Codesmith Founder on becoming a SWE in the world of AI: "I don't know what the route is to that level [of tacit knowledge] for people not already in the system".
Codesmith Founder on becoming a SWE in the world of AI: "I don't know what the route is to that level [of tacit knowledge] for people not already in the system".
Source Podcast (March 12th, 2026): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eggWeDjCFdA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eggWeDjCFdA)
I’m currently researching a 2024 lawsuit involving Codesmith and its investors, so I’m not sharing opinions on Codesmith right now.
Other direct quotes from the discussion:
“domain knowledge is built by experience”
“if more of the programmatic building is done by AI, how do you build the tacit knowledge?what's the route in for people”
u/ericswc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It’s as simple as having the discipline to learn things and explore concepts in depth without using AI as a crutch.
So many people think it’s a binary choice, but it’s absolutely possible to manually tinker to build understanding and use AI in targeted ways for things you deeply
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
One of the points the founder makes against this is that new people to the industry were effectively being paid to learn and develop tacit knowledge and eventually they do and are a valuable engineer. And he is concerned that with AI there will be no reason for a company to hire someone in those early phases because the math doesn't add up anymore (AI replaces all of their value for $100 a month instead of $10K a month). I believe he mentions he thinks the government needs to step.
u/ericswc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Ah, so he doesn’t understand how labor markets work.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I can't give my opinions on him but I can share opinions in summarizing the podcast that the overall discussion doesn't propose any concrete solutions or have any concrete examples. It's mostly him talking about himself and the host talking about himself and extrapolating to high level opinions about the industry.
u/ericswc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Same thing will happen that happened post dot com crash.
CS enrollment craters (down 50% then, 60% now).
Senior devs retire. Natural attrition continues unaffected.
Competition for mid level (2+ yrs) becomes fierce as labor markets tighten.
Suddenly, there’s a critical shorta
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I can give me personal opinion on this comment only that is unrelated and not an statement regarding Codesmith and or its leadership.
I hate others say "this time is different" but I feel like that's the case...
If an engineer produces 10X the raw output (and potentially more) for the same salary, then even in a world where there is demand for the skill of programming, we might just not need as many.
Like if the productivity output is so much higher, I think it can be enough to both see an expansion of the need for code-writers but not a need for many more engineers.
Maybe 50% of the engineers we have now can write all the code humanity needs, and the others need to do a new job.
u/ericswc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The most generous studies put productivity increases around 20%. The average is around 4%.
The assumption also assumes that if creating software becomes cheaper it won’t increase demand for software, which flies in the face of the last 70 years. Your backlog is never “done”.
Wh
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Studies don't mean anything when newer models that change the game come out every two months.
I'm pretty in the middle on this, I agree on the expansion, I disagree on the skills that will be needed.
I think that AI has changed the nature of programming so much that it will not be the same going forward, and the "expansion" will be a titanic shift of ALL WALKS OF LIFE towards more technical skills to 'develop', 'configure', 'manage' these AI tools, where the engineering work is for the building building the underlying frameworks.
I don't think this is a bad thing for learning to program, programming skills (or at least the thinking skills behind the code) might become table stakes for a lot of jobs that currently aren't considering 'engineering' roles.
Engineering might eat the world, not software.
u/ericswc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It’s as simple as having the discipline to learn things and explore concepts in depth without using AI as a crutch.
So many people think it’s a binary choice, but it’s absolutely possible to manually tinker to build understanding and use AI in targeted ways for things you deeply
u/michaelnovatireplied·
This conversation led me to wrapping up my essay on this topic at a bit of a higher altitude but anyways... [https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/ai-is-about-to-reveal-that-most-of](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/ai-is-about-to-reveal-that-most-of)