Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD • Hacker News Board

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#11

Post by o11c » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

BlackjackCF wrote: post #5

_wire_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a definition of thought as work, the entire argument of AI productivity is noise. The value of AI to work is utterly unquantifiable. But command of human attention is another matter: it can be quantified and it is command of attention that defines the value of FAANG+ The AI boosters hype it in such terms, both intra-model and extra-model: we track the attention and sell seats in the musical chairs of "investm…

I always find the X% of developers use AI tools for their work suspect because I know many people who are being pressured by their company to adopt AI tools for their day to day workflows.

Yeah that's an outright fraudulent claim.

But most fraud is legal, and most illegal fraud never sees legal action taken against it.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#12

Post by bitbasher » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

yawn

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#13

Post by swamiji » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

Specification driven design has been around for a long time. Lets see if AI can make it come true. Dr. David Parnas wrore about Parnas Tables https://research.cs.queensu.ca/home/cisc323/2006w/slides/Bil... ; and then there was Eiffel with Design-By-Contract; and the Type System in F-Sharp seems like magic.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#14

Post by Terr_ » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #10

BlackjackCF wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find the X% of developers use AI tools for their work suspect because I know many people who are being pressured by their company to adopt AI tools for their day to day workflows.

As they should be. It’s a necessary tool to learn. If your entire dev team circa 2010 was writing code in notepad++ and sharing code versions in a zip file, you would push them to use an IDE and source control. It’s the same concept.

That's true insofar as there is friction to adoption.

But whether $THING should be adopted and whether it does increase long-term productivity is nowhere near as clear-cut.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#15

Post by bandrami » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #10

BlackjackCF wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find the X% of developers use AI tools for their work suspect because I know many people who are being pressured by their company to adopt AI tools for their day to day workflows.

As they should be. It’s a necessary tool to learn. If your entire dev team circa 2010 was writing code in notepad++ and sharing code versions in a zip file, you would push them to use an IDE and source control. It’s the same concept.

Why should it be necessary to adopt a tool that reduces your productivity by 20%?

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#16

Post by username223 » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:47 AM UTC

It's a wall of text sprinkled with Halloween-colored AI slop images (look for the text artifacts). Which parts, if any, were produced by a human?

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#17

Post by csomar » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:48 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #2

> McKinsey stated AI could “automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today” across all occupations, not specifically software development. I would wager a large portion of that would be both generating and then triaging a certain level of institutional "bullshit communications". For example, the employee must give daily status updates, and they have a three-item list for the day. They…

LLM biggest productivity boost might uncovering that most of the work we do is B.S. anyway and mostly made up of pushing papers around.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#18

Post by SubiculumCode » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:49 AM UTC

Look, maybe AI for professional programming is overhyped, but for the huge number of professionals who need to program as a part of their job, but programming is decidedly NOT their job, but who do not have programmers available to them, LLM's are.monunmental. For these people, these LLMs are huge productivity enhancers. We shouldn't be measuring productivity gain by professional programmers, but by the larger population of professionals who are required to wear many different hats.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#19

Post by taude » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:51 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #2

> McKinsey stated AI could “automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today” across all occupations, not specifically software development. I would wager a large portion of that would be both generating and then triaging a certain level of institutional "bullshit communications". For example, the employee must give daily status updates, and they have a three-item list for the day. They…

I'm telling people that if AI can make the process easy or go away, maybe it's time to rethink we need the process.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#20

Post by nojs » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 2:56 AM UTC

The “X% AI coded” metric needs to die. It is completely meaningless.

The nature of development work is changing. A project can be 100% written by AI but guided so closely by humans that the process wasn’t much faster. Alternatively, AI can make a project faster by helping with architecture and other things beyond writing code.

When people quote “70% AI coded”, it implies that 100% is some mythical goal that means AI is writing all code unsupervised. But most production AI code at the moment is still developed in lockstep with humans.