Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

Seems about right for me (older developer at a big tech company). But we need to define what it means that the code is AI-generated. In my case, I typically know how I want the code to look like, and I'm writing a prompt to tell the agent to do it. The AI doesn't solve any problem, it just does the typing and helps with syntax. I'm not even sure I'm ultimately more productive.

Yeah I’m still not more productive. Maybe 10% more. But it alleviates a lot of mental energy, which is very nice at the age of 40.

For all the folks on the "reduce mental burden", "reduce cognitive load" train, are you all aware that this basically means you are exercising less your brain day in and day out, and in the end you will forget how to do things? You will learn how to guide an AI agent, but until the day an AI agent is perfect (and we don't know if we will ever see that day), you are just losing inch by inch your ability to actually understand what the agent is writing and what is going on.

I'm pretty radical on this topic but for me cognitive load is good, you are making your neurons work and keep synapses in place where they matter (at least for your job). I totally accept writing down doc or howto to make doing some action in future easier and reduce that cognitive load, but using AI agent IMO is like going to bike in the mountain with an electrical bike.

Yes, you keep seeing the wonderful vistas but you are not really training your legs.

This, to me, feels like you're complaining to the 45 year old builder that they should be using a hammer instead of a nail gun.

I know how to nail a nail, I've nailed so many nails that I can't remember them all.

My job is to build a house efficiently, not nail nails. Anything that can make me more efficient at it is a net positive.

Now I've saved 2 hours in the framing process by using a nail gun, I have 2 extra hours to do things that need my experience. Maybe spot the contractor using a nail plate in the wrong way or help the apprentice on their hammering technique.

IMO it's different. That's why I brought the e-bike similitude: climbing even mild mountains or hills with your own legs will actually make your legs, heart and lungs stronger in the process. So you get both the wonderful views (building the house or delivering the software) but also you get improved health (keeping your mind trained on both high level thinking and low level implementation vs high level only). We might say that using a hammer constantly will develop more your muscles, but in carpentry there are still plenty of manual work that will develop your muscles anyway. (and we still don't have bricks laying machines)

> So you get both the wonderful views (building the house or delivering the software) but also you get improved health (keeping your mind trained on both high level thinking and low level implementation vs high level only).

The vast majority of developers aren't summitting beautiful mountains of code, but are instead are sifting through endless corporate slop.

> We might say that using a hammer constantly will develop more your muscles, but in carpentry there are still plenty of manual work that will develop your muscles anyway.

The trades destroy human bodies over time and lead to awful health outcomes.

Most developers will and should take any opportunity to reduce cognitive load, and will instead spend their limited cognitive abilities on things that matter: family, sport, art, literature, civics.

Very few developers are vocational. If that is you and your job is your identity, then that's good for you. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that's a normal or desirable situation for others.

> The vast majority of developers aren't summitting beautiful mountains

I'm not sure you're approaching this metaphor the right away. The point is that coding manually is great cognitive exercise which keeps the mind sharp for doing the beautiful stuff.

> The trades destroy human bodies over time and leads to awful health outcomes.

Again, you're maybe being too literal and missing the point. No one is destroying their minds by coding. Exercise is good.

> I'm not sure you're approaching this metaphor the right away. The point is that coding manually is great cognitive exercise which keeps the mind sharp for doing the beautiful stuff.

No, I'm challenging the metaphor. Working the trades isn't exercise - it's a grind that wears people out.

> Again, you're maybe being too literal and missing the point. No one is destroying their minds by coding. Exercise is good.

We actually have good evidence that the effects of heavy cognitive load are detrimental to both the brain and mental health. We know that overwork and stress are extremely damaging to both.

So reducing cognitive load in the workplace is an unambiguous good, and protects the brain and mind for the important parts of life, which are not in front of a screen.

> No, I'm challenging the metaphor. Working the trades isn't exercise - it's a grind that wears people out.

If your job is just grinding out code in a stressful and soul-crushing manner, the issue lies elsewhere. You will be soon either grinding out prompts to create software you don't even understand anymore or you will be replaced by an agent.

And by no way I'm implying you are part of the issue.

But LLMs can make the soul crushing part so much easier.

I need to add a FooController to an existing application, to store FooModels to the database. The controller needs the basic CRUD endpoints, etc.

I can spend a day doing it (crushing my soul) or I can just tell any Agentic LLM to do it and no something that doesn't crush my soul, like talk with the customer about how the FooModels will be used after storing.

"But it'll produce bad code!"

No it doesn't. It knows _exactly_ how to do a basic CRUD HTTP API controller in C#. It's not an art form, it's just rote typing and adding Attributes to functions.

Because it's an Agentic LLM, it'll go look at another controller and copy its structure (which is not standard globally, but this project has specific static attributes in every call).

Then I review the code, maybe add a few comments for actual humans, commit and push.

My soul remains uncrushed, client is happy when I delivered the feature on time and I have half the day off for other smaller tasks that would become technical debt otherwise.