It's partially a product of Amdahl's Law. Coding and related textual activities are only a fraction of the work required for product design, implementation, and maintenance.
If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
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Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#521. They probably are. I'm sure I would notice a 500% increase in the rate that products get better, but I'm also sure I wouldn't notice 10%, which is much more realistic (but imo it's probably still less.)
2. Productivity gains don't go directly to products getting better. Individual developers may choose to realize some gains by spending more time with their family. Of course the company will claw that back but it takes time. And when they do, some of the gains may instead be realized by higher profit margins rather than better products and it will take time for consumers try to claw that back using their market choices.
3. Companies have lots of moving parts and a speed they're used to going; it will take time to adjust if one part goes a little faster.
4. LLM-assistants help a lot with getting up to speed in a new field or making stuff from scratch, and a lot less for a skilled team who already knows all the product code and surrounding tools. So "products you use regularly" benefit the least.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#53The way the question is framed invites a justification: "why it could be improving while not improving".
I'm sure there are hypotheses. But it's also likely that things are simply not improving.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#54[dead]
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#55AI code assistants are amazing when you start from zero and just need a 80% working prototype. But once you start trying to refine the product from there, that's where the automation gets counterproductive.
If you can exactly specify the problem, eg "Password input crashes when the password has an apostrophe", AI can probably fix it. But if the bug report comes in as "Password input randomly crashes", I will be very surprised if AI can figure out why and fix it.
Where a human wrote the code, he or she may figure out why fairly quickly. Now, if you want a human who didnt write the code to understand the AI generated code, it may take a lot longer.
In fact, in all likelihood, the AI assisted products are likely to be buggier and stay so longer, esp if companies start to think they can fire the senior devs and hire less skilled devs and fill the gap with AI.
At some point, the pendulum will swing back, and companies will be chasing devs again.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is such a wildly unsubstantiated claim. Where is the evidence of this happening ?
Which one? I run DevRel at Sourcegraph and our AI coding assistant, Cody, is used by tons of individuals, small business, and large enterprises. I get to talk to a ton of customers and see how their adoption of AI is going. And it's certainly increasing and developers are finding a ton of value.
Finding value in a product does make development go from months to days , which is the unsubstantiated claim. Even your customers can talk shit to sometimes in order to curry favour for a discount.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#57An improvement in productivity does not necessarily imply improvements in quality. Where those extra engineering hours get spent is determined by management, and management are optimising for profit, which could mean optimising for quality but more likely means optimising for feature development.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#58Why would there be a correlation between how fast something is developed and its quality? Assuming that AI is helping developers to write more code, it could mean: * there are fewer developers * developers are working less * the efficiency gains are resulting in more products being created rather than existing products being improved * AI isn't widely enough adopted or used to make enough of a difference * the benefi…
> Why would there be a correlation between how fast something is developed and its quality?
I've found that for all but the smallest and tightest of teams, there definitely is a correlation... an inverse correlation.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#59ahhh the classic "I confused speed with quality" argument
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which one? I run DevRel at Sourcegraph and our AI coding assistant, Cody, is used by tons of individuals, small business, and large enterprises. I get to talk to a ton of customers and see how their adoption of AI is going. And it's certainly increasing and developers are finding a ton of value.
Finding value in a product does make development go from months to days , which is the unsubstantiated claim. Even your customers can talk shit to sometimes in order to curry favour for a discount.
Since gpt came out I have built tons of throwaway apps, plenty of specialized apps for side projects, and experimented with tons of ideas that I likely wouldn’t have if I didn’t have access to a tool to build it for me from just asking it to do it and explain what it did. Claude artifacts has been awesome for this. Cody when I actually want to build it out. I recommend trying it before you knock it.