Comment You're holding it wrong (Score 1) 54
This is so wrong and backwards that it's surprising that it ended up on
The reason we have an "Oral tradition" is because we're lazy. Everyone knows this is the bad way to do software and we should have documentation on many different levels.
"The code is the documentation" is the standard phrase used. But good developers know this a bad excuse and always say it as a half joke. Not completely, because there is a truth to it, of course. But using the code as the only documentation is just plain wrong.
The problem is that we don't want to write stuff twice, and we seriously hate writing the same thing three times. So when we should be doing the overall documentation, feature documentation, code, and unit tests, we just sigh and start writing code.
AI actually goes a long way towards fixing this, if used well. Create plans for the implementation, and you get at least one level of documentation. Then ask the AI to generate the code. Preferably, you would ask a different AI to generate the unit tests for the code, but at least make the same AI generate the unit tests.
Now we almost have what we should create for all projects.
The great news is that we get to focus on the fun stuff - architecture, working with our code assistant on the very hardest parts of the code, talking to other people about what we should build.
To me and the others in my team, we find that AI is an enormous boost to productivity. We get much more done, and we do it like we always wanted to do it. And we have fun while doing it.
This is why I think this article is utter BS. We're not loosing a tradition, we're improving our workflow.