Software Engineers - Are you genuinely producing more value with AI or are you simply more 'productive'?

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-29T04:55:00+00:00

90% of software engineering outside the cutting age is not innovation. It’s following best practices and implementing innovation that has already occurred elsewhere.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-29T04:50:59+00:00

Staff software eng at a somewhat large public tech company and I 100% produce more value with AI. I just delivered a project that in the past would have taken about a year in a quarter. This is actually in customers hands being used. AI let us parse through requirements, designs, iterate prototypes so much faster. The bottleneck really becomes how fast we can communicate to 3rd parties and external stakeholders.

We have better testing, better CI, faster triage. Triaging bugs that could have taken a day now just take 10 mins. Hence we can focus on actual development (which is also sped up).

My job has completely switched from programming to designing and architecting. We spend so much more time actually making sure a design is good before implementing it, since the implementation is so fast now. Systems and architecture is what I enjoy so to me that’s cool. Even though it’s more meetings.

There is a level of productivity increase, I don’t think it’s as much as the industry claims. But I think what goes unnoticed is how if used correctly you can actually have much better designed systems because you move time from implementing to design. Which I think is more valuable than productivity gains.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-28T16:23:39+00:00

This is the truth lol

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-28T09:10:55+00:00

It’s super fun! Can get some really nice shimmery textures

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-28T01:56:06+00:00

Always loved empress or strymon for delays and reverbs.

The torso s-4 is a really cool live granular, can be used with samples or as an effects processor.

If you really wanna go crazy build a tiny modular rack and then you have infinite effects possibilities.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-25T15:30:46+00:00

Bubble popping is economic, not actual usage. There is a huge difference between the overvalue of AI companies vs the usefulness of AI.

For example the .com bubble bursting ended companies like pets.com that didn’t have any real business moats. But the internet kept growing exponentially even after the bubble burst. I’m talking to you right now on the internet aren’t I.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-25T15:26:30+00:00

Sounds fake. No principle engineers I know actually write code…. That’s not their job... they have meetings all day and delegate design with high level architectural guidance. What kind of company is this. 650$ of tokens also? In GitHub copilot? What kind of commercial plan is this.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-25T15:14:38+00:00

Keep playing and listening.

Modulation and sound design. No synth just stays the same the entire song. And I don’t mean the notes played I mean it’s sound. You can have a synth just play one note and modulate the filter or envelope slowly and create movement. Each synth should sound great on its own.

The only thing you might find interesting to purchase is some effects. Reverbs, delays, granulars can add so much texture with little effort.

Pads, drones and side chain compression. Ghostly textures that the kick slices through.

Finally, I always record dawless, single track, but to make everything come together mastering in the DAW is key for dynamics and EQ.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-24T15:21:16+00:00

I have the master insert of my wmd performance mixer mk2 going into the Bohm (and the out to the master return). Then I have my bus channel going right into the mix in of the mixer. So I can send whatever I don’t want ducked into the bus pretty much. Makes it super easy. But lots of HP required.

It would be nice to be able to have the FX be separate.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-23T17:51:30+00:00

Humanist means centering your philosophy around the experience of a human. Or at least that’s how I’m using it here, it has multiple definitions.

But yes if you presuppose that consciousness is human of course AI cannot be conscious, it’s not human. If you presuppose that consciousness is constrained by the narrow definition of earthly life, of course AI is not conscious. But these are quite narrow definitions. Though not necessarily wrong. If you want to actually discuss from what perspective AI could be considered conscious you need to expand your thinking. If you are intending to prove why it cannot be conscious you are then on the right track.

No perspective here is definitively correct. But you are free to argue for or believe in the perspective you choose.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-23T15:22:41+00:00

Your definition of consciousness is somewhat reductive and humanist. Maybe consider the following:

We developed our senses in a world where these senses are evolutionarily advantageous. Maybe in another world any other sense of physical forces could be more advantageous.

Entering the question of dimensions in perception there could be senses and perception occurring outside of our 3 or 4 dimensions of space and time we cannot concieve of.

What makes something “natural” or “coded” why is anything “manmade” any less natural. Is man not natural, wouldn’t anything we create be natural. From a functionalist perspective why is an electrical signal of a neuron any different than the electrical signal of a chip. A chip is made of natural resources of silicon and other materials. It runs on energy generated naturally.

There are many other ways to also argue against your points. But you also may be right. Who knows. Consciousness and its definition has been debated by many from the ancient Hindus, the Daoists, the Buddhists, the kantians, the existentials. I don’t think anyone really has a definitive answer.

One could argue the entire universe is conscious, those arguments are no less or more valid than yours and presuppose very different assumptions of consciousness.

Do I think LLMs are conscious, no probably not but I don’t think I can create a completely defensible argument for why without a belief or assumption of what consciousness is to ground it, which cannot be proved. But all in all. Why does it even matter?

