“AI slop”

I am a software engineer that, if it was up to me, would just write Ruby all the time. I never got into the religious wars of languages. People would love to hate on JavaScript when I actually like React. I even loved AngularJS when it came out! The first language I really wrote professionally was Java, but I didn’t love it. When I found Ruby, I loved it.

Nowadays, I see so many technical people talking about AI slop and it just feels… bad. Like have you heard people that only listen to country music talk about hip hop? It feels like that. It feels like they are so resistant to the idea that they refuse to get close enough to understand what it is actually about.

[! Note:] I am talking about AI coding. If you send me an email or any kind of five page communication written by AI, I am not reading it.

There is this idea that when someone says “this song sucks” or “this artist sucks”, they are really just talking about themself. What they are saying is “I don’t like this.

That is ok! People don’t have to like everything they see, hear, read, etc. I don’t like everything! However, I try to be honest about why.

For instance:

I hate the taste of Malort. I think it tastes like mowed grass and battery acid. But… you know how I know that? Because my idiot friends have made me do dozens of shots of it. I gave that thing a college try and now can speak from a place of experience.

I hate racism, sexism, and other isms. How do I know that? I grew up as a white guy in Virginia where racist people would say their racist opinions to me thinking I would agree because we share a skin color. I hate things for reasons.

Phew… that was therapeutic. Look at us being honest with each other!

Object Oriented Hate

If you are less than 50, you might be surprised to hear that when object oriented patterns came out, people were pissed! And before that, when higher level languages came out, people were pissed! I mean, do you really understand what is happening if you don’t manage memory yourself? And before that, the assembly guys were pissed when C came out. It just goes down and down and down.

So who are we, in our ivory tower, to say that people need to be closer to the code? I do feel that a bit, but I just have no ground to stand on considering I am standing on the shoulders of giants. I don’t wake up and code assembly. I am already far from the code when I am writing code so distance cannot be the problem.

The problem is transitioning into a new era that is being thrust upon us faster than any other era ever. It is exhausting. But it also reveals the real value of software engineers, which was never coding - it was problem solving.

So embrace the change and what has always been your real value. Now that coding is solved, solve some problems.