This suggests governments need to commission infrastructure level dependencies directly rather than relying solely on the market and consumer behaviour, particularly given the poor outcomes in areas where there is little to no competition
I fully concur, we've automated away the enjoyable and creative part of the job. I used Windsurf for a project recently, and while it was impressive, I don't feel I was notably more efficient at delivery. I often had to intercede to refactor what it had churned out to make the solution legible.
My takeaway was that AI coding is a fairly joyless experience, you're effectively writing JIRA tickets for it, and the labour switches to coaching and PRs. It feels like we're just accelerating the speed at which we build legacy code bases, which no-one will understand.
I've been following some kid on TikTok who started last year on this journey - and it's been truly frustrating to watch. I tried to discourage them from leaning so heavily on AI, but they insisted it was a different way of learning.
A year later, and they still don't comprehend for loops or conditional blocks, and believe that comprehending this basic material is a deep understanding of code.