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If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#131

Post by ado__dev »

csomar wrote: post #75
ado__dev wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since gpt came out I have built tons of throwaway apps, plenty of specialized apps for side projects, and experimented with tons of ideas that I likely wouldn’t have if I didn’t have access to a tool to build it for me from just asking it to do it and explain what it did. Claude artifacts has been awesome for this. Cody when I actually want to build it out. I recommend trying it before you knock it.

So you can give us a couple examples of apps you built with AI that are actually useful?

Many services that power https://videotap.com/ have recently been rewritten with the help of AI.

Recently I used Cody to rebuild the entire video processing pipeline and made it much more efficient and scalable, and I actually learned a ton about ffmpeg by pair programming with the AI. Now I'm building additional features into this app, mostly w/ just iterative prompting or chat-oriented programming to replace 3rd party services that are still in this pipeline and it's been a blast.

I've also used AI tools to really brush up on frameworks, like Laravel, that I haven't touched in a while, and it's been a great experience. Also started building a game w/ Godot and found AI super helpful there in walking me step by step. So for me it's been great.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#132

Post by turnsout »

The simple answer is that product managers are not asking for quality. They're asking for cards/stories to be completed. "Quality" has been redefined as "meets requirements" or "passes UAT." Actual quality is just not in anyone's KPIs or OKRs.

That's why it's way easier for indie developers to deliver high-quality software—their incentives are directly aligned with the user.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#133

Post by JohnFen »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #123
ActionHank wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last junior dev I spoke to, taught themselves React, spent months building a very polished portfolio, got hired to work with a new "language" they hadn't heard of called "Angular". This dev was taking up the job because it paid well, they otherwise had a disdain for tech. If these are the people who are coming into the industry, LLMs will not help them. There is no desire to learn or understand or dig even remotely b…

As someone who enjoys tech, I don't really fault or look down on people who get into tech for the pay like some in our field seem to do. In basically every other field on the planet that is high paying, people go into it for the money, not for some passion - so whats different about ours? I don't really mind whether you have some innate desire to learn something, or if you're doing because its your job and your job p…

I don't know that there's anything different about ours, but that's a shame.

The difference (broad-brushing here) between someone who is a dev because that's their passion and someone who is a dev for the pay is the quality of their work. As our industry matured and gathered more "in it for the money" types, the overall product quality has been declining.

I think that's a shame. Perhaps inevitable, but a shame nonetheless.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#134

Post by skydhash »

KronisLV wrote: post #71
ado__dev wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since gpt came out I have built tons of throwaway apps, plenty of specialized apps for side projects, and experimented with tons of ideas that I likely wouldn’t have if I didn’t have access to a tool to build it for me from just asking it to do it and explain what it did. Claude artifacts has been awesome for this. Cody when I actually want to build it out. I recommend trying it before you knock it.

> Since gpt came out I have built tons of throwaway apps, plenty of specialized apps for side projects, and experimented with tons of ideas that I likely wouldn’t have if I didn’t have access to a tool to build it for me from just asking it to do it and explain what it did. GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT and Phind are all a bit like this for me - they both lower the barrier of entry and save me a lot of time for trivial alg…

> If nothing else, so far we basically have a more versatile form of IntelliSense, even if it's not always going to output correct code.

That's the real issue for me. I remember learning programming and I either had not so good intelligence (Codeblocks, IDLE, Netbeans) or none at all (notepad++,...). This forces me to either follow the book attentively (and hunting down errata) or read the manual and getting explanations from forums or friends. When you're a beginner, uou need a good source of truth, not something that can be subtly wrong.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#135

Post by [deleted] »

dasil003 wrote: post #130
ericmcer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT came out in late 2022 so it has been almost 2 years since the "AI is going to change everything" wave started. Looking at myself and my coworkers I don't feel there has been an uptick in developer output in that time. We all have copilot licenses as well, I don't use mine but pair with people who do and it seems cool but not for much more beyond advanced autofill. My big concern with all this stuff is it is p…

This resonates with me, but also I don’t want to presume too much about the value of the old ways of doing things. AI tools are going to drastically lower the bar of entry to programming, so it will be flooded with dilettantes, but people who can think will still apply their thinking in creative ways. It will be really interesting what happens as AI tools mature and a generation of AI-native developers figures out ho…

[deleted]

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#136

Post by marcosdumay »

PaulHoule wrote: post #102

There's a time delay between when an innovation is first adopted and when it has a real impact. You might spend anywhere from 2 months to 8 years [1] developing an application. I've seen numerous VC or bootstrapped companies that took 1.5 years to 2 years to launch, so I wouldn't expect AI to have had much an effect yet. I'm also not sure about "better"; I find Copilot is a good wingman for writing things like shell…

GTP-derived bash scripts seem like a new kind of nightmare I never wanted to imagine.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#137

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

turnsout wrote: post #132

The simple answer is that product managers are not asking for quality. They're asking for cards/stories to be completed. "Quality" has been redefined as "meets requirements" or "passes UAT." Actual quality is just not in anyone's KPIs or OKRs. That's why it's way easier for indie developers to deliver high-quality software—their incentives are directly aligned with the user.

Note that passes UAT could actually be nearly enough if UAT are properly written, your merge rules are strict enough and you do a minimum of complementary testing on release.

The issue is that the people writing the UAT generally have no incentive to write good UAT. They want to ship. They don't want to get code blocked because it doesn't meet requirements. Amusingly and to get back to the core of the discussion, AI is generally pretty good at helping write good UAT.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#139

Post by rdlecler1 »

alentred wrote: post #112

Because Code ≠ Product. Code ∈ Product, among many other things. I would go even further and say that that relationship between the two is weak, but also very peculiar: bad code can ruin a good product; but good code alone says very little, if anything at all, about the quality of a product.

This is a great point. LLMs may flood an app with more features without making it better. At the end I do the day you still need to make something people love. AI may help you build that faster if you know what do build, but it’s not going to make a bad product great.

Re: If AI is helping people code better, why aren't products getting better?

#140

Post by marcosdumay »

sevensor wrote: post #119
ActionHank wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last junior dev I spoke to, taught themselves React, spent months building a very polished portfolio, got hired to work with a new "language" they hadn't heard of called "Angular". This dev was taking up the job because it paid well, they otherwise had a disdain for tech. If these are the people who are coming into the industry, LLMs will not help them. There is no desire to learn or understand or dig even remotely b…

Ever since FORTRAN came on the scene, there have been tools that make disdainful, unskilled programmers more productive. I doubt this will ever change. It’s in the interest of mainstream employers to treat programmers as a fungible resource. There’s a much smaller risk to your business when you hire ten and get one or two good ones in the lot, than if you hire one good one and pay them triple. Things average out, and…

You mean COBOL? FORTRAN wasn't really about lowest common competence.

Anyway, about this:

> It’s in the interest of mainstream employers to treat programmers as a fungible resource.

It's in their interest to make programmers fungible. It's self-delusional to think they succeeded.

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