They write a doc urging his colleagues to be better. The next day? 20,000 line PR to review. Day after day, their workload grows. Bugs seep into production. No one seems to care. Another round of AI is thrown at it. Their animosity to their colleagues rises. Eventually, they give up. It's just not what it used to be. The craft they loved is dead. They eventually wake up, a lazy.
This isn't all companies. Many companies are genuinely more productive, adopt the right set of principles and practices around AI development and have highly talented teams that trust each other. It tends to happen in bigger companies that are 10+yrs old with a higher talent variance. But it happens. A lot.
Yoann Celton retweeted
true (I am not depressed)
> Jira ticket description - AI written slop
> PR description - slop
> PR code - slop
> I leave a crafted review - slop replies
I have to spend so much time understanding and reviewing. Even true with folks who have 4-5x experience than me
Most software engineers are facing an identity crisis bordering on depression.
As CTOs aggressively evangelize tokenmaxxing, a class divide ensues.
The lazy. The lazy push code. They don't write it. They don't manually test it. They don't even read it. They're on autopilot. See Jira ticket, prompt for task, submit code. Many of them are barely on their computer the whole day. A comment on the PR asking why they did this? The lazy ask AI. A Slack message? The lazy ask AI. Need to prepare for standup? The lazy ask AI. As long as it sounds enough like them and isn't detected. Some of the lazy are even overemployed, and work multiple jobs. The lazy smart ones get away with this, and even rewarded. After all, software engineering for the lazy is just a dance to convince your colleagues you're smart and hard working.
The craftsmen. The craftsmen are tired. Very tired. 15 PRs in queue. Slack blowing up. The entire burden of review falls on the craftsman. The burden of understanding. They try. They work their way through the code, thoughtfully commenting to improve what ships. The response? A lazy: "That's a clever idea! You're absolutely right." with an incorrect change. It's fine, the craftsman says. I can fix them. They write a doc urging his colleagues to be better. The next day? 20,000 line PR to review. Day after day, their workload grows. Bugs seep into production. No one seems to care. Another round of AI is thrown at it. Their animosity to their colleagues rises. Eventually, they give up. It's just not what it used to be. The craft they loved is dead. They eventually wake up, a lazy.
This isn't all companies. Many companies are genuinely more productive, adopt the right set of principles and practices around AI development and have highly talented teams that trust each other. It tends to happen in bigger companies that are 10+yrs old with a higher talent variance. But it happens. A lot.
Yoann Celton retweeted
Having been part of the industry for 50 years, I can confidently report that none of this is true.
Sure, writing code has a non-zero cost; this is true of any artifact.
But you know what costs even more, Jonathan?
Writing bad code; writing unnecessary code; writing more code than you really need simply because you think you might need it someday or you are too lazy or sloppy to clean up after yourself.
Anything that costs nothing is often worth nothing as well, and results in significant unintended consequences.
For 50 years, software engineering ran on code rationing. Writing code was expensive, so we rationed it carefully through roadmaps, RFCs, prioritization meetings, and scope reviews.
This created a role: the No Engineer. No, that won't scale. No, we don't have bandwidth. No, that's out of scope. No, we need a design doc first. The No Engineer was valuable for 50 years. Every "no" saved real money. Their judgment was the rationing system.
LLMs will be the end of code rationing. Code is cheap now. And while the No Engineer is explaining why something can't be done, the Yes Engineer has already shipped three versions of it.
If you're a Yes Engineer, the next decade is yours.
Yoann Celton retweeted
It's actually so unpleasant to work in tech rn because people are so fucking hard abt reality shifting into whatever world this is
Were 5 years in and LLM error rates are still obnoxiously high, the have a midas touch for turning codebase design into shit, the economics of AI make no sense, and the code they write tends to be incredibly inefficient
They write code super fast. Isn't that enough? Can't we just go hey this thing can speed up the process to a reasonable degree?
Why must we larp lyrical about capabilities that AI will never have and make up a new OSS universe that's entirely detached from observable reality
Hey doesnt this guy work for Anthropic
Yoann Celton retweeted
so... I audited Garry's website after he bragged about 37K LOC/day and a 72-day shipping streak.
here's what 78,400 lines of AI slop code actually looks like in production.
a single homepage load of garryslist.org downloads 6.42 MB across 169 requests.
for a newsletter-blog-thingy.
1/9🧵
Yoann Celton retweeted
Being a European today basically means having a pretty excellent day until around 5 pm when the White House starts posting the dumbest shit you've ever had the misfortune to read.
Every. Damn. Day.
Yoann Celton retweeted
No boom, just buzz - it's an ultrasonic spray 😂 #ElecrowPCB
Yoann Celton retweeted
You could do that with a phone app. Or plasticine. Or pencil and paper. Or a photo. But no, we have to demonise Flipper like it’s some magical evil thing only Flipper can do?
The Flipper Zero has an app called "Key Maker" that allows users to copy the cut pattern of some physical keys.
Scary isn't it?
xitter.cf/froggyups/status/18476…
Yoann Celton retweeted
I built a portable Xbox.
This isn't a PC handheld, it isn't emulation, this is a real motherboard from a real Xbox. It has a 9” 480p display, pure digital video/audio, 100W USB C charge and play, and I'm currently adding WiFi 6 for wireless Xbox Live functionality.
Yes, really.
Yoann Celton retweeted
Shitty Character Idea:
A cleric who was a warlock until their patron ascended to godhood. Now they have to deal with being a priest.
Yoann Celton retweeted
here's a funny little trick you can do with Protonmail addresses
Every Proton address is generated and given a PGP key even if you've never sent or planned on using encrypted emails. All keys are published via the Web Key Discovery protocol, so you can just do a
gpg-wks-client --check -v <proton_address> to look up when the key was created, which is usually the account's creation date by default (assuming the address is not an alias of another main account and the key has not been replaced with a user supplemented one).
Yoann Celton retweeted
La macroniste Anne-Laurence Petel enrage après sa défaite cuisante ce soir à Aix-en-Provence, la députée sortante est arrivée troisième dans cette triangulaire, faisant gagner le RN. Elle avait le choix entre le déshonneur et la défaite, elle a choisi les deux...
In infosec very often you need people to not do what they want to do, or do what they don't want to do, and you cannot do that effectively without being "people-oriented", especially as you go up the leadership
This Post is from an account that no longer exists. Learn more
