You might have seen a lot of fearmongering posts that says it's the end of us software engineers. It's the era of AI, and the expertise of such software engineers are not needed anymore. People, from any background, can just use AI to write the features they want and most of the time it will just work. Under the name of "accessibility", people are justifying the said usage because "finally coding is accessible for us peasants!". These are just funny remarks that came from people that don't know what they're doing, or what they're getting themselves into.

Is this post just a coping mechanism for me, a mere associate software engineer, to cling and to give myself a sparkle of hope that my choice from 6 years ago was a right one? Am I completely being oblivious towards the fact that my job is now increasingly replaceable and I should start considering another safety net?

Those are things that they (vibe coders), try to make you believe, and try to reshape your mindset into giving up your choice so that they can replace you, while also being oblivious towards the fact that you're miles above them.

The Increasingly Short Memory as People Have More Knowledge on Their Fingertips

Not gonna lie, AI is so cool that I am now able to access basically any knowledge from any domains through just chatting with the bot. Let it be ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others, whatever the domain is, I can get a glimpse of their precious knowledge without too much effort, which makes you feel superior. And this is natural, I think. You'll feel some sort of superiority when you can surpass what others had done in a mere fraction of time, and even able to make you have the same standing ground with them. The power of technology is the key of advancing the human civilization and to keep break the boundaries, and you feel like everyone has the chance to do that now.

Except that it's a mere Dunning-Kruger Effect at works. You'll soon feel like everyone is right below you because you can utilize the new technology far better than those boomers you called for. You feel like it's useless for them to fight back because human can't fight machines and other sort of related arguments. And you feel like it's over for them. But at the same time, it's also over for you. On the less likely to happen situation where you have no access to technologies, you're definitely far behind those experts. On the more likely to happen situation where they also have access to AI, you'll come really short as you'll probably going to spend much more time to get the surface-level information then dig it one by one, while the experts can just describe the problem directly without too much hassle. In the fast moving age, you'll, once again, get left behind.

"But that doesn't matter right? I still have the entire knowledge on my fingertips!". Need to inform you that we already have access to that long before ChatGPT, and even long before Covid-19. The era of information where everything is connected through internet makes the barrier of information really less apparent and basically almost anyone can be self-taught on specific domain of their choice. But I think the keyword here is "self-taught", or basically, "to learn", that most of the vibe coders and AI slop clankers are missing out. As everything becomes more convenient, you develop less and less motivation to just... learn. You'll eventually stop learning because you feel like it's useless anymore. Everyone can surpass you at any moment using AI. And that is a real bummer.

This comes at a bigger risk where we will have an era where people just refuse to think and to learn. What will consume them is just the ego and superior feeling over others, because damn it's indeed an addicting feeling to have. But faced with the more likely to happen situation I explained prior, it really is just a crack that will give you short timed satisfaction, which then will be crushed by those that can definitely utilize the same thing better than you. And I think that's what the actual change that is happening. The process of information retrieval has become so easy and fast (but far costly), that most of the time you'll skip the part of scrolling down threads, discussions, and reading the books online just to find that needle in the haystack. But after that, those that can utilize the information better will still win the race. And I think that's the direction we're heading. An era where information is so fast that all you need to focus on is the act of processing those information. Lets disregard the problem of information authenticity, and focus on the utopist scenario where all the information are legit (which in reality is far from the truth).

Those that can adapt, will unlock such door to a much bigger possibilities, but those that can adapt and wise on it, will know on how to weave wisdom from the knowledge. It has always been like this, and it's never going to change.

The Naturally Ever-so Increasing Ego of Human

I mentioned before about how having more upperhand than others will increase their ego by magnitudes, and how it is not any different with the current public discourse. Those that feel like they know, will go through the Dunning-kruger effect phase, but those that actually knows, or the so-called "The Experts", will have another set of phase. And it's not a new phase, really. It's there by default.

I've been into several meetings where many of bright-minded and genius and the experts are also attending, and most of the time it's just them having some sort of catfights on deciding something that can definitely be solved by asking AI. But I'm not undermining their prowess by comparing to how the AI can give a similar or even better decision. Even AI can miss a one or two critical considerations because the lack of context they have. Machine can never surpass how amazing the human brain is, on how amazing it able to store and recall memories, and even turning those knowledge into wisdom, although behind the scenes it just a bunch of enzymes, proteins, and chemical compounds that are interacting each other. A mere clankers doesn't do that. But what also human being carries is ego. It's something that can turn someone that is really bright and wise into someone that is malicious. It's the barrier of knowledge and the very source of unhealthy discourse. And you won't believe how it directly correlate with the so called "dignity". Which is why, most of the amazing and bright people will defend their dignity by pushing their ego. And it applies just basically anywhere, everywhere.

I think that even in the face of AI, given how close and correct it can be, it will still kneel on the face of the human ego. You can't really blame it, each one of us need to survive by the end of the day. We need to think in the long term, and having a better standing ground is always a beneficial one. And defending that standing ground is the key of achieving a safe future. People will fight until their eyes bleed for it, and that includes using their ego.

Afterwords

In this era of ever so increasingly toxic environment, let it be by the environmental hazard, or by the malicious response of humans, having a stronger resolve and stance is the best thing to start. As I've said that ego is the one that can be the start of the fight, I think it's better to direct that ego into a common enemy. But to call it an enemy is a harsh thing to do, because it doesn't have a will, nor a soul. It's just a tool. AI, is just a tool.

To always say that you are better than AI, and to BELIEVE that you are better than AI, I think is the best mindset that you can have now. To believe in yourself, and to believe that with the right usage of tool, you can catapult yourself farther than those that still rejects.

I've been using AI on most of my software development now, and while most of the time it can write better code than me (given the same time window), it often fails me on the decision and the architectural level. The work is now shifting into defining and crafting the better prompt and supplying the correct context so it can output the code better, but again, to know the top level view, to know the nook and cranny, and to master the domain, is the feat that only human can do, no matter how big the context window an AI can have. Heck, I believe human's context window is around hundreds of billion tokens, which is far from the puny 128k tokens for what you'll get on Github Copilot. Even 1 million token is not enough.

And in the end, if you feel like your foundation, your standing ground, is being threatened, then what you can do the best is to further strengthening that foundation. And that, my friend, is through learning.

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The Actual Problem as Associate Software Engineer in the Midst of Vibe Coding Fiasco