followup question: Why is AI productivity gains showing up in quarterly reports.
If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
121–130 of 173 posts
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#122Programming with AI, so far, tries to specify something precise, algorithms, in a less precise language than what we have. It's the difference between Euclid and modern notation, with AI programming being like Euclidean notation and current programming languages being the modern notation: "if a first magnitude and a third are equal multiples of a second and a fourth, and a fifth and a sixth are equal multiples of the…
The only problem with this is the fact that the 99%+ of issues with software products aren’t the fact that a parsimonious language was used and tightly coupled to the compiler
The vast majority of issues is missed edge cases between what the user wants and expects, and the design and function of the software
Higher productivity would in theory allow programmers more opportunities to address more issues
Programs don’t exist in a vacuum, users and other actors need to interact with them
Whether or not these LLMs result in increased productivity with the same or better quality is a more pertinent question
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#123Simple, really. It's not actually helping people to code better: https://greaterdanorequalto.com/ai-code-generation-as-an-age...
Last junior dev I spoke to, taught themselves React, spent months building a very polished portfolio, got hired to work with a new "language" they hadn't heard of called "Angular". This dev was taking up the job because it paid well, they otherwise had a disdain for tech. If these are the people who are coming into the industry, LLMs will not help them. There is no desire to learn or understand or dig even remotely b…
As someone who enjoys tech, I don't really fault or look down on people who get into tech for the pay like some in our field seem to do. In basically every other field on the planet that is high paying, people go into it for the money, not for some passion - so whats different about ours?
I don't really mind whether you have some innate desire to learn something, or if you're doing because its your job and your job pays you. As long as in the end you suck it up and do it.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#124At this point, I'd expect to see more new products, especially more web apps. Are there? Would be interesting to look at /show with that in mind. I know I'm creating things I couldn't without AI. I expect more people who aren't web devs to make web apps.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#125Because Code ≠ Product. Code ∈ Product, among many other things. I would go even further and say that that relationship between the two is weak, but also very peculiar: bad code can ruin a good product; but good code alone says very little, if anything at all, about the quality of a product.
Another riff on this is that you won’t get better products, but more products. AI reduces the barrier of entry and you’ll have many products doing niche things (often for free!) instead of platforms capturing a lot of the incremental value.
It’s like mobile cameras, they reduced barrier of entry to photography, but you didn’t end up getting better photos necessarily. Instead you had more of them.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#126There's a time delay between when an innovation is first adopted and when it has a real impact. You might spend anywhere from 2 months to 8 years [1] developing an application. I've seen numerous VC or bootstrapped companies that took 1.5 years to 2 years to launch, so I wouldn't expect AI to have had much an effect yet. I'm also not sure about "better"; I find Copilot is a good wingman for writing things like shell…
ChatGPT came out in late 2022 so it has been almost 2 years since the "AI is going to change everything" wave started. Looking at myself and my coworkers I don't feel there has been an uptick in developer output in that time. We all have copilot licenses as well, I don't use mine but pair with people who do and it seems cool but not for much more beyond advanced autofill.
My big concern with all this stuff is it is pushing devs away from the uncomfortable part of coding. When you approach a new area of a codebase you just have to sit in discomfort and step through the code and experiment with it until your brain gains context. Sure you can tweak something on the surface to fix a bug, but to really gain full understanding of it can take days or even weeks.
Patience is one of a developers most important tools, whether its spending 30m uninterruptedly working to achieve "flow" state, or slowly stepping through a complex piece of code to see why it is failing. I worry AI is going to instill a rapid reward system that makes future devs goal just to rush to make it work. They won't have much interest in really gaining mastery over what they work on.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#127AI makes it easier to build a mediocre or just barely working product, hence rather a decline in quality is to be expected.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#128My theory... Being able to code well or fast doesn't one to one translate to a good end user experience. The strength of your org's ability to determine good features and iterate on them from a product perspective is what matters, and that /can/ potentially happen faster if AI is enabling faster development, but it's not guaranteed. Even if we had a magic box that results in perfect code coming out every time for a g…
This. AI coding can almost turn an excellent product manager into a one man shop. We all know precious few exist.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#129AI is helping people code a lot faster. For "better", you still have to put the work in.
Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?
#130There's a time delay between when an innovation is first adopted and when it has a real impact. You might spend anywhere from 2 months to 8 years [1] developing an application. I've seen numerous VC or bootstrapped companies that took 1.5 years to 2 years to launch, so I wouldn't expect AI to have had much an effect yet. I'm also not sure about "better"; I find Copilot is a good wingman for writing things like shell…
ChatGPT came out in late 2022 so it has been almost 2 years since the "AI is going to change everything" wave started. Looking at myself and my coworkers I don't feel there has been an uptick in developer output in that time. We all have copilot licenses as well, I don't use mine but pair with people who do and it seems cool but not for much more beyond advanced autofill. My big concern with all this stuff is it is p…
This resonates with me, but also I don’t want to presume too much about the value of the old ways of doing things. AI tools are going to drastically lower the bar of entry to programming, so it will be flooded with dilettantes, but people who can think will still apply their thinking in creative ways. It will be really interesting what happens as AI tools mature and a generation of AI-native developers figures out how to maximize them.