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Lines of code got a better publicist

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Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#191

Post by serial_dev »

tikkabhuna wrote: post #10
sunaurus wrote: post #6

I'm constantly thinking about that Microsoft guy who posted something like "we want 1 million LoC per engineer per month", which basically read as satire to most engineers I talked to, except apparently it was not satire at all, and indeed seemed to reflect the position of many CEOs etc when it comes to LLM code generation. I do think that over the past few months, it feels like the hype around producing unmaintainab…

The word “slop” was a good choice to talk about the mass of code generated by AI. I think it resonates with non-tech people and it conveys disgust. It’s clear that we should avoid slop. “Technical debt” never hooked management in the same way and we have found it hard to convince them that it needs to be addressed. Debt in general is something that can be a problem, but doesn’t need to be avoided or addressed until i…

To be fair, they are also different things, though there is certainly overlap...

To me, tech debt, captures the idea that we cut corners now to move faster, with the understanding that it will need to be "re-paid" and cleaned up later, otherwise we take on too much tech debt, and everyone knows too much debt is bad...

AI slop code means people feed their tasks to a model, trust it to drive the changes, they might do some cosmetic clean ups, then generate a 3 pager PR description they didn't even read themselves, then toss it over to the code reviewer, let that chump figure out what the hell I was doing while I ship 3-4 more PRs...

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#192

Post by fridder »

saghm wrote: post #37
fridder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reliability struggles of Github may have helped with this

I can't help but wonder if the causation is backwards here and the millions of lines of slop had more to do with the Github struggles than the reverse

In reality yes, and probably a complex mixture of things. Dedicated time and resources being siphoned off for Llm work, etc

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#193

Post by benj111 »

getnormality wrote: post #5

This weird trend reached an apex in a Feb 2026 OpenAI blog post [1], recently on the front page [2], which describes the process for building... something... written 100% by agents. There is no description of what the thing is, no indication of what value it provides its users. The closest it gets is "the product has been used by hundreds of users internally, including daily internal power users". But the fact that t…

Oh god why did you make me read that.

>We intentionally chose this constraint so we would build what was necessary to increase engineering velocity by orders of magnitude

What kind of wanky bs is "engineering velocity". Maybe the post was written by AI?

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#194

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

hbn wrote: post #75

> When a company says “AI made everyone more productive, so we need fewer people”, I want to see the evidence - and I don’t believe it exists today. Because they're bullshitting and using AI as an excuse to correct from their covid era over-hiring while simultaneously making themselves look good to investors by showing they're embracing the hip new technologies to become a more streamlined and cost-efficient operatio…

> while simultaneously making themselves look good to investors by showing they're embracing the hip new technologies to become a more streamlined and cost-efficient operation than ever.

This is not anything new... It just has a new name...

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#195

Post by atomicnumber3 »

satnhak wrote: post #140
sunaurus wrote: post #6

I'm constantly thinking about that Microsoft guy who posted something like "we want 1 million LoC per engineer per month", which basically read as satire to most engineers I talked to, except apparently it was not satire at all, and indeed seemed to reflect the position of many CEOs etc when it comes to LLM code generation. I do think that over the past few months, it feels like the hype around producing unmaintainab…

I once worked in a company where there was an 80% code coverage requirement. Some enterprising contractor had a script that generated a single file with its own covering test suite the size of which could be tuned to achieve 80% over the whole codebase. Mostly the code was untested.

And thanks to AI, we could generate extremely convincing reams of code whose only purpose is to be fake unit tested. Amazing. I sincerely hope I never need to use this nuclear weapon.

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#196

Post by Chu4eeno »

fridder wrote: post #192
saghm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but wonder if the causation is backwards here and the millions of lines of slop had more to do with the Github struggles than the reverse

In reality yes, and probably a complex mixture of things. Dedicated time and resources being siphoned off for Llm work, etc

I also think starting to migrate to Azure just as their traffic/usage exploded from LLM use (plus I assume merging a bunch of poorly written early-gen LLM code as early adopter dog fooding) was poor planning by Github/Microsoft.

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#197

Post by shimman »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #175
sanderjd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think engineers tend to over index on this kind of thing being "waste". You didn't waste that investment, you paid for the option to ship that feature or MVP and the research into the question of whether it made sense to ship it.

put simpler, you learned what not to build.

Shouldn't companies figure this out before wasting tens of millions in budget + working hours? All I'm reading is that corporations are not taxed enough if they are okay with such opulent waste.

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#198

Post by habinero »

benj111 wrote: post #193
getnormality wrote: post #5

This weird trend reached an apex in a Feb 2026 OpenAI blog post [1], recently on the front page [2], which describes the process for building... something... written 100% by agents. There is no description of what the thing is, no indication of what value it provides its users. The closest it gets is "the product has been used by hundreds of users internally, including daily internal power users". But the fact that t…

Oh god why did you make me read that. >We intentionally chose this constraint so we would build what was necessary to increase engineering velocity by orders of magnitude What kind of wanky bs is "engineering velocity". Maybe the post was written by AI?

It's a real term. It's a Agile metric for measuring how much a team is shipping over time.

Whether or not the whole concept is wanky bs depends on who you ask lol. It's useful if you measure it over time, not so much otherwise.

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#199

Post by habinero »

visarga wrote: post #126
lionkor wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unmaintainable even if you spend 100k per month on tokens to have LLMs pretend they are maintaining it, if they slow down and make little ACTUAL progress. Sadly real progress is impossible to measure, if all you have is an overexcited """engineer""", a credit card, and so much cash spent you could hire all the best engineers you know and still have money for a porsche.

It's not unmaintainable if most of it is tests. Just have it write tests until it becomes safe for AI.

I hate I can't tell if you're joking without checking posting history lol

Re: Lines of code got a better publicist

#200

Post by joe_the_user »

malfist wrote: post #162
prodigycorp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality distortion field is strong around anthropic. Anthropic posts tons of equally bullshit blog posts, written entirely by AI, saying absolutely nothing, to the front page and they consistently average many hundreds of upvotes.

I have to wonder if HN is astroturfed. Anthropic and OpenAI can post about a new model and it gets over to HN instantly and is full of glowing reviews of supposedly real people who supposedly have had prior access to it who supposedly think it's the best model yet.

The tech field has always been full of naive technology boosters. HN might be heavily astroturfed for all I know but I am sure there are many real people in a state of constant excitement over the progress of AI.
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