Standards

Trigger warning: this is part rant, part genuine exploration, and entirely my opinion. As usual. Also; research heavy. I wanted this to be informed. I’ve been thinking about this one for a while. In a previous post I argued that not everyone who writes code is an engineer, and that the title carries expectations. In another I complained about the lack of standards in an industry that rewards speed and hype over depth. And more recently I got on my soapbox about fundamentals mattering — about how the people who actually understood the machines they worked on are slowly dying off, and what we’re being left with instead. ...

⚠️ Generative AI isn’t lowering the barrier to entry. It’s lowering our standards. I hate that a talentless non-creative can use an AI music generator which, to most people sounds fine, but to others is clearly terrible, and make more money than my hard-working and super talented musician friends. I hate that someone with no experience can pick up an AI code generator and rip off someone else’s hard work solving a hard problem they struggled with over many years of trial and error, and then be successful because people don’t care it’s an obvious knockoff. ...

🔍 I’ve said before that I’m worried about where software development is heading. But it’s not just AI that’s the problem — it’s what AI is revealing. We’ve built an industry that rewards speed, hype, and surface-level skill over depth, safety, and real user value. And it’s starting to show — in the products we use, the people we hire, and the damage being done. 📈 This started before AI. During the pandemic, bootcamps exploded. Thousands of people pivoted to software for the remote work and high salaries. The market got flooded with junior devs trained just enough to build a CRUD app — but not enough to understand why and how things should be built. ...