I think at this point it's whoever can get the most useful work out of AI which is actually really hard due to their 'incomplete' state. Finding uses which require very little user input is going to be the next big thing in my opinion since it seems that LLMs are currently at a wall where they require technical advancements before they can overcome it.
Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
51–60 of 388 posts
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#52In terms of LOCs maybe, in terms of importance I think is much less. At least that's how I use LLMs.
While I understand that might produce the meaty bits as well, I believe that having a truck factor of basically 0 (since no-one REALLY understands the code) is a recipe for a disaster and I dare say long term maintainability of a code base.
I feel that you need to have someone in any team that needs to have that level of understanding to fix non trivial issues.
However, by all means, I use the LLM to create all the scaffolding, test fixtures, ... because that is mental energy that I can use elsewhere.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#53I looked at our anthropic bill this week. Saw that one of our best engineers was spending $300/day on Claude. Leadership was psyched about it.
I was told that I wasnt using it enough by one arm of the company and that I was spending too much by another.
Meanwhile, try as I might I couldnt prevent it from being useless.
I know of no better metaphor than that of what it's like being a developer in 2025.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#54I looked at our anthropic bill this week. Saw that one of our best engineers was spending $300/day on Claude. Leadership was psyched about it.
Claude is making $72k a year for a consistent $300/day spend.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#55In terms of LOCs maybe, in terms of importance I think is much less. At least that's how I use LLMs. While I understand that might produce the meaty bits as well, I believe that having a truck factor of basically 0 (since no-one REALLY understands the code) is a recipe for a disaster and I dare say long term maintainability of a code base. I feel that you need to have someone in any team that needs to have that level…
Agreed. If I use an LLM to generate fairly exhaustive unit tests of a trivial function just because I can, that doesn’t mean those lines are as useful as core complex business logic that it would almost certainly make subtle mistakes in.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#56> survey of 791 developers
We have got to stop. In a universe of well over 25 million programmers a sample of 791 is not significant enough to justify such headlines.
We’ve got to do better than this, whatever this is.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#57Article did not say what kind languages/applications thosd 791 developers were working on. I work on a legacy Java code base (which looks more like C than Java, thankfully) and I cant imagine AI doing any of it. It can do small isolated, well formulated chunks (functions that do a very specific task) but even that will require very verbose explanation.
I just can't fathom shipping a big percentage of work using LLMs.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#58In terms of LOCs maybe, in terms of importance I think is much less. At least that's how I use LLMs. While I understand that might produce the meaty bits as well, I believe that having a truck factor of basically 0 (since no-one REALLY understands the code) is a recipe for a disaster and I dare say long term maintainability of a code base. I feel that you need to have someone in any team that needs to have that level…
Agreed. If I use an LLM to generate fairly exhaustive unit tests of a trivial function just because I can, that doesn’t mean those lines are as useful as core complex business logic that it would almost certainly make subtle mistakes in.
> If I … generate fairly exhaustive unit tests of a trivial function
… then you are not a senior software engineer
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but in my experience actually no. At least not with the bleeding edge models today. I've been able to get LLMs to write whole features to the point that I'm quite surprised at the result. Perhaps I'm talking to it right (the new "holding it right"?). I tend to begin asking for an empty application with the characteristics I want (CLI, has subcommands, ...) then I ask it to add a simple feature. Get that working…
> I tend to begin asking for an empty application with the characteristics I want (CLI, has subcommands, ...) then I ask it to add a simple feature. That makes sense, as you're breaking the task into smaller achievable tasks. But it takes an already experienced developer to think like this. Instead, a lot of people in the hype train are pretending an AI can work an idea to production from a "CEO level" of detail – th…
> you're breaking the task into smaller achievable tasks.
this is the part that I would describe as engineering in the first place. This is the part that separates a script kiddie or someone who "knows" one language and can be somewhat dangerous with it, from someone who commands a $200k/year salary, and it is the important part
and so far there is no indication that language models can do this part at. all.
for someone who CAN do the part of breaking down a problem into smaller abstractions, though, some of these models can save you a little time, sometimes, in cases where it's less effort to type an explanation to the problem than it is to type the code directly..
which is to say.. sometimes.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. If I use an LLM to generate fairly exhaustive unit tests of a trivial function just because I can, that doesn’t mean those lines are as useful as core complex business logic that it would almost certainly make subtle mistakes in.
> If I … generate fairly exhaustive unit tests of a trivial function … then you are not a senior software engineer
Neither are you if that's your understanding of a senior engineer