AI at Shopify
Tobias Lütke, in a memo to employees at Shopify, re-posted on Twitter / X:
Using Al effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It’s a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance. Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying Al in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow.
I just blogged a few days ago that I think generative AI gives programmers an advantage, but I wouldn’t mandate it, just like I wouldn’t mandate auto-complete or Stack Overflow. Programmers can be productive and happy in a variety of ways. Requiring AI (or forbidding it) strikes me as extremist for little benefit.
Marco Arment posted to Mastodon yesterday that he doesn’t use AI in Overcast beyond Xcode’s smarter auto-complete.
Maybe that’ll change in the future, but I see myself only ever using autocomplete-style speedups, not “write it for me”. I usually won’t even use code that other humans write!
Hard to argue with the results. Overcast is one of my favorite apps.
Also I know from my own experience that some programmers love the craft more than others. AI is a major disruption to the craft, so everyone will have different opinions on when it should be integrated into the process. It is an advancement, but how it’s used matters too.