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Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

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Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#81

Post by giancarlostoro »

cmiles74 wrote: post #66
AlexandrB wrote: post #44

I find it weird how companies talk out both sides of their mouth on AI. On the one hand it's this magical tool that will make you 10x more efficient at your job, and on the other it's something they have to market heavily and shove in your face at every turn - sometimes outright forcing you to engage with it. These two things don't seem compatible - if the tool was that good people would be beating down their doors t…

The less I know about a thing the more useful an LLM seems to be. I’m working with a new-to-me enterprise code base, the LLM helps me find related (and duplicate) code. Even here it’s usefulness has an expiration date, eventually I’ll know where stuff lives and I’ll use it less and less. Life experience tells me I’m not unique and I suspect the constant cram-AI-into-the-thing is because the vendors are hoping, eventu…

This is the correct way. Use the LLM dont let it become the only way you work.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#82

Post by topaz0 »

politelemon wrote: post #19
Y_Y wrote: post #4

How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?

It wasn't critical at that time. But then who made it critical over the intervening years? That's on us. It's easy to knee jerk on HN but let's try to do better than this.

Not me.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#83

Post by bookofjoe »

chubot wrote: post #72
tho2342o349423 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, pretty much all of the US markets (and the USD) is hinging on "unlimited upside" promised by techbros and their magic AGIs & robots. They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Wonder what'll happen to JPY once the Yen-carry unwinds from this massive hype-cycle - will probably hit 70 JPY to the dollar! Currently Sony Bank in Japan offers USD time-deposits at 8% p…

They probably get orders from all the way up the food chain to keep the show going. Honestly I think the same thing happened with self-driving cars ~10 years ago. Larry Page and Google's "submarine" marketing convinced investors and CEOs of automakers and tech companies [1] that they were going to become obsolete, and that Google would be taking all that profit. In 2016, GM acquired Cruise for $1 billion or so. It se…

Apple car project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project

>From 2014 until 2024, Apple undertook a research and development effort to develop an electric and self-driving car,[1] codenamed "Project Titan".[2][3] Apple never openly discussed any of its automotive research,[4] but around 5,000 employees were reported to be working on the project as of 2018.[5] In May 2018, Apple reportedly partnered with Volkswagen to produce an autonomous employee shuttle van based on the T6 Transporter commercial vehicle platform.[6] In August 2018, the BBC reported that Apple had 66 road-registered driverless cars, with 111 drivers registered to operate those cars.[7] In 2020, it was believed that Apple was still working on self-driving related hardware, software and service as a potential product, instead of actual Apple-branded cars.[8] In December 2020, Reuters reported that Apple was planning on a possible launch date of 2024,[9] but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed it would not be launched before 2025 and might not be launched until 2028 or later.[10]

In February 2024, Apple executives canceled their plans to release the autonomous electric vehicle, instead shifting resources on the project to the company's generative artificial intelligence efforts.[11][12] The project had reportedly cost the company over $1 billion per year, with other parts of Apple collaborating and costing hundreds of millions of dollars in additional spend. Additionally, over 600 employees were laid off due to the cancellation of the project.[13]

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#84

Post by marginalia_nu »

api wrote: post #56

What is the actual rationale behind some companies literally shoving AI down people’s throats? It’s fascinating stuff and can be very useful. Why does it have to be rammed so hard? I’ve never quite seen anything like this. Or maybe I have. It reminds me a little of the obviously astroturfed effort to ram crypto down people’s throats. But crypto was something most people didn’t have any actual utility for. A magic tir…

KPIs are likely the missing part of the puzzle. CEO wants AI engagement to go up, organization makes AI engagement go up.

If users don't want to engage with new AI features, the new AI features become unavoidable so that engagement goes up despite user preferences.

KPIs are a fantastic way for an organization to lose any touch with reality and can drive some truly bizarre decision-making.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#85

Post by chamomeal »

mvdtnz wrote: post #31
Y_Y wrote: post #4

How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?

"Critical"? "Infrastructure"? What do you think Github is?

Critical piece of tech infrastructure. Which is absolutely is.

When GitHub goes down, the company I work at is pretty much kneecapped for the duration of the outage. If you’re in the middle of a PR, waiting for GitHub actions, doing work in a codespace, or just need to pull/fetch/push changes before you can work, you’re just stuck!

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#86

Post by hyperpape »

AlexandrB wrote: post #44

I find it weird how companies talk out both sides of their mouth on AI. On the one hand it's this magical tool that will make you 10x more efficient at your job, and on the other it's something they have to market heavily and shove in your face at every turn - sometimes outright forcing you to engage with it. These two things don't seem compatible - if the tool was that good people would be beating down their doors t…

From Dan Luu (https://danluu.com/wat/):

> When I joined this company, my team didn't use version control for months and it was a real fight to get everyone to use version control. Although I won that fight, I lost the fight to get people to run a build, let alone run tests, before checking in, so the build is broken multiple times per day. When I mentioned that I thought this was a problem for our productivity, I was told that it's fine because it affects everyone equally. Since the only thing that mattered was my stack ranked productivity, so I shouldn't care that it impacts the entire team, the fact that it's normal for everyone means that there's no cause for concern.

Do not underestimate the ability of developers to ignore good ideas. I am not going to argue that AI is as good as version control. Version control is a more important idea than AI. I sometimes want to argue it's the most important idea in software engineering.

All I'm saying is that you can't assume that good ideas will (quickly) win. Your argument that AI isn't valuable is invalid, whether or not your conclusion is true.

P.S. Dan Luu wrote that in 2015, and it may have been a company that he already left. Version control has mostly won. Still, post 2020, I talked to a friend, whose organization did use git, but their deployed software still didn't correspond to any version checked into git, because they were manually rebuilding components and copying them to production servers piecemeal.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#88

Post by api »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #76
api wrote: post #56

What is the actual rationale behind some companies literally shoving AI down people’s throats? It’s fascinating stuff and can be very useful. Why does it have to be rammed so hard? I’ve never quite seen anything like this. Or maybe I have. It reminds me a little of the obviously astroturfed effort to ram crypto down people’s throats. But crypto was something most people didn’t have any actual utility for. A magic tir…

Not old enough for MongoDB? Big Data?

I lived through that but it wasn’t like this. Hype isn’t the same thing as having something rammed down your throat with constant nag pop ups and dark patterns.

Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features

#90

Post by api »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #84
api wrote: post #56

What is the actual rationale behind some companies literally shoving AI down people’s throats? It’s fascinating stuff and can be very useful. Why does it have to be rammed so hard? I’ve never quite seen anything like this. Or maybe I have. It reminds me a little of the obviously astroturfed effort to ram crypto down people’s throats. But crypto was something most people didn’t have any actual utility for. A magic tir…

KPIs are likely the missing part of the puzzle. CEO wants AI engagement to go up, organization makes AI engagement go up. If users don't want to engage with new AI features, the new AI features become unavoidable so that engagement goes up despite user preferences. KPIs are a fantastic way for an organization to lose any touch with reality and can drive some truly bizarre decision-making.

Ahh, the reason we lost the Vietnam war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

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