I’ve taken some time away from the industry to move to a lovely new office. But I’m still in Los Gatos. So if you’d like to meet for coffee, hear some startup stories, or just chat about the industry, drop me a line.
The inexorable AI march continues of course, with deep-think execs surprised! at the real cost. Frankly, I’m surprised that they’re surprised. The entire revenue pitch for AI has always been a subscription and per-use model that gets them hooked and keeps them captive. I guess they were so obsessed with how the quarterly numbers were going to look so sexy without all those pesky engineers that they just didn’t think that maybe, just maybe, that free stuff wouldn’t stay free forever.
Ditto for “vibe programming”, the snakiest of snake oil imaginable. Yes, of course a good engineer or software programmer can and should use AI to make their work more efficient. They have the expertise to know how to streamline their work, and they know what questions to ask and what to ignore. Knowing the right question and knowing where to apply the work is how experts earn their pay. Ignorant bluster isn’t a substitute for knowledgable analysis.
We are in the age of confidence men and women, selling the rubes on what they want to hear. And no one is immune to its siren song of self-aggrandizement and greed.
AI is a fine tool. Like a sculptor’s chisel, AI can deftly shape the code. But the vision and architecture is in the mind of the creator. Only the sculptor sees the statue in the marble before the first touch of the chisel. And only the engineer sees the true form and architecture of the code and the ultimate product before tools are applied.
Let us all use our AI chisels wisely and well.