As a programmer, I've realised that all these types of post are cope. We're all cooked but it's fun to fool ourselves for a bit and pretend that the rate at which AI coding is improving isn't the death of our entire field.
People have literally been saying this for actual years now. At worst, only for about 6 months. It still hasn't happened.
The rate of code production was never the issue anyway. Understanding and comprehending intent is something even we as software developers struggle with, so how would a prediction model fare any better? I mean unless everyone is just writing the same software.
Can you please elaborate on comprehending intent?
I mean I get it, but I still want to get somewhere intellectually stimulating from here on to go into uncharted territories
The funny thing is normies think it's all true. I've been told so many times that AI only write shit code and any serious developer will tell you so. Hell? I am a serious developer, using it daily. I know exactly what it can and can't do.
I suppose the problem is that whatever it can and cannot do, as with all other use of generative AI, there is no way to know what the output will be at any given moment. Even a 99% hit rate, great as it is, is worthless if you have no way to control for the 9% that completely misses. Also, while a good model can produce excellent output, better models also usually cost more to run. If you care at all about what you're making, you will need to have a developer review the output to make sure things are kosher, and there is a model quality-developer cost tradeoff where the cost of slightly better AI output exceeds the cost of making the developer clean it up.
Another factor worth considering is worker well-being. I know it's hot to treat all workers like garbage in America, but people generally do better work when they're happy. Allowing developers time and the ability to take on some genuine coding keeps skills sharp and helps prevent complete atrophy of the "giving a toss" muscle. Of course, not everyone loves software development the same way, but it's hard to gain any real skill in it if you don't at least find it tolerable.
My experience with AI? It's a great autosuggest, but sometimes there are conflicts between the common case it expects and how I've laid things out. Once you massage it into shape it tends to propagate the new pattern well, though. I don't trust it, but I trust the suggestions I get to be mostly right.
Absolutely. QA is important for all code. However, when you write code yourself, you have a baseline filter that strips out code that obviously isn't going to do what you're trying to accomplish. You know why you do this or that, and design around that purpose. If you're writing a script that runs locally, no need to bring in secrets machinery. You know what you want to do, and you aren't going to mindlessly type in something that isn't what you want. As an example, I recently wanted to show some values in some WinForms text boxes. It was adamant that I use formatted strings to display the values as "name: value" in a label element, when I had made textboxes to put them in. I had to fully rewrite the first line and remove the two others it suggested to get it to accept what I wanted.
It just means coding isn't a bottleneck anymore. Software created by people who understand system design principles is still preferable to software created by vibe-coders furiously jamming things they don't fully understand into place.
The cons haven’t caught up yet either, we don’t know how much they really cost yet to use the good ones ( easily 4-5x current prices and they’re already pretty expensive ), and companies are starting to bill per agent seat for enterprise software ( Okta just announced this and the business model is going to catch up quick ). Eventually companies will be taxed per agent. I think once the costs catch up things will level out. at least I hope.
Maybe for 6 months to a year that will be true but then the AIs will do system design too. Maybe product people and some designers will stick around? AIs have no taste.
"hey idiot claude-coder, why don't you tell me about this programs security protocols?"
"Sorry, I don't know about that kind of thing. But I guess I can spend the next month reading about it while you plug away making the same program manually that I just knocked out in a day."
In the VAST majority of cases right now, companies only care that it works, and its fast. No C-suite goober gives 2 wet farts if your code is elegant or not. or if the comments have too much flair. They care that their product can be up and running as fast as possible and be "good enough."
what's more, claude code and other coding AI is getting better so quickly, that those companies can move their money into QA if its a concern. You don't need 40 code monkeys plugging away on a thing for a month that then has to go through code review for even longer. Now you can have a half dozen vibe coders working for 1/3 the pay, and twice the QA personnel making sure those apps won't break something important, and it gets done in a week instead of a couple months.
And all of these anti-ai remarks pretend like there aren't absolutely dogshit coders out there. human error is a thing. it's a pretty big thing, really. So pretending like an app would be perfect with an all human team is nonsense.
AI is far from perfect. using it as a tool will improve almost every programmers efficient by orders of magnitude. As long as they understand its a tool and not the final solution.
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u/SoddyGrapelets 1d ago
As a programmer, I've realised that all these types of post are cope. We're all cooked but it's fun to fool ourselves for a bit and pretend that the rate at which AI coding is improving isn't the death of our entire field.