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The copilot delusion

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Re: The copilot delusion

#201

Post by Glyptodon »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #19

As a preface, I think lots of people will not like this take. A lot of people are going to have to come to the realization that has already been mentioned before but many find it hard to grasp. Your boss, stakeholders, and especially non-technical people literally give 0 fucks about "quality code" as long as it does what they want it to do. They do not care about tests insofar as if it works it works. Many have no cl…

In my experience this isn't the case - it gets many details subtly wrong. Unless someone technical can nanny it you get weird fixes. For example, I recently had AI decide to remove a database column because it ran into an execution bug related to the column. Without a human in the loop I have no clue what the end game to that would have been. Similarly, it's getting better, but there've been times where it basically writes security vulnerabilities. Stakeholders in management should be aware of the risk, but seem oblivious to it. Maybe because there's little track record of anyone ever being held accountable for massive screw-ups, but at some point letting AI loose will lead to some kind of major disaster and there'll be some reevaluation.

Re: The copilot delusion

#202

Post by Glyptodon »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #54
lukan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost all my snobism about that years ago and I do just follow the paradigm, "does it work". But for some reasons, even with AI I ain't on another level. And those reasons are, it all collapses very quickly once the complexity reaches an medium amount. And if I want to rely on things and debug them - I cannot just have a pile of generated garbage, that works as long as the sun is shining. For isolated tasks it works…

Most replies here make the claim that all AI generated code is "garbage". And I can't help but think most of the people who say that do not actually use it in their day to day with the most recent models and actually give it good instructions/requirements. No, it is not always perfect. Yes you will have to manually edit some of the code it generates. But yes it can and will generate good code if you know how to use i…

I find it very hit or miss, but I definitely use it. I just don't think it's making vastly more productive yet, maybe 30%. I do think it will get good enough that my job may turn into 80% writing tickets or refining tickets for AI "engineers" and 20% fixing/debugging issues with AI output. But not there yet, and still don't think it will be trustworthy enough to let loose without someone technical in the loop doing that review/fixing. But that might be enough to make one generalist CRUD engineer into the equivalent of a team of 4 or 5 in a couple years.

I kind of see it replacing outsourcing, not mid level + engineers so far. But expect to lead to making mid level + about as productive as a small team.

Re: The copilot delusion

#203

Post by malfist »

abletonlive wrote: post #187
queenkjuul wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly millions of nobodies buying a product from a tech company is basically proof it's nonsense, in my limited mind. Which one have they bought in droves that actually had a massive impact on you as a developer?

copilot and openai have changed my entire development work process. if it hasn't for you then you are being left behind. it's that simple. i've made two QA roles obsolete on my team already...there's more to come

QA has been obsolete for years. I haven't worked with one for over a decade

Re: The copilot delusion

#204

Post by petemir »

a0123 wrote: post #186
throwaway314155 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind your rebuttal of the article, but to suggest that this particular article is AI generated is foolish. The style the author presents is vivid, uses powerful imagery and metaphor and finally, at times, is genuinely funny. More qualitatively, the author incorporates a unique identity that persists throughout the entirety of a long form essay. All of that is still difficult to get an LLM to do. This isn't AI…

> The style the author presents is vivid, uses powerful imagery and metaphor and finally, at times, is genuinely funny. More qualitatively, the author incorporates a unique identity that persists throughout the entirety of a long form essay. This is incredible you would say that because you'll never guess what it reads like.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to have thought that...

Re: The copilot delusion

#205

Post by monero-xmr »

sanderjd wrote: post #188
monero-xmr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you run a trucking company, or a retail business, or a food company, etc. I believe you can understand to a fairly detailed level the logistics and “secret sauce” involved that makes the business tick, even if you are not the core employees operating with the skills and expertise. But if you are a non-technical CEO and your core business is, say, enterprise SaaS software, you don’t fundamentally understand what th…

> But if you are a non-technical CEO and your core business is, say, enterprise SaaS software, you don’t fundamentally understand what the heck is going on Why the hell not? It's not that hard! I think this sounds like laziness, honestly. It is no harder to understand how your enterprise SaaS software works than it is to understand what makes your retail business or trucking company tick. If you're running a company…

