Asklemmy

I watch a streamer who game devs without AI because I appreciate watching him discuss his thought process & learning more about how I could write it manually. For context, I’m a game designer who knows some code, not an engineer. There’s real concern around skill atrophy without people doing some of these more manual ways of doing things.

My point about WPM is moreso about how the scale impacts velocity. I do think the speed impacts the old adage about software & pregnancy.

• How long does it take a pregnant person to deliver a baby? Roughly 9 months.
• How long does it take 2 people? …Roughly 9 months.

There was a quality of software development where work takes the time needed, and sometimes throwing more bodies at something wouldn’t alter the time. A good engineer could maybe shave some time off, or the patterns they used were more resilient or production ready on the first pass. Now, that engineer could genuinely deliver that feature much faster.

Here’s another trap I forgot to mention: our human read speed is always faster than our write. We may write up to 330 wpm, but your read speed is 400-1000 wpm. AI read speed is like 11m / wpm. The gap between our write v. read suggests it’s faster to describe a plan, read what the AI wrote & triage it, rather than the alternative.

• Case 1: Engineer is capped at 300 wpm write
• Case 2: Engineer writes a plan at 300 wpm, AI writes a bulk at 6k wpm, then humam reviews at ~800 wpm

I mention John Henry because in the story Henry wins but dies in the process. Going fast is not the only goal, but the scale of the velocity change happening is really difficult to overcome mechanically on paper.

Finally, to be clear, I say this stuff as a bitter pill I don’t want to swallow either. :/ I have my own emotional qualms with the whole situation. There’s big business risks around becoming captured markets & beholden to token costs. I think part of the AI acceleration is about creating that dynamic, and it greatly concerns me.