Is the writing here intentionally bad? May be it's not my cup of tea but it's been a while since I've read something so cringey, it's difficult to finish.
The copilot delusion
11–20 of 214 posts
Re: The copilot delusion
#12I feel this in my bones. Every day I'm getting challenged by leadership that we're not using AI enough, told that I should halve my estimates because "we'll use AI", and being told that there's a new AI tool that I have to adopt because someone is tracking KPIs related to adoption and if our team doesn't adopt enough AI tools we're going to be fired to give more headcount to those that do. It's like the world has los…
> Management has an AI shaped hammer and they're hitting everything to see if it's a nail. I really think we need to figure out how to cut back on management so we can get back to the business of actually doing work
Unions. What other way is there?
https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-b...
Re: The copilot delusion
#13Sounds like it was written by ChatGPT, to be honest.
Re: The copilot delusion
#14I wonder if we'll look back on this period in a couple of years and feel a nostalgic fondness as we think of the fateful moment when people working in software were forced to pull the wool from their eyes and look at the fact that businesses really, really, really dislike losing huge amounts of money paying people to make the software their businesses completely depend on. I mean, I'm guessing that's true. It'd make…
[dead]
Re: The copilot delusion
#15I feel this in my bones. Every day I'm getting challenged by leadership that we're not using AI enough, told that I should halve my estimates because "we'll use AI", and being told that there's a new AI tool that I have to adopt because someone is tracking KPIs related to adoption and if our team doesn't adopt enough AI tools we're going to be fired to give more headcount to those that do. It's like the world has los…
Well when you have a hammer big enough everything is indeed a nail. Have you considered that instead of resisting you should do more to figure out why you're not getting the results that a lot of us are talking about? If nothing has changed for you in the past 2 years in your productivity the problem is most likely you. Don't you think it's your responsibility as an engineer to figure out what you're doing wrong when…
Where did you see that I didn't use AI and that _nothing_ has changed for me?
Re: The copilot delusion
#16Adapt or die. Keep up on industry trends and learn how to (responsibly) use the tools to be a better programmer, or be unnaturally selected out.
Re: The copilot delusion
#17I agree with this article. But, I do think it's important to understand that these tools do have value - especially when learning. I also think a lot of the issues raised will improve when we can increase context length. Googling problems, and having obsolete answers from 2007 also slow down progress, but we're not saying Google is worthless for serving those results.
These tools will get better, and they will eventually allow the best to extend their ability instead of both slowing them down and potentially encouraging bad practices. But it will take time, and increased context length. The world is full of people who don't care about best practice, and if that's all the task requires of them - keep on keeping on.
Re: The copilot delusion
#18I wonder if we'll look back on this period in a couple of years and feel a nostalgic fondness as we think of the fateful moment when people working in software were forced to pull the wool from their eyes and look at the fact that businesses really, really, really dislike losing huge amounts of money paying people to make the software their businesses completely depend on. I mean, I'm guessing that's true. It'd make…
Non-technical business owners have always had deep anxiety about software development. They don’t understand it, it’s very expensive, timelines can explode, and a hack or leak can materially damage their business.
A reasonably smart CEO can pretty much understand, in depth, every aspect of their business. But when it comes to tech, which is often the most essential part, they are left grasping, and must rely on the expertise of other people, and thus their destiny is not really in their control, other than by hiring the best they can and throwing money at R&D.
The AI and the hype around it plays into their anxieties, and also makes them feel like they have control over the situation.
In biotech, the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) is often given much more authority in startups than the CTO in tech startups, I have noticed.
Re: The copilot delusion
#19As a preface, I think lots of people will not like this take.
A lot of people are going to have to come to the realization that has already been mentioned before but many find it hard to grasp.
Your boss, stakeholders, and especially non-technical people literally give 0 fucks about "quality code" as long as it does what they want it to do. They do not care about tests insofar as if it works it works. Many have no clue about nor do they care about whether something just refetches the world in certain scenarios. And AI whether we like it or not, whether it repeats the same shit and isnt DRY, doesn't follow patterns, reinvents the wheel, etc - is already fairly good at that.
This is exactly why all your stakeholders and executives are pushing you to use it. they've been fed that it just gets shit done and pumps out code like nothing else.
I really think a lot of the reason some people say it doesn't give them as much productivity as they would like is due largely to a desire to write "clean" code based on years and years of our own training, and due to having to be able to pass code review done by your peers. If these obstacles were entirely removed and we went full bandaid off I do think AI even in its current state is fairly capable of replacing plenty of roles. But it does require a competent person to steer to not end up in a complete mess.
If you throw away the guardrails a little bit and not obsess about how nice code looks anymore, it absolutely will move things along faster than you could before.
Re: The copilot delusion
#20I feel this in my bones. Every day I'm getting challenged by leadership that we're not using AI enough, told that I should halve my estimates because "we'll use AI", and being told that there's a new AI tool that I have to adopt because someone is tracking KPIs related to adoption and if our team doesn't adopt enough AI tools we're going to be fired to give more headcount to those that do. It's like the world has los…
Well when you have a hammer big enough everything is indeed a nail. Have you considered that instead of resisting you should do more to figure out why you're not getting the results that a lot of us are talking about? If nothing has changed for you in the past 2 years in your productivity the problem is most likely you. Don't you think it's your responsibility as an engineer to figure out what you're doing wrong when…
> why you're not getting the results that a lot of us are talking about?
IMO the problem occurs when "the results" are hyped up linkedIn posts not based in reality, AI is a boon but it's not lived up to the "IDEs are a thing of the past, youre all prompt engineers now" expectations that we hear from executives