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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

#41

Post by woodruffw »

ma2kx wrote: post #39
woodruffw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with this. One of the strangest things about LLM driven engineering is holding two seemingly contradictory positions in your head: they’re both better than the median developer, and they’re also much worse at producing artifacts that are comprehensible to humans. I often find myself throwing away large amounts of LLM driven code not because it’s bad, but because it doesn’t fit within my attention sp…

It's the same with any tool. You can buy the most expensive drill but if its used by an inexperienced worker, the only result will be more wrong drilled holes.

Charitably, we could say that “agentic” software engineering is less than 4 years old. I say charitably because I think even that’s an extraordinary stretch. But even at 4 years, I don’t think anybody can fairly claim to be experienced in it in a way that’s going to be stable and fungible for, say, the next 30 years.

(My experience has been the polar opposite: the people I know who are the most “AI pilled” are also the ones who have the shortest technical horizons in terms of how transferable they expect their LLM skills to be.)

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#42

Post by Retr0id »

slowin wrote: post #3

I 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 think LLMs can be used productively, but I also think the average PR from an LLM is crap. They can be decent (or even excellent) at writing code, but they're mediocre at deciding what code to write, and terrible at deciding what not to write.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#43

Post by lelanthran »

ma2kx wrote: post #33

I really want to agree but the arguments he brings up make that extremely hard > Also, it seems that many don’t want to learn but instead expect to have all understanding outsourced to LLMs. Many seniors have noticed this and have stopped teaching juniors as the seniors don’t like the feeling of having their time wasted by teaching people who don’t want to learn. Or may be it is because now a junior dev is expected t…

> stop saying “please” to an LLM. It does not have any feelings.

> Yes, but I still prefer a nice tone. Like why should I change my manners just because it has no feelings? If anything the statistic predicts a friendlier answer when I say "please".

It's a probabilistic generator. If you set the tone of the conversation it will follow it.

Try inserting a few jokes, puns etc into a conversation and you'll see that it responds kn kind.

Just like if you ask highly specific technical questions, it responds using highly technical language. If you ask questions in legalese it responds using precise legal terms.

That's what happens when a token predictor has a conversation: it can't have any tone other than what you give it.

So continue saying please, and you'll have more pleasant conversations.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#44

Post by karmakurtisaani »

daishi55 wrote: post #24
grey-area wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly this is the impression true believers have had for at least a year. Nobody seems to have been left in the dust yet though. How odd.

Sure they have. Massive layoffs throughout the industry.

Layoffs were mainly due to overhiring during covid and outsourcing to cheaper countries tho.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#45

Post by cratermoon »

slowin wrote: post #3

I 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…

> AI is already better than most developers

By what measure? How do you even compare developer skill?

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#46

Post by Sharlin »

david-gpu wrote: post #37
woodruffw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with this. One of the strangest things about LLM driven engineering is holding two seemingly contradictory positions in your head: they’re both better than the median developer, and they’re also much worse at producing artifacts that are comprehensible to humans. I often find myself throwing away large amounts of LLM driven code not because it’s bad, but because it doesn’t fit within my attention sp…

My experience is the same. That is why I write technical specifications for the LLM to follow, and treat the actual code they generate in the same way I treat the assembly produced by a compiler: a black box I rarely peek into. If the code passes the (extensive) tests, I don't need to read or understand it. That said, I retired before LLMs became popular, so my experience is limited to vibe coding at home.

We (at least some of us) sort of figured out 30ish years ago that waterfall-style software development doesn’t quite work in practice. I don’t think LLMs have substantially changed that.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#47

Post by preommr »

cryzinger wrote: post #40
preommr wrote: post #8

This 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 mem…

I'm biased, being a software technical writer and not a dev, but at least from my side of the fence I think LLMs are no better at generating docs than they are at generating code, and might actually be way worse :) My devs keep throwing Claude-generated writeups at me that look okay at first glance but fall apart when you actually try to follow the instructions they lay out (which makes them useless for anyone who's…

Documentation was difficult to keep in sync with code because the tools didn't operate at a natural language level. Things like refactoring names, or terminology, or concept changes (foo is now fooGroup that contains bar) were tedious.

The granularity at which documentation parity is kept makes a big difference.

For example, brekaign things down into explicit assertion blocks in the code, and a link to the documentaiton that covers that assertion. So block-to-block tracking works well. Tracking completely separate documentation to independent codebase... idk I haven't tried it but my guess it that the context windows are too small for that.

But minor things like making sure there are unique error codes, that the codes somewhat make sense, etc. are all helpful. If nothing else, the model being stupid and acting as a rubber duck for pair-programming is useful for knowing what to document given a different perspective.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#48

Post by Rexxar »

lowsong wrote: post #12
slowin wrote: post #3

I 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…

> ... you can be living in a golden era for software development. Let's assume for a moment that you're correct. That AI is already better than most developers, for whatever definition of "better" you like, and they will very soon be better than any person. (I think this is a total fantasy and you've failed to recognise the limitations as the article points out, but I digress.) In that case the end goal of these comp…

Additionally, if this is true companies that have replaced all their software engineers will discover that they themself can be completely replaced by AI by their former customers.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#49

Post by karmakurtisaani »

Tangentially related, I'm starting to think LLM assisted coding will increase the jobs in software engineering.

Think about it: code is cheap now. You'll have accountants realizing they can create scripts to automate their work flow, so they hack together something. These scripts will become the backbone of the accounting pipeline of a company. Now someone needs to productionalize and maintain these scripts, but the accountants don't even have the vocabulary required for that, so they hire a software engineer to do so.

A simplified example, but I can see that happening. The only (personal) issue I have with this is that the LLMs get to take the fun part of the job.

Re: The growing divide between AI hype and software engineering reality

#50

Post by simianwords »

lowsong wrote: post #15
digitcatphd wrote: post #6

First, 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…

> I don’t think it’s widely accepted financial markets are in an AI bubble or there is actually any evidence to support this It's widely reported on and discussed. You'll find plenty of people saying it isn't one, but I'm sure you can find an economist willing to take any position you like if you look hard enough. Not to mention everyone who's financially incentivised to continue to claim that there isn't a bubble. >…

There's something to say about the extreme confidence people have that AI is a bubble with perpetually pushed up timelines.

It doesn't matter that AI is useful (but so was internet).

It doesn't matter that revenues exist (mostly fake and circular).

It doesn't matter that real unit costs go down (models are getting commoditised).

It doesn't matter that the margins are high (companies are secretly hiding the real costs because that would pop the bubble).

In their world view, the bubble is predestined. There's nothing that could prevent it - even with higher demand, even with higher revenues, even with higher margins. Nothing.

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