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Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

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Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#101

Post by mgh95 »

lanstin wrote: post #98
mgh95 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why mock at all? Spend the time making integration tests fast. There is little reason a database, queue, etc. can't be set up in a per-test group basis and be made fast. Reliable software is built upon (mostly) reliable foundations.

hmmmm. I do like integration tests, but I often tell people the art of modern software is to make reliable systems on top of unreliable components. And the integration tests should 100% include times when the network flakes out and drops 1/2 of replies and corrupts msgs and the like.

> I do like integration tests, but I often tell people the art of modern software is to make reliable systems on top of unreliable components.

There is a dramatic difference between unreliable in the sense of S3 or other services and unreliable as in "we get different sets of logical outputs when we provide the same input to a LLM". In the first, you can prepare for what are logical outcomes -- network failures, durability loss, etc. In the latter, unless you know the total space of outputs for a LLM you cannot prepare. In the operational sense, LLMs are not a system component, they are a system builder. And a rather poor one, at that.

> And the integration tests should 100% include times when the network flakes out and drops 1/2 of replies and corrupts msgs and the like.

Yeah, it's not that hard to include that in modern testing.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#103

Post by davemp »

Gigachad wrote: post #95
lpapez wrote: post #63

This article goes completely against my experience so far. I teach at an internship program and the main problem with interns since 2023 has been their over reliance on AI tools. I feel like I have to teach them to stop using AI for everything and think through the problem so that they don't get stuck. Meanwhile many of the seniors around me are stuck in their ways, refusing to adopt interactive debuggers to replace…

I've tried the interactive debuggers but I'm yet to find a situation where they worked better than just printing. I use an interactive console to test what stuff does, but inline in the app I've never had anything that printing wasn't the straightforward fast solution.

I’m only found them to be useful in gargantuan OOP piles where the context is really hard to keep in your head and getting to any given point in execution can take minutes. In those cases interactive debugging has been invaluable.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#104

Post by cornel_io »

mgh95 wrote: post #88
com2kid wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The useful part is generating the mocks. The various auto mocking frameworks are so hit or miss I end up having to manually make mocks which is time consuming and boring. LLMs help out dramatically and save literally hours of boring error prone work.

Why mock at all? Spend the time making integration tests fast. There is little reason a database, queue, etc. can't be set up in a per-test group basis and be made fast. Reliable software is built upon (mostly) reliable foundations.

There are thousands of projects out there that use mocks for various reasons, some good, some bad, some ugly. But it doesn't matter: most engineers on those projects do not have the option to go another direction, they have to push forward.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#105

Post by verdverm »

ottah wrote: post #94
ojosilva wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see much mention of tab-completions in the survey and comments here. To me that's the ultimate coding AI is doing at my end, even though it seems to pass unnoticed nowadays. It's massive LOC (and comments!), and that's were I find AI immensely productive.

Don't you have to keep dismissing incorrect auto-complete? For me I have a particular idea in mind, and I find auto-complete to be incredibly annoying. It breaks flow. It has no idea my intention, but very eagerly provides suggestions I have to stop and swat away.

fwiw, VS Code has a snooze auto complete button. Each press is 5m, a decently designed feature imo

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#106

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

ottah wrote: post #94
ojosilva wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see much mention of tab-completions in the survey and comments here. To me that's the ultimate coding AI is doing at my end, even though it seems to pass unnoticed nowadays. It's massive LOC (and comments!), and that's were I find AI immensely productive.

Don't you have to keep dismissing incorrect auto-complete? For me I have a particular idea in mind, and I find auto-complete to be incredibly annoying. It breaks flow. It has no idea my intention, but very eagerly provides suggestions I have to stop and swat away.

Yeah, [autocomplete: I totally agree]

it's so [great to have auto-complete]

annoying to constantly [have to type]

have tons of text dumped into your text area. Sometimes it looks plausibly right, but with subtle little issues. And you have to carefully analyze whatever it output for correctness (like constant code review).

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#107

Post by verdverm »

another_twist wrote: post #96
INTPenis wrote: post #41

I wouldn't say I'm old, but I suddenly fell into the coding agent rabbit hole when I had to write some Python automations against Google APIs. Found myself having 3-4 different sites open for documentation, context switching between 3 different libraries. It was a lot to take in. So I said, why not give AI a whirl. It helped me a lot! And since then I have published at least 6 different projects with the help of AI.…

When it comes to dealing with shitty platforms AI is really the best thing ever. I have had the misfortune of writing automations for Atlassian with their weird handling of refresh keys and had AI not pointed out that Atlassian had the genius idea of invalidating refresh keys after single use, I would have wasted a lot more of my time. For this sort of manual labout, AI is the best tool there is.

One time use refresh keys is not all that uncommon, probably more so than not, but lots of clients handle that for you

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#109

Post by theonething »

danielvaughn wrote: post #79
yodsanklai wrote: post #65

Seems about right for me (older developer at a big tech company). But we need to define what it means that the code is AI-generated. In my case, I typically know how I want the code to look like, and I'm writing a prompt to tell the agent to do it. The AI doesn't solve any problem, it just does the typing and helps with syntax. I'm not even sure I'm ultimately more productive.

Yeah I’m still not more productive. Maybe 10% more. But it alleviates a lot of mental energy, which is very nice at the age of 40.

> it alleviates a lot of mental energy

For me, this is the biggest benefit of AI coding. And it's energy saved that I can use to focus on higher level problems e.g. architecture thereby increasing my productivity.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#110

Post by StrandedKitty »

ojosilva wrote: post #83
yodsanklai wrote: post #65

Seems about right for me (older developer at a big tech company). But we need to define what it means that the code is AI-generated. In my case, I typically know how I want the code to look like, and I'm writing a prompt to tell the agent to do it. The AI doesn't solve any problem, it just does the typing and helps with syntax. I'm not even sure I'm ultimately more productive.

I didn't see much mention of tab-completions in the survey and comments here. To me that's the ultimate coding AI is doing at my end, even though it seems to pass unnoticed nowadays. It's massive LOC (and comments!), and that's were I find AI immensely productive.

Does it even fall into "AI-generated" category? GitHub Copilot has been around for years, I certainly remember using it long before the recent AI boom, and at that time it wasn't even thought of as any kind of a breakthrough.

And at this point it's not just a productivity booster, it's as essential as using a good IDE. I feel extremely uncomfortable and slow writing any code without auto-completion.

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