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AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

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Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#171

Post by throwuwu »

margorczynski wrote: post #66
WanderPanda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using Github copilot daily for two years and ChatGPT for 1 year now. And I think the tide lifts all the boats. I’ve seen a (perceived) 2-3x productivity increase. I think these tools slightly favor people in front of the learning curve of a particular field. I’ve been dabbling in all sorts of things so if you’re a focused expert (who doesn’t need to explore but just exploit) you probably get less than a 2x…

But how many experts do you need? Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing and those might disappear very fast because 1 dev + LLM >= 5 devs without. So what we'll see is an increase in company margins and an elimination of a large swathe of the middle class. The alternative theory is that if everyone can now quickly create systems multiple companies and competing products will pop off which will drive down the m…

I’d rather be in the textile industry post industrial revolution than before it. The fortunes made during the age of mechanization make all of history’s kings and merchants paupers by comparison.

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#172

Post by throwuwu »

Sindisil wrote: post #111
osigurdson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing Those jobs should go away. Basically, the elimination of anything boring is ultimately a net good for humanity.

Neat idea. That solves everything. Oh, one quick thing. I'm sure it's nothing, but I'm a bit slow. How do you get new experts if no one gets to do the junior work that gives them the experience to become an expert?

Move to a higher level of abstraction and architecture. We’re leaving the era of hand wiring data structures and program logic the same way we left behind the era of hand wiring ICs and discrete components. Different skills will be needed.

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#173

Post by sirmoveon »

throwuwu wrote: post #169
dudeinhawaii wrote: post #158

My hopes (and fears) about AI don't seem to match the reality which is that, until we reach AGI, humans are the sole source of creativity and novelty. I think about it like this, would ChatGPT invent Google Search if we had ChatGPT in 2000? Probably not. LLMs seem to exist in this realm of "as smart as an average human with a really big encyclopedia". They're confidently wrong, invent fantasy to defend bad reasoning,…

What makes you so sure that problem solving and invention aren’t just engineering challenges that we can solve by combining LLMs with well designed algorithms? The way I see it, we’ve just discovered something fundamental like steam power or electricity and we’re currently in the very inefficient stage of brute force solutions like mine pumps driven by condensing engines that needed tonnes of cheap readily available…

You guys buy too much into the marketable fuzz. In the last 15 years we've had multiple other technologies that were supposed to change the way we live (3D printing, Crypto, VR, EV, self-driving, now AI).

It's just the VC scheme: Over-promise/under-deliver = Profit

AI is and will continue to be a search on steroids.

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#174

Post by throwuwu »

ardaoweo wrote: post #83
osigurdson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Most dev jobs are mostly repetitive plumbing Those jobs should go away. Basically, the elimination of anything boring is ultimately a net good for humanity.

Only if you provide an alternative way for the newly unemployed to earn a living. Otherwise you just get crime, hunger and eventually war.

Jobs aren’t distributed out of some cookie jar. They are needs and wants and obligations that other people will pay to have fulfilled or taken off their hands. Figure out how to solve those problems and you’ll have all the work you could ever ask for.

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#175

Post by Turing_Machine »

croes wrote: post #72

So who is liable if the AI makes severe mistakes? Not that MS has been held accountable for all the security problems they've had recently.

Who is liable if a (non-CNC) machine tool goes off-kilter and kills someone? Possibly the manufacturer of the tool. Possibly the operator. Possibly the company that owned the tool as well as the one who manufactured it.

That is why we have courts. It's not necessarily a great solution, but the alternative would be abandoning all potentially dangerous mechanisms (heck, we wouldn't even have spears, wooden clubs, or sharpened rocks).

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#176

Post by internet101010 »

flir wrote: post #75
UK-Al05 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambiguity in requirements is where the majority of bugs come from now. So I don't think AI would improve things.

Assuming a (hypothetical, doubtful) AI as good as a human programmer, I think the advantage becomes speed. Think of it like a REPL that you program in English. Patching ambiguities with "Oh, I didn't mean X, I meant Y" becomes the work of minutes, not hours.

Exactly. There will be a lot less of the "we will have to look into it" 2-day lag time.

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#177

Post by pixl97 »

sirmoveon wrote: post #173
throwuwu wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you so sure that problem solving and invention aren’t just engineering challenges that we can solve by combining LLMs with well designed algorithms? The way I see it, we’ve just discovered something fundamental like steam power or electricity and we’re currently in the very inefficient stage of brute force solutions like mine pumps driven by condensing engines that needed tonnes of cheap readily available…

You guys buy too much into the marketable fuzz. In the last 15 years we've had multiple other technologies that were supposed to change the way we live (3D printing, Crypto, VR, EV, self-driving, now AI). It's just the VC scheme: Over-promise/under-deliver = Profit AI is and will continue to be a search on steroids.

You're buying into too much market fuzz too. That internet thing going big never happened and cell phones turned out to be bust, all that hype for nothing..... See how cherry picking works.

Also, EVs are a bust, wut?

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#178

Post by Turing_Machine »

skydhash wrote: post #39
earthnail wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterexample for the sake of argument: photography almost entirely replaced human painting.

Did it? I’ve not seen people paying for photographs on the ceiling and have not seen feet long framing of portraits inside someone home. It just became possible to capture snapshots of moments as they happened

Yeah, it did.

You're thinking of the household-name famous artists (so-called "fine artists"), but those were far from the only ones.

There used to be many thousands of itinerant portrait painters ("commercial artists"), maybe tens of thousands. These guys would travel from town to town banging out quick pictures of members of your family or local dignitaries or the new City Hall or whatever. They weren't bad artists (they had to be competent to earn a living), but neither were they Leonardos.

Think of the best artist in an average high school class. Back then, going into the portrait painting business would have been a valid career option for that guy (they were almost all guys).

Now, some of them later became famous artists, or became famous for other reasons (Samuel Morse, of Morse Code fame, earned his living as a portrait painter at one point), but they were basically just tradesmen.

All those guys lost their jobs almost immediately when photography appeared.

Even today, unless you're very unusual, I'd bet you have way more professional photographs than professional paintings in your home (weddings, graduations, baptisms/bar mitzvahs/analogues for other religions...)

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#179

Post by mkleczek »

Smaug123 wrote: post #170
mkleczek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until a computer can solve the problem “how to redesign this particular database design (tables/partitioning/indexes/queries) so that it can handle expected load in next 5 years” I can safely assume it does not hold :)

Ah, now you're talking price! How many years do you bet before this happens - three? Five?

I don’t believe it will happen at all. There will always be some problems that only a human can solve because it’s a human that defines them.

It is always _by definition_ a game between humans where computers are just tools.

At least as long as AGI does not happen…

Re: AutoDev: Automated AI-driven development by Microsoft

#180

Post by throwuwu »

devnull3 wrote: post #126

I don't think so AI will replace SW jobs. It will definitely change the way engineers work. Software development involves: 1. Understanding the requirement 2. Solving the problem with given constraints (and thereby innovate) 3. Talking to stakeholders 4. Code (& unit tests) 5. Review #4 6. Troubleshoot in testing 7. Troubleshoot in prod, both perf & subtle issues (this is hard) 8. Take the input from #6 & #7 and use…

Steps 2 and 4 through 8 are what this implementation along with others like Devin are doing. 1, 3, and 9 may have surprise answers when a reliable system can produce a working app/website/tool in a matter of minutes. If that’s possible then clients can just keep prompting and checking the results and iterating on changes until they get what they want just like people using Midjourney do to get the idea they have in their head transformed into an image. Things change a lot when apps become so quick, easy and cheap to create that you can try out a hundred variations and modifications in a day.
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