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Have a Coherent AI Policy

brianmeeker.me

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Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#21

Post by jwilliams »

> It’s Still Your Code... AI maximalists will read this section and scoff. They’re already vibe coding everything and have little to no idea what the generated code looks like.

This frames the argument like a dichotomy. And to be honest, using the Social Media "vibe-coding" as a strawman risks anchoring against something that's a mirage.

There are plenty of good engineers getting good results whilst accepting code-ownership as a continuum.

> If Claude goes down tomorrow, can you still do your job?

This is a valid counterpoint, but doing software is already a tricky set of dependencies. The answer here isn't automatically "you need to be able to do everything". It could simply be also use Codex.

I think the overall point is well made, I just don't agree with the absolute framing. There are things you can hand over AI safely. Even if you start small and increment it'll have a decent impact.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#22

Post by daishi55 »

ergonaught wrote: post #7
mikestorrent wrote: post #4

> You must understand what your AI generated code does Absolutely yes. > You must be able to do your job if your AI tooling disappears Absolutely not. Look, I'm an alright programmer. Not good, far from great. Interpreted languages work for me; add all that strong typing and compilation and it starts to go beyond what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, pre-AI, I have shipped many very functional, production-grade applic…

If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.

How is this different from saying “if you can’t do the job without the compiler, you can’t do the job”?

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#23

Post by jwilliams »

djoldman wrote: post #15

Is anyone actually at a company that is purposely trying to use a ton of tokens? It gets expensive really fast.

I've personally had people talk about token leaderboards at their work. Amazon and Meta did have ones, but I'd take with a decent grain of salt.

We all know it's such an insanely gameable metric you'd be insane to actually use it...

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#24

Post by djoldman »

jwilliams wrote: post #23
djoldman wrote: post #15

Is anyone actually at a company that is purposely trying to use a ton of tokens? It gets expensive really fast.

I've personally had people talk about token leaderboards at their work. Amazon and Meta did have ones, but I'd take with a decent grain of salt. We all know it's such an insanely gameable metric you'd be insane to actually use it...

I came across a comedy clip where the employees are fighting over how many billion tokens they were using and assumed it was a joke.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#25

Post by applfanboysbgon »

potsandpans wrote: post #9
sublinear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only a fool would pretend he can do everything the same without it now Unless you're working in a coding sweatshop, I don't see why you need AI to do what people have been doing for decades just fine without breaking a sweat. What are you working on?

> Unless you're working in a coding sweatshop You are obviously unaware of what the silicon valley companies are asking for and commiting to.

The same shit they've always been asking for, judging by what OpenAI and Anthropic are pumping out surrounding their models: bloated, buggy Electron apps that consume gigabytes of memory to display fucking <1kb of text. We are not witnessing better software, even from the people who have unlimited capital and unlimited access to frontier models and are true believers in its potential to replace engineers.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#26

Post by rsoto2 »

rsoto2 wrote: post #18
mikestorrent wrote: post #4

> You must understand what your AI generated code does Absolutely yes. > You must be able to do your job if your AI tooling disappears Absolutely not. Look, I'm an alright programmer. Not good, far from great. Interpreted languages work for me; add all that strong typing and compilation and it starts to go beyond what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, pre-AI, I have shipped many very functional, production-grade applic…

I can do everything the same without it, because I'm still not using it. Why would I want to be a guinea pig for the world's richest companies and also atrophy my brain.

uh oh you guys didn't realize you were guinea pigs for products that can permanently alter your mental health?

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#27

Post by 16bitvoid »

drodgers wrote: post #11
ergonaught wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.

'If you can't build a TODO list app using only punchcards, then you can't do your job...' Obviously our ambitions expand due to better tools. I now commit to and deliver much more work than before LLMs, and — before then — ditto for frontend frameworks, generation 4 languages etc. There are projects I now start without thinking twice that I never would have considered a few years ago. That's what productivity looks l…

It makes you less valuable and your job less secure because as LLMs improve, the level of knowledge/skill required goes down, thus putting more people at the level of "good enough", which is generally what companies optimize for over time with regards to hiring (least amount for good enough).

> There are projects I now start without thinking twice that I never would have considered a few years ago.

I'm sick of seeing this argument because it's not as persuasive as you think. If you were incapable of doing it before, why would I ever trust that you could properly evaluate the result? Even if I did, it's still like saying, "I never would've been able to do this project without a subordinate that knew how to do it, now look at me!" Okay? So why would I choose you when it sounds like I could pick anyone with basic programming knowledge to manage the subordinate since I clearly don't need someone with the know-how to do the thing, just someone capable of wrangling a coding agent? Might as well get the cheapest college CS graduate I can find.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#28

Post by Ferret7446 »

sublinear wrote: post #20
SeanAnderson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your competition's behavior necessarily affects you unless your company has an unassailable moat. If other companies are able to tolerate larger amounts of tech debt while shipping new features faster then you'll be out of a job at some point when your company loses market share. It's fine if you disagree with the idea that AI lets established companies ship faster. I'm not here to argue that. But I think it's pretty…

> unless your company has an unassailable moat Is not working in SV enough of a moat? > If other companies are able to tolerate larger amounts of tech debt while shipping new features faster then you'll be out of a job at some point when your company loses market share. I'm saying that B2B services are very common outside of SV and more focused on stability, compliance, long-term maintenance, and the operational know…

Economics are economics. If your company is inefficient by not using AI, then it must make up for it and sacrifice some other economic advantage it has over its competitors to break even. If the loss of efficiency is low enough for your particular business, then perhaps you do not care and are content with sacrificing N% of your economic advantage over your competitors.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#29

Post by bigstrat2003 »

daishi55 wrote: post #22
ergonaught wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.

How is this different from saying “if you can’t do the job without the compiler, you can’t do the job”?

For one thing, compilers actually work and enable you to do useful things.

Re: Have a Coherent AI Policy

#30

Post by bigstrat2003 »

mikestorrent wrote: post #4

> You must understand what your AI generated code does Absolutely yes. > You must be able to do your job if your AI tooling disappears Absolutely not. Look, I'm an alright programmer. Not good, far from great. Interpreted languages work for me; add all that strong typing and compilation and it starts to go beyond what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, pre-AI, I have shipped many very functional, production-grade applic…

I agree with other posters. You can't actually do the job if you can't do it without a half baked AI doing it for you.
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