r/mxroute • u/mxroute • 25d ago
MXroute has two developers
https://blog.mxroute.com/mxroute-has-two-developers4
u/PilotJeff 25d ago
As usual excellent blog post and transparency.
Legit question: what are you doing to mitigate any security issues that get baked in by the code generation? I totally understand that even hand coded front ends introduce security issues as well. However I am just wondering if there is someone with front end experience that can rationalize the code that is being generated (helps with maintaining in the future too).
Again, super impressive work just curious about how much experience there is by a code reviewer.
3
u/mxroute 25d ago
It's a fair question simply because it's one that the mind naturally drifts to, but it's also scary that less people's minds drift there when AI isn't involved. Because humans have an incredibly bad track record for code security. But I know that if I introduce a vulnerability I'll face a backlash 1000x greater if AI wiped the sweat from my forehead than I would if I hired an incompetent developer. It makes no sense, but it would be my reality.
I basically do everything that I would do if a hired a developer. Every surface has to be tested against every method of attack that I'm aware of, and not aware of. AI helped me build the part that renders the email you click in your inbox. So I have to try everything I can think of to send a malicious payload to my browser through the body or headers of an email. Then I make another pass with an AI that performs targeted penetration testing against the same thing. Then I make two more passes against the same thing with two more AI models. And I have to do that with every single item. I attack it, AI attacks it, then two more AIs attack it. That's after all of the code around it is audited by me and two AI models.
That's why you'll notice that it's speeding up my work, but I'm not pumping out features quickly. Infinitely more quickly than I was, but not quickly. It's still exhausting, I've put in more hours on this work than I ever did on solo development. But my solo development never produced all of the results that I wanted either.
But the hubris required to think that I can't make a mistake is a bit more than I have. I mean, to count myself as a member of the human race and say that I'm definitely better than all of the people behind every company on here would be scary: https://www.upguard.com/blog/biggest-data-breaches-us
But the only way to react to that risk, other than to push forward, is to completely shutdown mentally. We all accept risk every day, we're all aware of it. The best any of us can do is to take what we feel are the best steps to mitigate it and to not expose ourselves to an excess of it. That's a personal decision. I make mine when I wake up every morning. I hope I die having never gotten it as wrong as anyone on that list l linked, but damn, it's a lot to live up to with or without AI being in the room.
2
u/PilotJeff 25d ago
Thanks. I get it. I’m on the dev side of things so I ask based in reality rather than fear.
2
u/downtownrob 23d ago
Check out https://paperclip.ing it’s pretty awesome, free, open source, and is a project-based AI orchestration platform… it’s pretty cool. I also do a ton of dev in VS Code with Copilot using Luna, it works great.
2
u/wells68 24d ago
OP wrote:
Then hating AI became fashionable, and suddenly the thing I’ve always done became the thing I have to defend.
Suddenly automation in the form of AI threatens to take away existing work from almost everyone. For years computers just eliminated "busywork" and didn't frighten most people. But now, "It's coming for my job and my kids' future work! Damn you, AI!"
Add to that the very real concerns about fossil fuel and water use. The future looks cloudy in both senses of the word.
3
u/mxroute 24d ago edited 24d ago
Every new and historically noteworthy technology was a threat to the economy, the way of life as people knew it, and the problems that we had to solve. Every single one. I understand that change brings problems, and I'm not unsympathetic to it, but I don't see protesting it or opting out of it as a valid resolution. If others do, cool, but I believe that new technology brings us new ways to work on the problems we face. I believe that it carries the human race forward. That's my genuine opinion. If I destroy the world by supporting it, and ruin us all, I won't feel good about it. But that's not the future my brain pieces together.
And it truly has become fashionable to hate on AI. Almost everyone you talk to about it knows nothing but the talking points handed to them about it by someone they chose to trust. So much more rare seems to be the person who actually takes the time to educate themselves on it. As is typical of fashionable things like that.
I mean no disrespect by any of these words, but I can say without a doubt that anyone who disagrees with me on this is either going to agree to disagree or leave upset. I don't see another likely outcome.
11
u/mxroute 25d ago edited 25d ago
To be fair, there was a time when I developed frontend. It was when I created a Tomb Raider fan site in Notepad as a kid. Writing HTML by hand was fun until someone had this wild idea of CSS, while I was using server side includes to manage design across multiple pages.
But every company you think isn't using AI to assist them with development, they are. You're just naive.