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I am the CTO of a small NGO (10 people total, only 1 other junior Dev at the time). We supported two apps that were built by consultants. They were a mess. NextJS, React, about 4 micro services for a site that had 50 users per WEEK. I configured a devcontainer with the old codebase and an empty repository and asked Claude to rewrite it as an old school server side rendered Django app. Went to sleep. When I woke up it…
Frankly, to an outsider whatever it presents looks legit, but as an expert I recognize its failures, which makes me even more entrenched in the idea to never use it outside my area of expertise.
I have a question for all them believers: If on a hypothetical scenario you, having no medical experience, find yourself and your child on a mountain, 12 hours away from nearest road, and your offspring is having appendicitis (let's assume your recognize this 100%), with a sharp knife and Claude at your disposal - would you risk to operate on your child? Or hurry the fuck down to get him to a hospital? I know I would chose to get him to a hospital, because that would be a better chance for my kid to live than me to operate on my kid with Claude's assistance. I am pretty sure I would kill my kid on that mountain. So yeah, outside my area of expertise I don't trust Claude one bit.
Terrible code, but to think you can just rewrite whole libs with AI with relatively lazy prompting + feedback and get decent enough results is kind of mind boggling for me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> projects I simply could not have ever approached alone. I think that's part of the divide between enthusiasts and naysayers. If you use GenAI on things that you couldn't approach alone, it's an incredible tool. If you use it on stuff that you're pretty good at, it's not a gamechanger (and if you're an expert, it's a minor boost at best). Many people's job are about doing what they're an expert at.
The dangerous thing is when you’re a novice and can’t identify the BS. That’s why for people with “good” and “expert” skill, it’s not a huge boost. They can identify the BS, and what’s left is modestly helpful. The highest danger in using AI comes precisely to people who stand the most to gain from it.
Then they send that PR for a review by a more senior person. And that senior person doesn’t even know where to start on how to explain why it’s all wrong and likely to collapse in prod.
Tons of good use of AI. But tons of bad use of it. And when it’s bad and people don’t notice it, that gets dangerous. So because of that, now we spend a lot more time in doing reviews. Essentially creating a new bottle neck