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Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

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Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#431

Post by hn_submit »

gtowey wrote: post #414
hn_submit wrote: post #389

To me this merely signals how broken C++ development really is. Most if not all of the bugs being uncovered are memory related and therefore intimately tied to the mental memory model of C and C++, namely manual memory management. It's fine for a C or C++ program encompassing a couple hundred lines but beyond that it's a liability. C and C++ are simply not fit for purpose when large scale software projects are concer…

I'll await your Rust ports of Windows, Linux and MacOS then. This isn't really a fair take. Keep in mind that C/C++ has been the backbone of the most important software in the world since the 1970s. At that time we didn't have virtually unlimited compute and memory at our fingertips the way we do now. It was a huge improvement to have a high level language which still could be optimized nearly as well as assembly. It…

C is literally "high level assembly" and therefore lacks any guard rails you'd expect in a programming language. It's just unfortunate that so many software developers embraced C for its speed, even when it wasn't strictly needed.

I always remind people that C is a systems programming language and not fit for regular application programming. For that you need an application programming language like Pascal or Java.

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#433

Post by davidjade »

hn_submit wrote: post #427
rpdillon wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire compute world was built on top of C and C++. Saying they're not fit for purpose doesn't seem correct. I think what you're really saying is they're not an optimal choice from a safety perspective. > All of these need to be ported to Rust or another memory-safe language ASAP to prevent mayhem. Seems like hyperbole... It might be ideal if we could snap our fingers and suddenly have rust ports, but I feel like…

I assure you that Microsoft knew for years that there were thousands if not tens of thousands of memory related bugs lurking in Windows. But their policy was "don't fix" (and "don't look") unless a remotely exploitable vulnerability was making headlines. Because every minute a developer spends finding and fixing bugs is a minute he can't spend on adding new features customers will pay for. Luckily one of the perks of…

And I can assure you that there were a number of MS research developed tools for finding memory bugs that have been used for decades at MS. There was never a don’t look / don’t fix policy while I was there. Quite the contrary.

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#434

Post by zahlman »

addaon wrote: post #329
glimshe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't generally use AI to write code I feel I can write efficiently. In these cases, I'll just ask AI for a review. But when I need to write code in areas I'm less confident about, I'll let AI take the reins and the do a thorough review myself. These instances are not too common, though. I also ask direct questions to AI for brainstorming and advanced programming language usage. In these cases, AI isn't touching th…

> But when I need to write code in areas I'm less confident about, I'll let AI take the reins and the do a thorough review myself. I see this mindset a bunch, and I just don’t get it. Reviewing code is so much harder than writing code! To write code, I need to find one path to achieve my goal, and convince myself, the compiler, and the reviewer that it does so. To review code, I need to consider all reasonable paths…

To write code, I effectively need to do a mini-review as I go, and type vastly slower than the AI. To review code, given that all the automated checks are out of the way, I need to consider the objectives of the code (in terms of fitting into the existing codebase, having a reasonably appropriate style, etc.) and ensure there isn't anything too far out of line. Knowing that something is "sufficiently good" doesn't entail awareness of all possibilities, because you aren't ranking the thing but measuring it.

Seniors review code because they have a much better understanding of the necessary taste and discretion, and an awareness of the larger system the code will integrate into, whereas there's only so much you can learn about coding that's relevant to most of the code you'll write (and only so fast you'll ever really be able to type it, and most of the issues can be caught by automated, deterministic systems).

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#435

Post by cyanydeez »

xXSLAYERXx wrote: post #194
cyanydeez wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point is more: are people going to flood the zone with infinite bikeshedding that drowns out the real gains

[flagged]

yeah, but not at scale; you can now spin up 20 bike shedding agents and flood anyone of your employees/coworkers.

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#436

Post by coliveira »

runarberg wrote: post #242
truncate wrote: post #5

Not that I don't believe its possible to fix a lot of bugs, I also wonder what the actual dynamic was. Were the people in team working much more than usual as well? Given its Google, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an "internal push" to fix more bugs over next X sprints so that they can publish this blog and some manager can show impact and AI adaption to his superior.

This is just my hypothesis, but I suspect that at Chrome‘s engineering team there has been a culture of inaction for the past decade or more. That nothing gets done, no bugs fixed, unless some higher ups at Google sees a business interest in resolving it. And what has changed now is that the higher ups at Google do indeed see a business interest in fixing bugs and giving the credit to AI to sell us more AI.

Bingo. The issue is not lack of knowledge but prioritization at these companies. Microsoft has the ability to fix Windows bugs, they just think it's secondary compared to adding their own new bug ridden features.

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#437

Post by zahlman »

Aurornis wrote: post #320
glimshe wrote: post #41

A lot of people here seem to be living in a different universe than me or simply don't know how to work with AI. I think detractors believe you should just let AI do the job blindly instead of leveraging it as a tool to accelerate you. They get mad at Excel for the poor investment returns. At this point, this is such a strawman, it isn't worth counter arguing. I think I'll abandon this discussion and keep using AI qu…

LLMs are the first tech topic I’ve seen that attracts as much wishcasting as political debates. Some people get attached to the conclusion they want to believe and get angry at anyone who disagrees with them. Most of the tech people I talk to outside of HN, Reddit, Twitter, and other debate heavy spaces have a more nuanced view. In group chats we share stories about the amazing things we got out of an LLM today, or t…

I find plenty of nuanced takes on HN. Honestly I think it's easier here than elsewhere; I just have to filter down to them. On other platforms, polarized takes are incentivized by the struggle for "engagement". (Youtubers often have fairly nuanced takes, but are incentivized to clickbait by misrepresenting themselves as believing something more extreme. Then they're incentivized to make a longer video, wasting your time and distributing the interesting bits across the middle.)

I think LinkedIn belongs in a natural category with Reddit and Twitter far more than HN does.

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#438

Post by cyanydeez »

dpark wrote: post #413
tolciho wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM increase the range of things bikesheddable, so some folks will try to have a LLM design a nuclear reactor and manage the coffee budget in addition to the traditional bikeshed design complications. Whether this is an improvement or more engines of what passes for civilization catching on fire, well…

I don’t understand how LLMs make more stuff “bike sheddable”. What LLMs do is allow people to contribute low value garbage to all areas, but we have a word for that and it’s not “bike shedding”. It’s “slop”.

bike shedding is slop; you're arguing with some anchored semantics where culture, terms, etc are fluid.

Can only assume english might not be your first language.

Re: Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

#439

Post by coliveira »

artrockalter wrote: post #425

In my experience LLMs do find a lot of embarrassing bugs as Linus says but it can constantly turn into a game of whack-a-mole where most of the bugs it finds were written in previous LLM sessions. It's a huge struggle to get it to actually fix the root cause of the bug instead of patching the symptom.

Yes, it is relatively easy to find any solution to a bug. It is hard to find the root cause and change only what is necessary to fix the bug. AI makes it very efficient to "fix" bugs with code that needs to be fixed again later. The big problem in fixing bugs is understanding what is causing it, not to suggest a temporary "bug fix".
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