alt Hacker NewsThere are plenty of engineers that couldn't work without a modern IDE or in languages without memory management.
Or without the ability to use a library from GitHub / their package manager.
It doesn't feel THAT much different to me.
"Engineer" as a term might drift. There are "web developers" that can only use webflow / wordpress.
Replies
Engineer as a term has already drifted vastly since nobody in the field of "Software Engineering" is actually an Engineer if we go by a strict definitions.
Engineers are accredited and in some countries even come with a title.
The huge difference is that we don't know the cost we're going to end up with.
Will you have AI at the cost of a slack subscription? At the cost of a teammate? Will it not be available and you'll have to hire anthropic workers with AI access?
At least today, it isn't practical for most people to run these models locally- I think adding a dependency on a cloud service is different enough to some local (possibly open source) tool like an IDE.
"What kind of engineer are you" - Jesse Plemons wearing bright-red sunglasses
IDEs are free. Libraries are free. Languages are free. This is becoming more like an internet subscription where you’re at the mercy of Anthropic the same way you may be at the mercy of Comcast.
I’m sure you can see the difference between a garbage collector and a nondeterministic slop generator
But it feels good to equivocate, so here we are.
> couldn't work
"Couldn't", or "wouldn't"? Early in my career I'd be happy doing anything basically, not much I "couldn't" do, given enough time. But nowadays, there is a long list of things I wouldn't do, even if I know I could, just because it's not fun.