Hi everyone, I'm Gudong.
Today I left work very late.
The reason was a major feature I've been working on for 3 months was scheduled for release today.
Code review took two hours.
What I Do
New friends here might not know me well.
I'm a software engineer at an established internet company, working on mobile app development.
Many of you probably use this product every day.
Friends who've read my previous articles can probably guess which company.
But that's not important.
How Enterprise Software is Built
Many people don't understand software development or what our work is.
I write a lot about AI here, and I do use AI to write code every day—but that's for my side projects.
For company code, I still mostly write by hand.
Because AI can't fully write company code yet.
What's My Job?
The traditional software development process goes like this:
- Product manager proposes requirements
- UI designer designs the layout and interactions
- Frontend developer (me) writes the code to implement these effects
Things like: adding comments to notes, liking posts, various interaction features.
The features you use daily in apps like Xiaohongshu, Weibo, WeChat—that's my work.
Today's Feature
The feature shipping today took 3 months to develop end-to-end.
The reason it took so long is that a feature goes through the entire pipeline:
Product design → UI design → Technical design → Implementation → Testing → Release
Every step matters.
And tonight I did code review.
Before code can be merged into the repository, everyone must review it together to confirm there are no issues.
Because this feature was so large, I spent two hours explaining how I wrote the code.
Found some issues, so I'll be fixing them tomorrow and the day after.
The State of AI
This is the reality of a programmer's work.
Even though AI is hot now, I can still only use it in limited ways at work.
I still have to write code myself.
I wrote an article before saying AI will definitely be able to write company code in the future.
But not yet.
The Future I Look Forward To
Someday it will be possible.
Not just writing code.
Product development, UI design, implementation, testing—AI can do all of these.
Then, code review won't exist anymore.
AI reviewing AI, AI testing AI—totally possible.
When that day comes, we'll truly be liberated.
What I Want
I want to be better at directing AI.
Let them do the work.
In my side projects, the feeling of having AI do the work is really good.
I don't worry about unemployment or anything like that.
As long as AI can do more work, I'm more than happy to let AI do it.
Let AI do the work, liberate us.
That's what I look forward to.
About Gudong
inBox Notes Creator | Independent Developer | AI Programming Practitioner
Love development, love sharing.
Here, I continuously share valuable AI practices and development insights.
Follow me to explore "Conversational Programming" together.
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