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Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

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Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#71

Post by croon »

distances wrote: post #26
sixothree wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this conversation recently. Not only are search engines and comment threads getting filled with AI responses, but people are increasingly sounding like AI themselves. This makes it even harder to distinguish. Related to code quality, I've noticed developers picking up tricks from AI. Like using feature/xxxxx as the branch name. Last year exactly zero developers used this convention. If any used paths in their b…

What. Strict branch naming like feature/, bugfix/, chore/, release/ has been the standard for probably 10 years now in all projects I've been in, often enforced by auto-rejecting pushes that don't comply.

Yeah, we've had our CI only run pipelines on proper branch prefixes for many years, so if you for whatever reason had a wip/branch you wouldn't clog up our runners.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#72

Post by croon »

deterministic wrote: post #62
VariousPrograms wrote: post #29

The effort required to do most jobs has gone down and so has the output quality. Rather than doing the same quality work with less effort, some people use LLMs to produce minimum-quality work at minimum effort. LLMs are a cool tool but we’re over-encouraging use in every domain, even tasks they’re not good at. Every tech company in the world seems to be getting rich though how can I possibly say things would be bette…

> and so has the output quality Not my experience at all. The quality has gone up dramatically . Because we also use LLMs to make large scale refactorings that cleans up the code and use it to find lots of bugs that would otherwise have exploded in production at some point in time.

I just used Fable to thoroughly review a PR, and it came up with 5 "Findings that block approval".

I went through each one through the code path (a couple were already considered during implementation), and while all 5 were theoretically accurate, 0 of them were actually reachable.

I wrote them back to Claude point by point and got this back: "I checked all five claims against the code. Your list is correct on all five. I downgrade my verdict: none of the five findings blocks approval. Details and one subtlety below."

This is a usual experience with SOTA models for me and others in my team.

Don't get me wrong, I use it daily; sometimes as a crutch, other times as an accelerator, mostly as a validator/peace of mind. I however don't think that neither velocity or quality is meaningfully changed. But I do spend much more time arguing with a machine.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#73

Post by croon »

chrisra wrote: post #35
vips7L wrote: post #5

I’d have to stop interacting with meat proxies and wouldn’t have to read copy pasted LLM text.

I have the same feeling but don't really know why. Why do I dislike reading LLM text so much? Weird

I don't hate it if it's text I asked for, in which case it's also easier to glance through looking for the points relevant to the topic.

I hate it if the assumption is that I'm communicating with a human, and I then get hit with a wall of text that I have to decipher the context behind. I'd rather read the prompt then.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#74

Post by ben_w »

sixothree wrote: post #18
joshuamoyers wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so ironic to see “load bearing” in a comment about removing AI. certain phrases have been ruined by fable/opus 5 for all time.

I had this conversation recently. Not only are search engines and comment threads getting filled with AI responses, but people are increasingly sounding like AI themselves. This makes it even harder to distinguish. Related to code quality, I've noticed developers picking up tricks from AI. Like using feature/xxxxx as the branch name. Last year exactly zero developers used this convention. If any used paths in their b…

> Related to code quality, I've noticed developers picking up tricks from AI. Like using feature/xxxxx as the branch name. Last year exactly zero developers used this convention.

Huh.

I've been using that convention for ages, but I have to remind Claude on new projects to actually use git in the first place, and then also specifically tell it to use branches.

Then again, I was using em-dashes before they got un-cool.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#75

Post by pranit1 »

croon wrote: post #72
deterministic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and so has the output quality Not my experience at all. The quality has gone up dramatically . Because we also use LLMs to make large scale refactorings that cleans up the code and use it to find lots of bugs that would otherwise have exploded in production at some point in time.

I just used Fable to thoroughly review a PR, and it came up with 5 "Findings that block approval". I went through each one through the code path (a couple were already considered during implementation), and while all 5 were theoretically accurate, 0 of them were actually reachable. I wrote them back to Claude point by point and got this back: "I checked all five claims against the code. Your list is correct on all fi…

This!! the amount of times that has happened to me in PR. A lot of the times its my fault as I haven't given the agent all of the context ( sometimes intentionally to cross check if it would reach to the same conclusion as me without additional info) but as soon as I give it all the context it would then back track on most of the blockers.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#76

Post by notahacker »

mancerayder wrote: post #51
wax66 wrote: post #4

Pretty much nothing. We'd remove the AI integrations, the UI elements, then back to where we were. Luckily, we have no load bearing AI. But if everyone else got to keep their AI, we'd lose customers very quickly.

>Luckily, we have no load bearing AI. Is this a subtle joke?

You're absolutely right! Honestly? It's not just a joke, it's a smoking gun.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#78

Post by johnsuder »

distances wrote: post #26
sixothree wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this conversation recently. Not only are search engines and comment threads getting filled with AI responses, but people are increasingly sounding like AI themselves. This makes it even harder to distinguish. Related to code quality, I've noticed developers picking up tricks from AI. Like using feature/xxxxx as the branch name. Last year exactly zero developers used this convention. If any used paths in their b…

What. Strict branch naming like feature/, bugfix/, chore/, release/ has been the standard for probably 10 years now in all projects I've been in, often enforced by auto-rejecting pushes that don't comply.

I've used that style in 3 different companies over the last 10 years and I assumed the technique was ubiquitous. This just goes to show the standard deviation in engineering culture is high. There are some large bodies of water but also lots and lots of little isolated tide pools.

Re: Ask HN: What would happen if your company stopped using all AI tomorrow?

#80

Post by trueno »

DerArzt wrote: post #79

Several people would have their incompetence more visible.

this and i think a lot of "leaders" would go back to being quiet. they're quite emboldened to be in everyone's business these days seems like they're smoking a ton of "you're absolutely right to challenge engineering/architect teams here..."
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