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Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

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Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#151

Post by linotype »

godelski wrote: post #123
jajko wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So its not going to stop. Typical C-suite who holds real power has absolutely 0 clue about IT complexity, we are overpriced janitors to them. Their fault, their blame, but they are probably long gone when these mistakes manifest fully. In my banking corp, in past 13 years I've seen massive rise of complexity, coupled with absolutely madly done bureaucracy increase. I still could do all stuff that is required but - I…

- my laundry app (that I must use) takes minutes to load, doesn't cache my last used laundry room, and the list of rooms isn't even fucking sorted (literally: room 3, room 7, room 1, room 2, ...) - my AC's app takes 45 s to load even if I just used it, because it needs to connect. Worse, I'll bring the temp down in my house and in the evening raise it, but it'll come on even when 5F below my target value, staying on…

I use an Apple TV. It’s more expensive than Google and Amazon’s offerings, but fast as hell and gets better with time.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#152

Post by smokel »

godelski wrote: post #123
jajko wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So its not going to stop. Typical C-suite who holds real power has absolutely 0 clue about IT complexity, we are overpriced janitors to them. Their fault, their blame, but they are probably long gone when these mistakes manifest fully. In my banking corp, in past 13 years I've seen massive rise of complexity, coupled with absolutely madly done bureaucracy increase. I still could do all stuff that is required but - I…

- my laundry app (that I must use) takes minutes to load, doesn't cache my last used laundry room, and the list of rooms isn't even fucking sorted (literally: room 3, room 7, room 1, room 2, ...) - my AC's app takes 45 s to load even if I just used it, because it needs to connect. Worse, I'll bring the temp down in my house and in the evening raise it, but it'll come on even when 5F below my target value, staying on…

> What the fuck is wrong with us?

This is simple: we can't just trust each other. When programming started, people were mostly interested in building things, and there was little incentive to spoil other peoples work. Now there is money to be made, either through advertising, or through malpractice. This means that people have to protect their code from others. Program code is obfuscated (compiled and copyright enforced) or stored in a container with a limited interface (cloud).

It's not a technical issue, it's a social issue.

Applying a social mindset to technical issues (asking your compiler to be your partner, and preparing them a nice dinner) is equally silly as applying a technical mindset to social issues.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#153

Post by anonymousDan »

agentultra wrote: post #150

Empirical studies like this are hard to conduct... I'm curious though. This study was authored by at least two folks from Microsoft and one of the sample groups in the study was also from Microsoft . The reason this seems to stand out to me as odd is that Microsoft also owns the AI tool being used in the study and would definitely want a favourable conclusion in this paper. Is that a flag we should be watching out fo…

It sure is.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#154

Post by dboreham »

sgarland wrote: post #27
alternatex wrote: post #5

I wonder if the study includes the technical debt that more experienced developers had to tackle after the less experienced devs have contributed their AI-driven efforts. Because my personal experience has involved a lot of that in one of the companies listed in the study. Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them th…

> Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. Thank you, this says what I have been struggling to describe. The day I lost part of my soul was when I asked a dev if I could give them feedback on a DB schema, they said yes, and then cut me off a few minutes in with, “yeah, I don’t really care [about X].” You don’t care? I’m telling y…

[flagged]

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#155

Post by liminalsunset »

mrighele wrote: post #134
alternatex wrote: post #5

I wonder if the study includes the technical debt that more experienced developers had to tackle after the less experienced devs have contributed their AI-driven efforts. Because my personal experience has involved a lot of that in one of the companies listed in the study. Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them th…

> Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them though. For them programming is a means to an end, and I think it is fine, in a way. But you cannot just ask an AI to write you tiktok clone and expect to get the finished product. Writing software is an iterative process, and LLMs currently used are not good enough for tha…

I've been playing with Cursor (albeit with a very small toy codebase) and it does seem like it could do some of what you said - it has a number of features, not all of which necessarily generate code. You can ask questions about the code, about documentation, and other things, and it can optionally suggest code that you can either accept, accept parts of, or decline. It's more of a fork of vscode than a plugin right now though.

It is very nice in that it gives you a handy diffing tool before you accept, and it very much feels like it puts me in control.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#156

Post by sethops1 »

pjot wrote: post #37
gamerDude wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I start new projects a lot and just have a template that has everything I would need already set up for me. Do you think there is a unique value prop that AI gives you when setting up that a template would not have?

GH Copilot chat specifically has directives like @workspace /new “scaffold a ${language} project” that automagically creates a full project structure and boilerplate. It’s been great for one off things for me at least

You don't need AI to implement that.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#157

Post by trashtester »

acedTrex wrote: post #68
alternatex wrote: post #5

I wonder if the study includes the technical debt that more experienced developers had to tackle after the less experienced devs have contributed their AI-driven efforts. Because my personal experience has involved a lot of that in one of the companies listed in the study. Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them th…

> Also, I've personally seen more interest in AI in devs that have little interest in technology, but a big interest in delivering. PMs love them though. Bingo, this, so much this. Every dev i know who loves AI stuff was a dev that I had very little technical respect for pre AI. They got some stuff done but there was no craft or quality to it.

> was a dev that I had very little technical respect for pre AI

There are two interpretations of this:

1) Those people are imposters

2) It's about you, not them

I've been personally interested in AI since the early 80's, neural nets since the 90's, and vigilant about "AI" since Alexnet.

I've also been in a tech lead role for the past ~25 years. If someone is talking about newer "AI" models in a nonsensical way, I cringe.

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#158

Post by trashtester »

acedTrex wrote: post #111
Delk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, a (former) team mate who was one of the more enthusiastic adopters of gen AI at the time was in fact a pretty good developer who knew his stuff and wrote good code. He was also big on delivering and productivity. In terms of directly generating technical content, I think he mostly used gen AI for more mechanical stuff such as drafting data schemas or class structures, or for converting this or th…

I have certainly used it for different mechanical things. I have copilot, pay for gpt4o etc. I do think there is a difference between a skilled engineer using it for the mechanical things, and an engineer that OFFLOADS thinking/designing to it. Theres nuance everywhere, but my original comment was definitely implying the people that attempt to lean on it very hard for their core work.

Those bad engineers who offload critical thinking to copilot will be the first to leave....

Re: Effects of Gen AI on High Skilled Work: Experiments with Software Developers

#159

Post by huuhee3 »

stuckkeys wrote: post #141
ang_cire wrote: post #90

I sometimes wonder about whether the decline in IT worker quality is down to companies trying to force more and more roles onto each worker to reduce headcount. Developers, Operations, and Security used to be dedicated roles. Then we made DevOps and some businesses took that to mean they only needed 2/3 of the headcount, rather than integrating those teams. Then we made DevSecOps, and some businesses took that to mea…

Sadly. It is an onward trend. I have become so discouraged from this subject, that I am evaluating my career choices. Farming is a the safest bet for now.

Nursing is pretty safe too, simply due to demographics and limitations of robotics.
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