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GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

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Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#351

Post by the_real_cher »

bongodongobob wrote: post #339
0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

You. Can. Write. Tests.

Even better you can let the AI write tests.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#352

Post by hi41 »

samatman wrote: post #290
hi41 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s correct. Not a native speaker. I am not well versed with slang words. I am sometimes embarrassed because I speak as if they are words from a book instead of sounding like spoken words. Do you know how cuts came to mean that it’s a deal. For a non-native speaker it means the exact opposite thing as in “he cut a wire”. Language evolves in strange ways.

"Cut a deal" is an idiom, not slang: it's appropriate language to use in a business context, for example. The origin is hazy, of the theories I've seen I consider this the best one: "deal" means both "an agreement" and "to distribute cards in a card game". The dealer, in the latter sense, first cuts the card deck then deals the card. "Cut and deal" -> "cut a deal". It could also be related to "cut a check", which com…

Thanks much for the explanation.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#353

Post by hakunin »

bongodongobob wrote: post #339
0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

You. Can. Write. Tests.

How do you write a test for code clarity / readability / maintainability?

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#354

Post by 0xFACEFEED »

bongodongobob wrote: post #339
0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

You. Can. Write. Tests.

How do tests account for cases where I'm looking at a 100 line function that could have easily been written in 20 lines with just as much, if not more, clarity?

It reminds me of a time (long ago) when the trend/fad was building applications visually. You would drag and drop UI elements and define logic using GUIs. Behind the scenes the IDE would generate code that linked everything together. One of the selling points was that underneath the hood it's just code so if someone didn't have access to the IDE (or whatever) then they could just open the source and make edits themselves.

It obviously didn't work out. But not because of the scope/scale (something AI code generation solves) but because, it turns out, writing maintainable secure software takes a lot of careful thought.

I'm not talking about asking an AI to vomit out a CRUD UI. For that I'm sure it's well suited and the risk is pretty low. But as soon as you introduce domain specific logic or non-trivial things connected to the real world - it requires thought. Often times you need to spend more time thinking about the problem than writing the code.

I just don't see how "guidance" of an LLM gets anywhere near writing good software outside of trivial stuff.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#355

Post by blitzar »

miki123211 wrote: post #302
thih9 wrote: post #221

I use cursor and its tab completion; while what it can do is mind blowing, in practice I’m not noticing a productivity boost. I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting the pipes wrong. I need to double and triple check the updated code - or fix the resulting errors when I don’t do that. So: boilerplate and outer app layers, yes; architecture and core libraries,…

For now, I mostly use AI as a "faster typist". If it wants to complete what I wanted to type anyway, or something extremely similar, I just press tab, otherwise I type my own code. I'd say about 70% of individual lines are obvious enough if you have the surrounding context that this works pretty well in practice. This number is somewhat lower in normal code and higher in unit tests. Another use case is writing one-of…

Reminds me of how I use the satnav when driving.

I don't close my eyes and do whatever it tells me to do. If I think I know better I don't "turn right at the next set of lights" I just drive on as I would have before GPS and eventually realise that I went the wrong way or the satnav realises there was a perfectly valid 2nd/3rd/4th path to get to where I wanted to go.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#356

Post by corobo »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #334
xpe wrote: post #312

Award for most ambiguous headline. (“cuts” can mean “initiates” or “terminates”!)

“Cut a deal” is a standard phrase with only one meaning

Yes but cuts deals, which is what the title says, is ambiguous.

Those are some load bearing pluralisations right there.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#357

Post by kortilla »

njtransit wrote: post #92
kingkongjaffa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> interest rates go up This is kind of a cynical tech startup take: - ragging on VC's - calling something a bubble Interest rates are on their way back down btw. https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone... https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/bank-england-cut-bank-rate-... Funding has looked to be running out a few times for OpenAI specifically, but most frontier model development is reasonably well f…

If interest rates are on their way down, why has the 10Y treasury yield increased 50 points over the last month? https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US10Y

Because they previously decreased more under the expectation of another half point cut by the fed. Stronger economic indicators have cut the expectation for steep rate cuts so treasuries are declining.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#359

Post by sbarre »

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329
ianbutler wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually very curious why AI use is such a bi-modal experience. I've used AI to move multi thousand line codebases between languages. I've created new apps from scratch with it. My theory is the willingness to baby sit and the modality. I'm perfectly fine telling the tool I use its errors and working side by side with it like it was another person. At the end of the day it can belt out lines of code faster than I…

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

I think it depends on the stakes of what you're building.

A lot of the concerns you describe make me think you work in a larger company or team and so both the organizational stakes (maintenance, future changes, tech debt, other people taking it over) and the functional stakes (bug free, performant, secure, etc) are high?

If the person you're responding to is cranking out a personal SaaS project or something they won't ever want to maintain much, then they can do different math on risks.

And probably also the language you're using, and the actual code itself.

Porting a multi-thousand line web SaaS product in Typescript that's just CRUD operations and cranking out web views? Sure why not.

Porting a multi-thousand line game codebase that's performance-critical and written in C++? Probably not.

That said, I am super fascinated by the approach of "let the LLM write the code and coach it when it gets it wrong" and I feel like I want to try that.. But probably not on a work project, and maybe just on a personal project.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#360

Post by ianbutler »

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329
ianbutler wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually very curious why AI use is such a bi-modal experience. I've used AI to move multi thousand line codebases between languages. I've created new apps from scratch with it. My theory is the willingness to baby sit and the modality. I'm perfectly fine telling the tool I use its errors and working side by side with it like it was another person. At the end of the day it can belt out lines of code faster than I…

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

I have 10 years professional experience and I've been writing code for 20 years, really with this workflow I just read and review significantly more code and I coach it when it structures or styles something in a way I don't like.

I'm fully in control and nothing gets committed I haven't read its an extension of me at that point.

Edit: I think the issues you've mentioned typically apply to people too and the answer is largely the same. Talk, coach, put hard fixes in like linting and review approvals.

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