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The Bitter Prediction

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141–150 of 189 posts

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#141

Post by AndrewKemendo »

I had a conversation with a fellow tech founder (Running a $Bn+ val Series D robotics company currently) recently on AI assisted coding tools.

We have both been using or integrating AI code support tools since they became available and both writing code (usually Python) for 20+ years.

We both agree that windsurf + claude is our default IDE/Env now on. We also agree that for all future projects we think we can likely cut the number of engineers needed by 1/3rd.

Based on what I’ve been using for the last year professionally (copilot) and on the side, I’m confident I could build faster, better and with less effort with 5 engineers and AI tools as with 10 or 15. Also communication overhead reduces by 3x which prevents slowdowns.

So if I have a HA 5 layer stack application (fe, be, analytics, train/inference, networking/data mgt) with IPCs between them, instead of one senior and two juniors per process for a total of 15 people, I only need the 5 mid-seniors now.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#142

Post by doug_durham »

kassner wrote: post #90

> I've never been more productive Maybe it’s because my approach is much closer to a Product Engineer than a Software Engineer, but code output is rarely the reason why projects that I worked on are delayed. All my productivity issues can attributed to poor specifications, or problems that someone just threw over the wall. Every time I’m blocked is because someone didn’t make a decision on something, or no one has th…

I agree with you that traditionally that is the bottleneck. Think about why poor specifications are a problem. It's a problem because software is so costly and time consuming to create. Many times the stakeholders don't know that something isn't right until they can actually use it. What if it takes 50% less time to create code? Code becomes less precious. Throwing away failed ideas isn't as big an issue. Of course it is trivially easy to think of cases where this could also lead to never shipping your code.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#143

Post by d0liver »

kassner wrote: post #90

> I've never been more productive Maybe it’s because my approach is much closer to a Product Engineer than a Software Engineer, but code output is rarely the reason why projects that I worked on are delayed. All my productivity issues can attributed to poor specifications, or problems that someone just threw over the wall. Every time I’m blocked is because someone didn’t make a decision on something, or no one has th…

I feel this. As a dev, most of my time is spent thinking and asking questions.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#144

Post by doug_durham »

palata wrote: post #122
davidanekstein wrote: post #117

I think AI is posing a challenge to people like the person in TFA because programming is their hobby and one that they’re good at. They aren’t used to knowing someone or something can do it better and knowing that now makes them wonder what the point is. I argue that amateur artists and musicians have dealt with this feeling of “someone can always do it better” for a very long time. You can have fun while knowing som…

> can make it better than you, faster, without as much struggle Still need to prove that AI-generated code is "better", though. "More profitable", in a world where software generally becomes worse (for the consumers) and more profitable (for the companies), sure.

I don't see that as a likely outcome. I think it will make software better for consumers. There can be more bespoke interfaces instead of making consumers cram in to the solution space dictated by the expensive to change software as it is today.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#145

Post by thwarted »

vertnerd wrote: post #116

I'm a little older now, over 60. I'm writing a spaceflight simulator for fun and (possible) profit. From game assets to coding, it seems like AI could help. But every time I try it out, I just end up feeling drained by the process of guiding it to good outcomes. It's like I have an assistant to work for me, who gets to have all the fun, but needs constant hand holding and guidance. It isn't fun at all, and for me, co…

Editing and proofreading, of code and prose, are work themselves, which is often not appreciated enough to be recognized as work, and I think this is the basis for the perspective that if you can get the LLMs to do the coding/writing and all you need to do is just proof the result as if that's somehow easier because proofing is not the real work.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#146

Post by aeonik »

skybrian wrote: post #139

To put the cost into context, spending $5 a day on tools is ludicrously cheap compared to paying minimum wage, let alone a programmer’s salary. Programming is only free if you already know how to code and don’t value your time. Many of us do write code for fun, but that results in a skewed perspective where we don’t realize how inaccessible it is for most people. Programmers are providers of expensive professional se…

Software could be much, much cheaper if libraries were easier to use, and data formats and protocols were more open.

So much code I have written and worked with is either CRUD or compatibility layers for un/under-documented formats.

