Earlier quoted context omitted.
I review the code that matters - anything security adjacent or that's an API that will be used by other code in the future. I don't review code that either works or doesn't - most HTML and CSS layout code for example. There I test it on desktop and mobile and commit it if it works. Ditto for stuff that's simple. A JSON endpoint that runs a SQL query and returns some JSON? If it works and a glance at the tests looks O…
> Ditto for stuff that's simple. A JSON endpoint that runs a SQL query and returns some JSON? If it works and a glance at the tests looks OK then I trust my agents wrote it properly. That is *exactly* the sort of area I *wouldn’t* blindly trust AI, there’s a huge security boundary there. What if the AI is doing string concatenation with user-provided data???
Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
141–150 of 269 posts
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#142>On my visits to the Bay Area, I would ask AI researchers or interns why they are doing their current research or projects, when in a year or three agentic LLMs could probably do them; This is such a weird point to make that doesn't become correct just because everyone makes it, all the time. Why clean the ocean if some magic future tech will clean them? Why save the world now if some benevolent AI is 'just around th…
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay. Show me the evidence that AI has an impact on productivity when doing design work. Or reducing meeting load. My own experience is that AI doesn't tighten the design cycle, and in fact might extend it by encouraging gold plating.
It does because you can now just steamroll features out the door and make everyone look bad that’s sitting around in meetings all day
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#144It's easy for a small team to adjust workflows and roles, but I just imagine the office politics must be a waking nightmare in big organisations right now.
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#145No, they don't! It's easy to dispel myths when the myths are built on straw men. Dumb article.
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#146> We already know developers don’t actually spend most of their time writing code, with studies at Microsoft and elsewhere showing it’s closer to 14 percent. Anyone else finding they're spending more time writing code (or at least driving agents to write code) now? 14% used to feel about right for me - I'd spend the rest of the time researching approaches and libraries, planning things out in issues, or sometimes jus…
Does the code get reviewed? How do you deal with increased amount of code that may need to be looked at?
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#147>On my visits to the Bay Area, I would ask AI researchers or interns why they are doing their current research or projects, when in a year or three agentic LLMs could probably do them; This is such a weird point to make that doesn't become correct just because everyone makes it, all the time. Why clean the ocean if some magic future tech will clean them? Why save the world now if some benevolent AI is 'just around th…
By trade I'm a UX Researcher/Designer who designs in code (HTML/CSS) and have done so since 2009. Recently I vibe coded an entire python app with a database and each time I didnt know what to do I would just feed screenshots to Gemini or Codex for guidance (i think i could share my screen with Codex and it can guide me via a voice conversation). I know I could follow up and build a companion iPhone and Android app us…
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#148>On my visits to the Bay Area, I would ask AI researchers or interns why they are doing their current research or projects, when in a year or three agentic LLMs could probably do them; This is such a weird point to make that doesn't become correct just because everyone makes it, all the time. Why clean the ocean if some magic future tech will clean them? Why save the world now if some benevolent AI is 'just around th…
> This is such a weird point to make I think it is a great point to make, because if everyone really believed that AIs will do everything without human intervention in a handful of years, as the marketing repeats again and again (AGI, singularity, etc.) and have been saying for years... why then get bothered? Because we DO know LLMs have their hallucinations, limitations, perform tasks not previously seen way worse t…
This is such a weird point to make. We are currently ( only ) discovering that paradigm; we are not inventing anything. We found a bunch of laws that produce rather cool results but our paradigm is incomplete which leads more or less wordy or frame-rich weird stuff like hallucinations, singularity and so on ... it's childish, really and on that funny pseudo-profound, pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-spiritual ( personal opinion, if it gets you horny, you go, baby ) "universe consciousness unity, Rick James, bitch" level ...
Our bodies and minds need proper AI, not all the stuff we already outsource to middle and/or passionate men and women. Other species on the planet would certainly like to see us get augmented by AI so we can solve as many survivability issues as possible to keep as many ecosystems running long enough ... whatever that means but whether animals and plants are aware of chance and potential is another philosophical debate.
To individuals, software is a hammer and chisel, a knife, a brush and canvas, pen and paper, a reading help, and to a good amount of people it's a microscope and a fine scalpel.
To collectives, it's a tool to work on consensus and conventions, to share and gather.
It's baby steps for civilizations and it looks like our particular species is gonna get stuck in a puddle of our own monkey shit, with bottles of champagne in our hands and monkeys grinding up and down the few ivory towers in proximity.
> why then get bothered
Humans are on different levels. Most have decided that "nature realized the/a bug and wanted someone dead" or "their survival is a matter of chance" is not acceptable at all and some people decided that sabotage, poison, abuse, rape, murder are acceptable means to get chicken shit ...
The "paradigm" of life is far from explored/discovered, so we simply can't content ourselves with presumptions about inherent limitations of the LLM and AI paradigm for any other reason than to uncover ( not invent ) other parts of the paradigm.
We are happy with what AI can do for us but "AIs will do everything without human intervention" sounds weird because babies are born and the older they get and the less sabotaged ( vs influence, cultural manipulation ) they get to grow up, the more breadth and depth humans want to experience. For this they need to learn and use their hands & fingers. They need to feed body and mind to find what triggers what, and what excitement and curiosity are inherent and which can or need to be added/acquired/experienced extrinsically.
How many associations will we be able to make if AIs will do everything without human intervention?
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#149Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#150With all the myths and hyperbolae circulating regarding AI, I'd love to know what it's like at large software companies adjusting to this brave new world. It's easy for a small team to adjust workflows and roles, but I just imagine the office politics must be a waking nightmare in big organisations right now.
Top leadership and/or investors believe in the benefits of AI.
Thus, skeptics stay silent. Who wants to loudly contradict their bosses' boss?
In practice, I do not see a big shift yet in workflows that would require a lot of politics. We just have the agent implement the code, and then it still goes through the usual code review and QA processes.
Only now with more effective models and harnesses do many developers realize how good these tools are at investigating bugs, etc.
Before the price-decreased GPT 5.6 Luna we barely had access to enough cheap AI to last for a month of work.