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sebmellen | 11 days ago

Yeah, ratios vary depending on how productive you are with code. For me it was 50:50 and is now 80:20, but only because I was a relatively unproductive coder (struggled with language feature memorization, etc.) and a much more productive thinker/architect.

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overgard|11 days ago

"Struggling with language feature memorization" is what we call "unemployed", not "relatively unproductive".

sebmellen|11 days ago

No. You can be a very productive developer and have the syntax be more of a blocker than application design, and the same in reverse.

I interview a lot of people, and I've seen people who are astoundingly good at micro-systems, very complex regexes, etc. white struggling massively with system design. And vice versa. People have different talents.

But, in my experience, AI will vastly improve the success of the developer who's better at orchestration, architecture, and system design than the developer who's very good at tiny micro-system type of work. Yes, there is still a need for someone who can read and understand regexes... but is there anywhere near as much of a need as before? Not at all.

Now. there are very many dual threats, and most truly senior engineers are both. These people now have an even bigger leg up, because they have an understanding of system mechanics + the superpower of Claude Code/etc. They don't have to waste as much time on boilerplate and raw implementation, and yet they can check the output of their input to the AI. They are also probably better equipped to build testing harnesses, etc., that adapt well to agentic use.