On AI Augmented Engineering

The conversation about AI in software development often swings wildly between "AI will replace all programmers" and "AI can't do real engineering." Both miss what's actually happening: we're witnessing an automation revolution similar to what transformed manufacturing decades ago.

When I watch "How It's Made", I can't help but think about how all of those jobs that robots are doing now used to be done by people, or by no one at all because they were impossible. The circuit board assembly where robotic arms place hundreds of microscopic components with perfect precision. The metal fabrication systems that cut and weld complex parts with submillimeter accuracy. The injection molding machines that maintain precise pressure while producing thousands of identical components. These machines didn't eliminate manufacturing jobs—they transformed them.

10-15 years ago, I'd spend entire days implementing complex concurrency patterns in pre-ARC Objective-C, carefully architecting thread-safe singletons and debugging race conditions in Core Data background contexts. Or I'd be fighting with CSS across browsers, spending hours debugging why my flexbox layout worked perfectly in Chrome but completely broke in Safari. Today, AI can surface these solutions in seconds, synthesizing scattered knowledge into coherent fixes.

Perhaps most importantly, all that time investment has historically been a powerful reason not to build at all. How many side projects have been abandoned because the work needed to go from idea to complete product felt too daunting? AI is systematically removing those barriers, letting us jump straight to the interesting parts and enabling creators to focus on their crafts.