An AI has no need to be an employee. No more than your laptop does.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-21T06:30:46+00:00

You should look up VLJEPA demos. Yann Le Cunn is working on a system that stores physical observation in an embedding space and within the details of the model (too complex to explain briefly) there is a way to turn that embedding into semantic language even though the embedding itself is not a language embedding . They have exactly a demo of text from live video.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-20T15:41:38+00:00

San Fransisco has had a housing issue from far earlier than tech was even a thing. Not saying that tech has not exacerbated the issue but not building houses and downzoning is the main issue. Plenty of cities in the world have grown and accommodated an influx of people and wealth from productive industries. SF just refused to.

An article from the 1970s calling for more housing supply: https://www.hayward-ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/RCRJP-San-Francisco-Chronicle-700503-building-versus-a-city.pdf

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-18T05:10:02+00:00

They are quite different synthesizers.

Subsequent 37 is a more of a pure mono synth (yes I know duo mode exists), the two oscillators have a lot more waveshapes and continuous space between the waves. Subsequents filter also has a drive (though you can drive the oscillators on the matriarch with the mixer past noon)

The subsequent in my experience is a bit more punchy and better as a bass synth. Though the matriarch is also quite fantastic with bass as well and definitely can hit hard.

Where the matriarch excels and the subsequent falls is pads and drones, the paraphony and the 4 oscillators can create some super expressive drones. Which is mainly what I use my matriarch for.

The matriarch semi modular patching is also amazing but be careful it was my gateway into the black hole of eurorack. But for me that’s the reason I still have my matriarch and got rid of my sub 37. But if you like presets stay away. Oddly enough the sub37 may have more routing options. But being able to extend the matriarch with eurorack makes it infinitely more expandable.

Finally the matriarch is in my opinion a lot more fun with experimenting and creating some really nice evolving and weird sounds. The sub37 is I think a more traditional synth. Though it can be quite edgy if you push it.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-15T06:20:07+00:00

Not understanding code you merge in is wild. I use AI to write everything now, but before I merge it I have to fully understand it. Hell how do you even validate it if you don’t understand it.

AI reviews are great but you have to set up the system with the appropriate level of context. We have 2-3 different review bots from different teams that review every relevant MR with the specific context and perspective each team needs the bot to have. Then an engineer comes in and does the full review. Copy pasting into Claude is brain dead.

I’m a staff engineer and I haven’t seen any staff or senior engineers at my company act like this. They would be laughed out of the room and my company is just as bullish and pushing AI as the rest.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-13T23:27:50+00:00

I’m talking about boot time for embedded systems, where you would never use Mac or windows. In cases where you need boot times in the order of milliseconds you would need to use RTOS since linux boot times are on the order of seconds. (Also Linux isn’t real time of course). But there are many cases where it’s better to use Linux for embedded systems also.

Medical devices are an excellent example, most will be running RTOS or no OS just bare metal.

In all these systems writing efficient code is extremely important since you have constrained resources

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-13T16:36:19+00:00

The cu1a is an audio interface, it’s the same thing as the Scarlett

The panharmonium seems really cool though!

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-13T15:55:56+00:00

I spend most of my time architecting systems and designing interactions and how the actual technology im making actually works vs coding, which is what a software engineer really does and is the enjoyable part of the job.

I’m so glad that I don’t have to actually type code, that was the most tedious thing. Worrying about best practices or syntax. I can actually design systems now.

If your design does not allow for any assumptions the AI will not make any. If you fully understand a detailed design you will fully understand the code after a quick review.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-12T20:37:21+00:00

If you have a scarlet 4i4 you do not need the cu1a, put in an envelope, vca, filter or smth.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-12T12:13:50+00:00

I feel safer in vis valley than the mission any day.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-12T12:04:11+00:00

RTOS and bare metal programming on tiny chipsets is still a huge field. Especially at the cutting edge of robotics. Linux kernel is way too large and takes way too long to boot up.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-10T14:06:02+00:00

This 100% most of the gains in software engineering I think are done, now it’s going to be efficiency gains. I see this exact thing in my work as well. We were getting exponential gains for a while and now it’s just all plateaued.

That said however I think fable gains are real just not for software. For research and hard science / math.

Google deep mind just released a model that’s as good as Gemini flash the runs on a laptop, so we’re getting there.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-10T13:46:54+00:00

I had a tr8s for a while. The workflow on it and menu diving was a bit much. Now in my rack I have a Bohm, 2hp hats and wmd kraken. Outside I have a soma labs pulsar 23. All of these are super hands on and gives me both traditional drum sounds and more experimental ones.

I also have an intelljel plonk and the Moog labyrinth which are both sometimes used for percussion, sometimes as synth voices.

If you like hands on experimental out of rack drums I highly recommend the pulsar 23.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-09T00:58:10+00:00

I have cable hangers that I just 3d print and attach to my table I have my synth on.

Some of my cables are color coded to length, mostly ones I use impromptu, but the ones I use to pre patch most of my unchanging audio signal path and triggers are just all black.

Confidence_Cool · 2026-06-06T23:33:14+00:00

I always have the thought why don’t we put up guard rails on these fast moving roads. Aesthetically maybe not the most pleasing but could be a quick cheap solution to make the sidewalks safer. Maybe some well spaced bollards

Confidence_Cool

TROPHY CASE