So it's hard to avoid the topic of AI these days. As a working software engineer who had a pre-AI career, I thought I'd note down how I'm feeling about it in May of 2026.
So first of all, I do use AI - extensively - for actual development work. The project I'm working on at the moment is biased towards the 'speed' side of the speed/quality curve, in that it's better for us to get 80% working software into people's hands so that they can try it out and give us feedback.
AI works fine for this. That last 20%, which of course takes as long as the first 80%, is something there's not a lot of pressure to get right in this case.