Sup...? Long time... brah.

Well, I finally got AI'd... not that it took my job, I was just averse to it. Which affected my performance, (in the eyes of the company) as the performance bar was recently increase to 30% "faster", yes... faster. So severance package was offered... I reluctantly accepted, even in my 60's I still aim for integrity over compromise.

This is how I saw it, for me it is a difference in two workflows:

• Before: I wrote the code... I understood every line because I made every decision. The quality was mine. The craft was mine.
• Now (with AI): I'd review generated code... I'd hunt for subtle mistakes the model snuck in. I'd then question whether a function it wrote actually did what it claimed it did.
  
  I was no longer the author... I was the auditor.

In the grand scheme of things; it is not the same job and definitely... not a better job.

My Craft Argument

As I am a bassist... I considered this analogy:

I imagined someone told me that to be 30% more "productive" as a musician, I should start using AI to compose my bass lines. I'd then "just review them" and make sure they sound right. Right? You know I'd feel the exact same way... I didn't play the part, so I don't feel the part... the nuance, the groove, those micro-decisions that make a line mine... those are gone.

Code is the same. The act of writing it... IS where the understanding lives.

Industry Push

What frustrates me most isn't the technology itself... it's the expectation. Management sees (AI === '30% faster') and adjusts targets accordingly, without accounting for:

1. The shift from creation to review is a different skill with different fatigue patterns...
2. Reviewing code is cognitively different from writing it... and I, myself, find it less satisfying...
3. Expertise has value beyond speed, imho... architectural judgment, debugging intuition, domain knowledge...
4. Needing to write a full dossier on platform or integrated hubs to get a simple bug fix or product enhancement...

But enough about me brah... how you been?