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I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

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Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#891

Post by jagenabler2 »

epolanski wrote: post #722
tns_admin wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, AI really lowered the bar for bad code in the name of delivering faster. I have seen people write highly complex code where all the complexity was not necessary. Think: deep unnecessary branching, pointless error handling and retries which make no sense in our context, hand-coded parsing using regexps, haphazard data flow, functions which seem purely computational but slyly make API calls, pointless…

> In my experience, AI really lowered the bar for bad code in the name of delivering faster. I would've believed that 6 months ago, but not now. If you have a good codebase with proper rails, hygiene and architecture, AI will produce better code than most engineers out there. People forget that 90% of the field has always been charlatans barely able to implement a fizz buzz or go much beyond trial and error googling.…

Proper rails, hygiene and architecture need to be actively maintained, they don’t just continue to exist in a developing codebase. Historically, a small proportion (the 10% as you say) had a disproportionate amount of influence on coding standards. When they can no longer keep up with that ongoing maintenance, which we’re seeing with the increased pressure to ship code, the hygiene will regress. We’re riding the tail of all the engineering practices we’ve developed as an industry.

This is what I’m seeing, anyways. Junior engineers are being rewarded for shipping so much code, it’s impossible to evaluate it all, and subtle changes in existing patterns are slipping through. Eventually all those subtle changes transform the rails.

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#892

Post by cindyllm »

deadbabe wrote: post #889
fjdjshsh wrote: post #650

I find talking about X psychosis (or generally using mental illness metaphors) unproductive. It sets up the conversation to be "nothing else to do with this person". Maybe the problem is you, but you won't figure that out if you think the other person has psychosis. For example, maybe you need to do a better job explaining, changing your language, simplifying things, being more concrete with consequences. Or maybe yo…

How about AI Derangement Syndrome?

[dead]

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#893

Post by johnnyanmac »

badtuple wrote: post #370
hattmall wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find this type of work??

I've worked with many people over the years. A bunch of product people have struck out to make their own thing now that they can get a feedback loop going. I just keep in touch with people. They know my services are available, so if they have a need they reach out. The greatest asset in this type of work is genuinely liking people, being good at what you do, and keeping in touch. My email is easily findable for a rea…

So, there is no secret sauce? Just work for people and have a hand at their contact info?

The one part I do wonder is how to "keep in touch". Maybe it's a generational thing as a young millennial (some would call it "Zillenial") but the biggest issue in my networking over the year (cough and the dating scene cough) is ghosting. You think you hit it off, try to follow up the day after, and proceed to never again hear from them.

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#894

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nojs wrote: post #863
wrxd wrote: post #538

I’m at a FAANG and we have $300/day token quota. Personally I don’t use that much of it but management is pushing really hard for it. “the quota has been raised for a reason, use it”. Any task: “have you tried working on it with Claude?”. Every meeting “now engineer x and y will show you what he did with AI”. It’s not all useless but most of the days I think I would be more productive if some processes were streamlin…

> $300/day token quota Are companies using per-token billing? Why - is there some reason they can’t buy the $200/mo Claude plan for every employee?

I’m curious what FAANG is actually doing per-token billing? I’m guessing not google or amazon (since my wife and I aren’t aware of that).

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#895

Post by seanmcdirmid »

zomglings wrote: post #723
denkmoon wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use $30 a day to produce a decent amount of code. Certainly more than we need - thinking about/designing the correct solution/distilling requirements is still the bottleneck. How can you possibly even review $300/day worth of output?

It doesn’t have to be $300/day worth of output tokens. It could be like $290/day worth of input tokens to teach both you and the model about the problem you are solving and then $10/day worth of output tokens.

It could be thinking tokens or tokens passed in via RAG.

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#896

Post by smusamashah »

hosteur wrote: post #709
ex-aws-dude wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s funny I’ve been doing that too Trying to crank out all the tools I never had time to build because I think we’re going to get cut off eventually

May I ask what tools did you make so far? And what is on your roadmap?

Not op, made a tool to convert Microsoft OneNote notes to Obsidian canvas and Markdown. First it used a python lib which was too limiting. Then it used windows API to plug into OneNote and read the doc in its original XML form. That made the conversion correct and fully featured.

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#897

Post by andoando »

consumer451 wrote: post #347
foxfired wrote: post #260

Maybe this is what will turn software engineering into an Engineering field. Right know, prompters are setting up whole company infrastructure. I personally know one. He migrated the companies database to a newer Postgres version. He was successful in the end, but I was gnawing my teeth when he described every step of the process. It sounded like "And then, I poured gasoline on the servers while smoking a cigarette.…

> Maybe this is what will turn software engineering into an Engineering field. Oh man, I think you may have touched the third rail here. My first job out of high school was as an AutoCAD/network admin at a large Civil & Structural firm. I later got further into tech, but after my initial experience with real Engineering, "software engineering" always made my eyes roll. Without real enforced standards, without consequ…

Eh writing software for healthcare, or aircraft or self driving cars is more rigorous than an EE working on industrial lighting or toys.

Im sure for the most part, engineers in physical space deal with the same kind of tradeoffs software engineers make, where you try your best based on industry standards, personal past experiences without some way to prove what youve done is right

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#898

Post by gw32 »

dawnerd wrote: post #807
tns_admin wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, AI really lowered the bar for bad code in the name of delivering faster. I have seen people write highly complex code where all the complexity was not necessary. Think: deep unnecessary branching, pointless error handling and retries which make no sense in our context, hand-coded parsing using regexps, haphazard data flow, functions which seem purely computational but slyly make API calls, pointless…

So many fallbacks. So many function_exists. So much pointless type casting. I swear it’s like the system prompt is designed to waste as many tokens as possible.

Ironic: my value as a programmer now comes not from my ability to write code, but my ability to delete the useless fluff that AI wrote.

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#899

Post by ramoz »

sir0010010 wrote: post #360
ramoz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-technical friend of mine has just won some hospital contracts after vibecoding w/ Claude an inventory management solution for them. They gave him access to IT dept servers and he called me extremely lost on how to deploy (cant connect Claude to them) and also frustrated because the app has some sort of interesting data/state issues.

As a SWE that has only ever worked for an employer or on his own projects, this makes me wonder: how would someone even get such a contract? Did this person already have a consulting business? Do you just call up random hospitals and ask if you can demo an inventory management system for them? Did this person already know people at the hospital? I know technical folks that do independent consulting, but even with a v…

He's already in the whole consulting sphere around these hospitals in his area.

Re: I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis

#900

Post by ramoz »

hattmall wrote: post #363
ramoz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-technical friend of mine has just won some hospital contracts after vibecoding w/ Claude an inventory management solution for them. They gave him access to IT dept servers and he called me extremely lost on how to deploy (cant connect Claude to them) and also frustrated because the app has some sort of interesting data/state issues.

I'd really like to know how he won contracts, just in general. Did he have some connections. And he doesn't even know how to get it to run on a server by himself? There's millions of people that can do that, if he can win contracts why worry about vibe coding at all, just hire someone to do it. Winning contracts is the challenge in my view.

He's already within the consulting sphere around hospitals in his area.
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