The other day, while I was catching up on the Slack messages I had missed throughout the day, I stumbled upon a post from a colleague that caught my attention:

”… (with the help of Claude) …”

This was the first time I recall someone openly admitting to using AI assistance in their work, and it made me pause and reflect on how our perceptions as engineers are evolving in this new AI era we are all going through.

Thinking about the tools engineers have used during all these years, I realized that we never really admitted to using autocomplete snippets in our IDEs or the use of tools like Google or Stack Overflow to figure out a bug or find inspiration on how to write a specific algorithm. It was always just part of the process.

These tools have been integral to our workflow for years, yet they never added the perception they did the work for us. We would simply say, “I did this” or “I worked on that” without the underlying guilt of informing about the tools we used to get it done.

Now, it almost seems necessary to emphasize that you didn’t use AI at all to make it feel genuine.

While it’s true that it made me wonder about how open we need to be when it comes to the use of AI to make a statement about our craft, I will personally continue embracing AI and anything that helps me accomplish my goals more efficiently and effectively. I want to believe that the value I’m adding goes beyond the lines of code I’m producing.

I prefer to celebrate the tools that are within my reach, whether they are traditional resources or advanced AI. For me, it’s about the results we achieve and the innovations we create, not just the methods we use.