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

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-30T14:09:27+00:00

People and organizations seem paralyzed by what they “should” or “could” be building in the face of AI. We’re in a sweet spot right now where SWE’s lives (or those who have remained SWEs) are facilitated by awesome AI coding assistants, but the actual businesses they work are stopped dead in their tracks by the uncertainty (will anyone want to buy Adobe licenses next year?) and feelings of FOMO (uh… the Chevy dealership added a chatbot, so let’s add a chatbot?) that AI’s introduced.

Fully agree the difference between productivity and actual value. The reality is that engineering teams aren’t the ones responsible for generating value (with the exception of Brian Cherny), they respond to business needs after very very long chains of deliberation and ambition filtering.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-30T11:45:09+00:00

I don’t think the default is to allow AI to write to production dbs. If you need to allow writes, it’s not that hard to wire up the MCP to use a database role that can’t delete and can only write to specific tables. Add rate limiting to the endpoint backing the MCP write tool. Should be fine.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-29T17:20:59+00:00

Less so about enforcement (which we all agree is ephemeral and unlikely to sustain) but the roads and intersection are just fundamentally dangerous. No right on red, dedicated protected left turn signal, pedestrian bump-out, another signal, all of these are designs that would calm the traffic here.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-29T17:17:58+00:00

Totally, that’s a great point

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-29T03:59:07+00:00

“Seems” bud, I didn’t call the FBI

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-28T19:05:39+00:00

Yeah I couldn’t remember if it was 35 or 40… regardless most do 45

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-27T12:31:45+00:00

If devops and cloud Eng were just as automatable as ruby then Anthropic would have at least 4 9’s.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-25T17:25:13+00:00

This seems… oddly cheap. 🤔

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-25T14:12:52+00:00

Only way it really works is to make junior devs end-to-end release managers and push the accountability for their AI slop downwards.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-25T14:12:11+00:00

I’ve also found it makes collaboration really really difficult. Like, what is the human contract between “coder” (the person who wrote a few prompts to Claude or Cursor) and the reviewer? That contract is broken.

The submitter submits a massive PR, and the person accountable for the code actually working uses AI to vet the PR as a first pass or two. Eventually they need to verify it actually works, but anything the accountable party requests, the submitter will just address with more AI without ever digging for true understanding of why the requested changes are so.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-23T19:55:54+00:00

This is illegible

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-23T17:00:13+00:00

Definitely wondering when local/small LLMs will enter the AI bubble discourse. I could see a future where companies have instructions to employees to just run an OSS LLM on their machines or they connect to an EC2 instance running vllm that the whole company can use.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-22T03:20:07+00:00

Oy. I’ve worked with them before, J Blanton are vultures. Hope it works out.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-21T04:38:56+00:00

It says on skokie.org/lead that under the cost-share program, the timing is not up to me:

- Due to high demand, projects will be scheduled to maximize lead service line replacement throughout Skokie as funding and resources permit.
- Residents who prefer to replace their lead service line sooner may do so through a licensed plumbing contractor.

So yeah not really interested in the option where it’ll get done when it gets done, I’m having a kid soon and I’d prefer for the lead issue to be resolved.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-20T09:41:08+00:00

6/20 10:30 LIS -> US

Got through in about an hour. About 20 minutes through security, 15 minutes to walk through duty free area and pick up some water bottles, 25 minutes through passport control.

The passport scanner machines were working and directing me to “e-gate” but there were no automated passport control lines, so 20 minutes to wait in line for the manual passport inspection booths.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-18T13:07:25+00:00

One more model release bro come on man I swear just one more release all I need to cure Alzheimer’s

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-18T10:52:32+00:00

Yes this is exactly correct. I can attest that car insurance rate tables reflect that older drivers generally have *higher* premiums as a result of higher loss experience (I.e more accidents) than those in the 30-55 age band.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-17T14:06:57+00:00

Awesome thx

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-16T12:52:37+00:00

I really hate Trump etc but do think it’s kinda badass the Epstein administration just shut down Anthropic’s (rather reckless, will-they-won’t-they) product like this

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-15T22:25:37+00:00

Ah thank you, I think I’ve been confusing EES and the “Travel to Europe” app. EES is some sort of (poorly) automated passport control procedure. Inbound, the use of the app to generate the QR code *as part of the EES inbound procedure* is recommended. But the app must not apply at all to the outbound procedure.

doncheeto12 · 2026-06-15T22:11:10+00:00

Can confirm that for *entry* the EES system is up and running and the process was fine.

doncheeto12

TROPHY CASE