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Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

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Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#21

1972: Using Anything Other Than Assembly Will Make You a Bad Programmer 1995: Using a Language with a Garbage Collector Will Make You a Bad Programmer 2024: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

Plato: Writing will make people forgetful.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#22

1972: Using Anything Other Than Assembly Will Make You a Bad Programmer 1995: Using a Language with a Garbage Collector Will Make You a Bad Programmer 2024: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

>1972: Using Anything Other Than Assembly Will Make You a Bad Programmer 1995: Using a Language with a Garbage Collector Will Make You a Bad Programmer Both of these remain true to today, which is why we always interview people at one layer below the requirement of the job so they know what they’re doing. Writing C/C++ - know how the output looks like. Using GC-based languages? Know the cleanup cycle (if any). I woul…

It's not true but I appreciate you leaving all of the people with experience actually building usable software for me to hire.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#23
TL;DR: shipped

More specifically, I think code quality is a luxury that not everyone has if you work for dumb corpos who think that moving the gantt chart block left will speed up development.

The answer there is probably don't work for those people, but salaries cap out at some point and the allure of megacorps is there.

I'm a CS old head, who has manually allocated / managed memory, and built what would be considered stupid data structures to support scientific efforts.

For me, using AI and getting 0 to 1 experience in languages/frameworks I don't know is ultra. Combining those skills has made me some money in shipping small software, which has been fun.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#24
Copilot and AI generated code 100% has degraded code quality, judging simply by the now infamous metric about code churn in repositories shooting up after copilot was introduced.

The thing that bothers me is that your colleagues will use AI, your bosses will see it as progress, yet not realise the time saved now is going to be wasted down the road

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#25

Yeah, probably true, but joke's on you - I'm just a B2B SaaS PM so making me a bad programmer is a huge step up! But in all seriousness, these models are getting to the point where they're really useful for me to just build one-off tools for my own use or to prototype things to show other people what I'm looking for (like an interactive mockup). That's the power of turning a non-programmer into a bad programmer, and…

This sucks so absolutely bad because even a shitty demo or POC sticks, and now you’re stuck with that, when it would’ve been faster and easier to just rewrite from scratch.

Also exacerbates the problem of A teams that get assigned to greenfield work and B teams that thanklessly maintain and actually productionise said greenfield work

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#26
post #13

fun fact: after 25 years as a software engineer in silicon valley, I'm convinced nobody cares about code quality and they never have.

Yeah, no, things have changed in the last 30 years...

How/where? We see a lot of companies inside as nature of business our business; almost no one cares. Some say they care but in the end it's money and shipping fast. If that can get code quality for the same price, they feel they are overpaying and they can ship faster.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#27

fun fact: after 25 years as a software engineer in silicon valley, I'm convinced nobody cares about code quality and they never have.

Some care but most don't or cannot care as talking code quality means to managers that you could be doing more, faster and cheaper that is relevant to the bottom line. In large corps, everything is slow and expensive as it is, so 'wasting time' on things that are hard/impossible to measure is not something that is a great sell.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#28

While I agree with the spirit of this post, it seems a bit misguided on several points. 1) I do not believe AI will ever replace programming as a practice, because people will still need to read/review the code (and no, I don't personally believe LLM's are going to be able to do that themselves in the vast majority of cases) 2) while the "script kiddie" characterization is a bit of an unfair generalization, there is…

For the record, some of us have tools which comprehensively solve all of your concerns (even #1). Generating 100% reliable self-analyzing deterministic code is already possible and will become mainstream within the next two months. When you see how it’s done, you’re going to smack yourself in the forehead. Programmers in particular seem extremely vulnerable to dismissing technology that they are not intimately familiar with.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#29

1972: Using Anything Other Than Assembly Will Make You a Bad Programmer 1995: Using a Language with a Garbage Collector Will Make You a Bad Programmer 2024: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

Right, but having used assembler and C/C++ before has made me a better programmer, even if I choose to work with a more high level language day to day so I'm more productive.

Re: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

#30
post #17

1972: Using Anything Other Than Assembly Will Make You a Bad Programmer 1995: Using a Language with a Garbage Collector Will Make You a Bad Programmer 2024: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer

2035: Using simplified english will make you a bad prompt engineer.

2069: Ascension will unmake you
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