Every CEO I have worked for - and I am an executive - doesn’t know shit about software engineering. I mean I’m paid a lot of money for that. I just explain things in metaphors, but the non-tech execs are clueless

Re: The copilot delusion

#206

Post by _rutinerad »

sgarland wrote: post #165
queenkjuul wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally, mission critical low level code isn't the kind of software i want to write anyway. I don't find AI tools super useful for most of the same reasons as the author, but i do kind of get tired of the idea that if you're not writing systems in C you're not really programming. I like writing front end code. I'm probably never going to have a job where i need or would even want to write a low level graphics l…

> I like writing front end code. I'm probably never going to have a job where i need or would even want to write a low level graphics library from scratch. Fine, I'm not red-eyed 3am hacker brained, but I'm passionate and good at what i do. Keep that spirit! All I want from coworkers is genuine interest and curiosity. Not everyone is going to find investigating Linux’s networking stack interesting, just as not everyo…

I think it’s a fine label. I have skill and interest in all of those areas. Some things requires specialists, most jobs out there don’t.

Re: The copilot delusion

#207

Post by Fuhrmanator »

padolsey wrote: post #36

> if you want to sculpt the kind of software that gets embedded in pacemakers and missile guidance systems and M1 tanks—you better throw that bot out the airlock and learn. But the bulk of us aren't doing that... We're making CRUD apps for endless incoming streams of near identical user needs, just with slightly different integrations, schemas, and lipstick. Let's be honest. For most software there is nothing new und…

I sometimes imagine, even before LLMs, how much human-written code still matters, like the DNA that has survived evolution. It's got to be a super low percentage.

The trend with Autocomplete Industrialization (AI) is just speeding up the creation of shanty towns of code, as opposed to architecturally robust foundations. The survivability of code is dropping because of the Copilotz. But perhaps this rapidity of creating crude solutions will increase the chances of something truly significant?

p.p.s there are too many times "it's" should be "its" in that blog post to have been AI-generated. That's a different kind of irony IMO, especially since that's just tricky English syntax (the thing AI is supposed to be good at). Maybe the author used AI to come up with the snarky metaphors. I asked ChatGPT for a sarcastic meaning for AI that starts with Autocomplete :)

Re: The copilot delusion

#209

Post by dorkitude »

My favorite thing about this article is that it was released the exact same day as Claude 4 Opus.

If it's satire, it's brilliant: because most of the comments I see (here and elsewhere) are clearly written by people who tried agentic coding before Opus 4, and haven't given it a fair shake over the ensuing five days.

IMO the most important engineering skill in 2025 isn't low-level programming, or the craft of debugging, or even having a firm grasp of system architecture. Believe it or not, I truly believe the vibe-first juniors will learn that stuff too, over the course of their careers, just as we did: through necessity (As an aside: if you don't think they'll encounter such necessity, then it's inherently not one any more than the countless other once-honored, fastidious hallmarks of craft that have since been rendered obsolete. And if you don't think they'll learn even upon encountering a true necessity, then you underestimate them.)

No, the most important engineering skill in 2025 is non-attachment: constantly update your priors, and hold your opinions very loosely. Because those opinions could be fully wrong before the essay even gets shared.

Re: The copilot delusion

#210

Post by yerushalayim »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #55
padolsey wrote: post #36

> if you want to sculpt the kind of software that gets embedded in pacemakers and missile guidance systems and M1 tanks—you better throw that bot out the airlock and learn. But the bulk of us aren't doing that... We're making CRUD apps for endless incoming streams of near identical user needs, just with slightly different integrations, schemas, and lipstick. Let's be honest. For most software there is nothing new und…

I don't mind your rebuttal of the article, but to suggest that this particular article is AI generated is foolish. The style the author presents is vivid, uses powerful imagery and metaphor and finally, at times, is genuinely funny. More qualitatively, the author incorporates a unique identity that persists throughout the entirety of a long form essay. All of that is still difficult to get an LLM to do. This isn't AI…

This rebuttal of the rebuttal does feel earily AI. Perhaps an injection of cynicism?
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