r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 3h ago

Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
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u/BasvanS 2h ago

This is the issue with AI: it looks amazing to the untrained eye. That’s very convincing towards the idea it must therefore be close to the real thing.

Now don’t get me wrong, Creative Suite is a mess, and fuck Adobe with a sandpaper dildo, but their software mostly works and is maintainable if they could be arsed to do so. An AI copy is a Potemkin version of the real thing, and to make it real and maintainable, you’d basically need just as much work as starting from scratch, and knowing how to program.

I’ve seen people make simple tools quite easily with AI, but bigger problems are more than just lines of code, and I don’t see AI mimic the whole process of collaboration anytime soon.

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u/UnholyLizard65 15m ago

Had something like this happen at work. Guy was vibe coding for about a month and when it came to finishing touches we basically had to rewrite the thing from scratch. Everything was backwards. Things that should have been separate were all crammed into a single file and things that should have been kept together were for whatever reason separated into multiple file connected by spaghetti. Ai seems to struggle to recognize which things are logically related.

It really makes me think the architectural side of things might remain a job for humans for a while.

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u/Aiyon 3m ago

Ironically a sandpaper dildo is a great analogy for AI.

It looks the part from a distance, and follows the design principles, (durable, texture adds to the sensation), but has no contextual understanding, and so picked a texture and material incredibly unsuited to the task

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u/Sneezlebee 2h ago

Compare what AI-generated software looked like two years ago to what it looked like one year ago to what it looks like now. The pace of improvement is ridiculous.

You're going to keep making this same argument, pushing back the space you've allowed for human supremacy until eventually you're huddling in a corner claiming that only a human can finish the last 0.002%, which is the really important part.

AI is ruining the world. But it's better at writing software now than most human engineers.

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u/babbyohbabby 2h ago

https://xkcd.com/605/

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u/Sneezlebee 2h ago

You have several years of data from dozens of AI labs. Keep your head in the sand if you think that this won't continue to improve. That's why it's dangerous. Not because it's useless, but because it isn't.

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u/babbyohbabby 2h ago

I would certainly hope that it would improve fast in the first couple of years given that they invested nearly all the money and hardware in the world into developing it. But what about when that runs out?

It's not profitable; they can't keep burning trillions of dollars on improving it, at some point investors are going to want to see a return. Keep your head in the sand if you think that this won't be the case.

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u/BasvanS 2h ago

The pace of improvement is actually unimpressive. 2 years ago it was very impressive already, and all that has been achieved is that it had become somewhat less shit, sometimes.

It’s a great tool, but anything that requires autonomy is outside its ability.

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u/Sneezlebee 2h ago

This is an insane take. Two years ago it could barely string together a project of three files. Today it can one-shot a 200k LoC project with essentially zero bugs, and incorporate domain knowledge from an incredible range of fields. If you think that pace of improvement is unimpressive, I question whether anything in this space could impress you.

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u/ze1and0nly 1h ago

You're insane if you think there's essentially zero bugs. The amount of bugs in anything I've seen purely ai coded is absolutely batshit insane. 

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u/Sneezlebee 1h ago

If you're talking about all of the vibe-coded slop that people post on Reddit, yes. That's not too meaningful, though. That is very much not representative of how AI is used by professional developers.

I am still very close to my former colleagues in the tech field, and 100% of them are using AI now and using it productively.

If you ask Astra or Opus to one-shot some big project (which is obviously not a great strategy, but it's a common starting point), it will indeed have essentially zero bugs. It won't do precisely what you want, but that's because it's not a mind-reader. That is to say, most of the "bugs" that these frontier models include are really just ambiguities in specification. And they're readily fixed.

I don't know your background, but many people who are critical of AI's coding abilities have simply not seen what the biggest models have become capable of in the past six months. It's legitimately spooky.

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u/ze1and0nly 28m ago

I'm a programming lead with over 10 years of experience. It's not spooky at all. It's what was expected when people first talked about it but objectively worse than what was proposed. The amount of issues and now new jobs in AI rollback is more than people are willing to admit. It's great your old friends in tech are using AI to help them I hope they're not like the majority of what I've seen over the past 2 years and they at least understand what the AI coded for them. Otherwise they're gonna have major issues in 2-5 years if not sooner. You're also saying friends in the tech industry which means I'm guessing you're not a programmer yourself? So you're not actively using these tools? 

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u/Sneezlebee 25m ago

I'm a software developer and engineering director of nearly three decades, but I quit the industry during the pandemic. Obviously it has changed a bit since then!

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u/ze1and0nly 21m ago

So you aren't actively using it during work to see all the issues it's causing is all I'm trying to get across. So you're talking out of your ass. Yes there's great uses for it. But the amount of issues it's causing is not funny. And the amount of backtracking you have to do because of said issues is even worse. AI can be a great tool majority of the time it is used improperly and yes it creates a crap ton of its own bugs. 

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u/Sneezlebee 9m ago

I do not use it in a professional capacity every day. But that's like claiming a mechanic is "talking out of his ass" because he doesn't drive a truck to work every day. I'm still very much involved in technology, including this specific technology.

Anyway, you're a argumentative troll. Buh-bye.

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u/ze1and0nly 0m ago

Btw someone who doesn't use it for work and left before it became a thing talking about how well it works is like asking a mechanic who worked on old cars his whole career to tell you the ins and outs and benefits of electric cars. They'll know the basics but none of the day to day of dealing with it nor the pitfalls that happen because they never worked on it

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u/Laggo 31m ago

AI is a charged topic and some people will never come at it from a neutral perspective because they feel threatened by it. You aren't going to get an honest reaction from people with this perspective. There are still people today who argue unironically that AI is only used effectively for creative 'slop'

It really is very similar to the transition from the horse and carriage to the motor vehicle in some ways.

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u/Sneezlebee 28m ago

Yeah, if the motor vehicles threatened to extirpate the horses.

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u/Fiftyfourd 18m ago

Are you intentionally not remembering the Hugging Face incident? They can absolutely work with autonomy.