It's as of most of the industry are plumbers, but we are mining and fabricating the materials for the pipes, and digging trenches to and from every residence using completely different pipes and designs for every. single. connection.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#147

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #82
zkmon wrote: post #62

It's not true that coding would no longer be fun because of AI. Arithmetic did not stop being fun because of calculators. Travel did not stop being fun because of cars and planes. Life did not stop being fun because of lack of old challenges. New challenges would come up. If calculators made the arithmetic easy, math challenges move to next higher level. If AI does all the thinking and creativity, human would move to…

I find legacy systems fun because you're looking at an artefact built over the years by people . I can get a lot of insight into how a system's design and requirements changed over time, by studying legacy code. All of that will be lost, drowned in machine-generated slop, if next decade's legacy code comes out the backside of a language model.

> "All of that will be lost, drowned in machine-generated slop, if next decade's legacy code comes out the backside of a language model."

The fun part though is that future coding LLMs will eventually be poisoned by ingesting past LLM generated slop code if unrestricted. The most valuable code bases to improve LLM quality in the future will be the ones written by humans with high quality coding skills that are not reliant or minimally reliant on LLMs, making the humans who write them more valuable.

Think about it: A new, even better programming language is created like Sapphire on Skates or whatever. How does a LLM know how to output high quality idiomatically correct code for that hot new language? The answer is that _it doesn't_. Not until 1) somebody writes good code for that language for the LLM to absorb and 2) in a large enough quantity for patterns to emerge that the LLM can reliably identify as idiomatic.

It'll be pretty much like the end of Asimov's "Feeling of Power" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power) or his almost exactly LLM relevant novella "Profession" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella) ).

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#148

Post by mountainriver »

pards wrote: post #113
kassner wrote: post #90

> I've never been more productive Maybe it’s because my approach is much closer to a Product Engineer than a Software Engineer, but code output is rarely the reason why projects that I worked on are delayed. All my productivity issues can attributed to poor specifications, or problems that someone just threw over the wall. Every time I’m blocked is because someone didn’t make a decision on something, or no one has th…

> code output is rarely the reason why projects that I worked on are delayed This is very true at large enterprises. The pre-coding tasks [0] and the post-coding tasks [1] account for the majority of elapsed time that it takes for a feature to go from inception to production. The theory of constraints says that optimizations made to a step that's not the bottleneck will only make the actual bottleneck worse. AI is no…

Disagree it’s normally the integration and alignment of systems that takes a long time e.g. you are forced to use X product but their missing a feature you need to wait on

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#149

Post by skybrian »

aeonik wrote: post #146
skybrian wrote: post #139

To put the cost into context, spending $5 a day on tools is ludicrously cheap compared to paying minimum wage, let alone a programmer’s salary. Programming is only free if you already know how to code and don’t value your time. Many of us do write code for fun, but that results in a skewed perspective where we don’t realize how inaccessible it is for most people. Programmers are providers of expensive professional se…

Software could be much, much cheaper if libraries were easier to use, and data formats and protocols were more open. So much code I have written and worked with is either CRUD or compatibility layers for un/under-documented formats. It's as of most of the industry are plumbers, but we are mining and fabricating the materials for the pipes, and digging trenches to and from every residence using completely different pi…

I think that’s too pessimistic. There are lots of successful standards. We rely on standard API’s and libraries a lot more nowadays than we used to. Some of them are pretty good. There’s been a lot of progress.

But it takes a while because the wheel has to be reinvented many times before people give up on improving it. When a new language comes along, a lot of stuff gets reimplemented. There’s plenty of churn, but the tools do get better.

Re: The Bitter Prediction

#150

Post by palata »

doug_durham wrote: post #144
palata wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can make it better than you, faster, without as much struggle Still need to prove that AI-generated code is "better", though. "More profitable", in a world where software generally becomes worse (for the consumers) and more profitable (for the companies), sure.

I don't see that as a likely outcome. I think it will make software better for consumers. There can be more bespoke interfaces instead of making consumers cram in to the solution space dictated by the expensive to change software as it is today.

That doesn't make sense: they could already spend more resources to make the software better, but they don't, because that is more profitable.

If AI makes doing the same thing cheaper, why would they suddenly say "actually instead of increasing our profit, we will invest it into better software"?

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