The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
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The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
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Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#2[dead]
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#3I think this post (and the OSS projects that he mentions that ban AI) are very reactionary.
> But the idea that AI has or will surpass humans any time soon in either capabilities or efficiency is simply not true
AI is already better than most developers. I'm not sure what alternative reality people are remembering, but human coders for the most part have been really awful at writing code. I think the average PR from an LLM is head and shoulders above the average PR from a human. Does it write code in the preferred style and architecture of the project maintainer 100% of the time? No, and neither did humans.
I think there are many legitimate criticisms of AI, but "they suck at coding" isn't one of them. The progress we've seen in the last couple of years alone suggest that very soon they will be better at coding than any person. As a coder of over 30 years, I've embraced this fact and come to terms with it. Leverage your knowledge of systems, software engineering and product design and you can be living in a golden era for software development. That's how it feels to me at least.
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#4I think this post (and the OSS projects that he mentions that ban AI) are very reactionary. > But the idea that AI has or will surpass humans any time soon in either capabilities or efficiency is simply not true AI is already better than most developers. I'm not sure what alternative reality people are remembering, but human coders for the most part have been really awful at writing code. I think the average PR from…
that’s the thing, you can have the LLM study and make a skill to only code in the maintainers preferred style or readability.
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#5I think this post (and the OSS projects that he mentions that ban AI) are very reactionary. > But the idea that AI has or will surpass humans any time soon in either capabilities or efficiency is simply not true AI is already better than most developers. I'm not sure what alternative reality people are remembering, but human coders for the most part have been really awful at writing code. I think the average PR from…
Yeah, it's a bit absurd. There's so many empirically measured benchmarks where LLMs clearly exceed human capabilities and efficiencies!
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#6First, I don’t think it’s widely accepted financial markets are in an AI bubble or there is actually any evidence to support this, most market cap growth is supported by real earnings per share. It is debatable how long that will continue and if it is sustainable, but that isn’t a bubble it’s a cycle. Even the most skeptical investors to bubbles like Buffet and Burry, have large stakes in Google and Microsoft, front line bets on AI.
Second, I agree with the distinction evals are not enough, and this is dangerously making people reckless, I think the conclusion is still quite incorrect.
There is essentially nothing magical about being human. Our primitive brains were trained on logic, reasoning and processes. An LLM is simply this on less efficient hardware, but, improving at a speed faster than human evolution.
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#7I think this post (and the OSS projects that he mentions that ban AI) are very reactionary. > But the idea that AI has or will surpass humans any time soon in either capabilities or efficiency is simply not true AI is already better than most developers. I'm not sure what alternative reality people are remembering, but human coders for the most part have been really awful at writing code. I think the average PR from…
How do you know your average AI PR is better than a human developer? Most of the teams that I see touting the benefits almost never review the code that's output, or they offload that process to another agent.
Like I see people say this, and yet the teams that are AI maxing produce worse code than ever. Software has rapidly gotten more unstable and unsustainable over the past three or so years than I've experienced in the past 20.
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#8This conversation again?
They go nowhere because people are using wildly different definitions and contexts. There's one already in here about how ai is better than humans at coding.
- Yes llms are better at the mechanics of coding
- no they're not good enough for overall software dev.
- yes, this stuff should've been automated years ago in frameworks and in libs, or through sane programming langs that dealt with memory and logic flow better.
- yes, they're much more useful for documentation, search, etc. than they are at actual coding
- no, your stats aren't useful - 90% of coding is meaningless if you've also massively increased the amount of slop produced
- yes, llms do make you more productive overall, whether it's 10-30% or 1000% is context dependent
- yes and no that AI will change everything; no it doens't make sense to keep comparing pre-ai and post-ai worlds, it is very likely that the gains cancel each other out and we all just move up a layer of abstraction, and end up in a simlar situation to now.
- no we don't know what will actually happen to the job market, things can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. We've had the technology to be where are 20-30 years ago if we were focused as a society. Things take time, and real world is complicated.
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#9I think this post (and the OSS projects that he mentions that ban AI) are very reactionary. > But the idea that AI has or will surpass humans any time soon in either capabilities or efficiency is simply not true AI is already better than most developers. I'm not sure what alternative reality people are remembering, but human coders for the most part have been really awful at writing code. I think the average PR from…
I agree, and I think what you’re describing is only scratching the surface of what’s possible today.
It’s even more powerful with large data and knowledge sources connected.
Takes a lot of work to set up effectively, but when connected to Slack _properly_ (not their MCP; but API which is more powerful), a database of your repo’s PRs/comments, data warehouses including analytics/telemetry and logs; and in a strong harness (including using multiple models simultaneously; like the OMP advisor pattern), what AI can achieve combined your domain expertise and human intelligence is just mind bogglingly crazy.
The larger your codebase / product / volume is; the more powerful it gets. AI has found many needles in haystacks that’s just impossible for a single person or team in large companies; because nobody has all the context.
I’ve embraced it too now. Initially I felt a bit disempowered and just somewhat uncomfortable.
Over time, I realised that I’m still doing serious and interesting engineering: just at a higher level of abstraction.
And for the craft and passion of software engineering, I have a couple of pet projects where I use ‘limited AI’. Good to still keep your wits sharp.
Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality
#10I think this post (and the OSS projects that he mentions that ban AI) are very reactionary. > But the idea that AI has or will surpass humans any time soon in either capabilities or efficiency is simply not true AI is already better than most developers. I'm not sure what alternative reality people are remembering, but human coders for the most part have been really awful at writing code. I think the average PR from…
They are only good in the context of the engineer guiding them.
I really can’t imagine what would happen if I didn’t manually intervene sometimes and just kept prompting it for the new behavior I wanted.