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I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

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Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#211

Post by tomrod »

Tainnor wrote: post #142
alexeiz wrote: post #55

I had a related episode at work when my coworker asked me why his seemingly trivial 10 line piece of code was misbehaving inexplicably. It turned out he had two variables `file_name` and `filename` and used one in place of another. I asked him how he ended up with such code, he said he used copilot to create it. Using code from a generative AI without understanding what it does is never a good idea.

And any decent IDE will highlight a variable that is declared but unused. We already have "artificial intelligence" in the form of IDEs, linters, compilers, etc. but some people apparently think we should just throw it all away now that we have LLMs.

No need for quotes, the best AI integrations are the ones you see as just part of the tech stack like spell check and linters.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#213

Post by RegW »

delifue wrote: post #130

Someone mentioned "hallucination-based API design" on twitter (I cannot find it now). It's designing API by LLM hallucination. If there is a common hallucination API call, just add that API. This will make the API more "friendly" and resemble common similar APIs. Considering that LLM can hallucinate in different ways unpredictably, not sure whether it will work in practice.

I suppose it would be relying on being trained on code that followed good practice. If this is true then we might suppose that this API isn't following good practice. However, a gigantic feedback loop is appearing on the horizon.

The AI of tomorrow will be trained on the output of AI today.

(Somewhere in my memory, I hear an ex-boss saying "Well that's good - isn't it?")

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#214

Post by pvillano »

paxys wrote: post #202

I can guarantee that all these users are following some "hustle university" course peddled by a Twitter influencer. Crypto and AI are the two favorite words of all these get rich quick scams.

I won't say all investors are entitled and overconfident, inspired by grifters, emboldened by survivorship bias, and motivated by greed. That would be rude

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#215

Post by b112 »

paxys wrote: post #202

I can guarantee that all these users are following some "hustle university" course peddled by a Twitter influencer. Crypto and AI are the two favorite words of all these get rich quick scams.

You can be a Google dev, and make half a million a year! For only $29.95, we'll show you how to empower yourself with the wonders of AI!

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#216

Post by datavirtue »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #114
thephyber wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may have made a good living, but his customer / employer bought low quality code with lots of tech debt. That business model only works until customers are sophisticated enough to understand tech debt. In the future, more customers will be less willing to pay the same good wages for low quality code.

> but his customer / employer bought low quality code with lots of tech debt. Sarcastic reply: Isn't that most tech? Even good (above average) developer produce lots of tech debt and sometimes low quality code.

Yeah, and the business people could not care less. I am on a team taking in millions of dollars from a Delphi Windows app from 1997. Zero tests, horribly mangled business logic embedded in UI handlers. Maintaining that app is not feasible. I'm rebuilding a modern version of it only because it is embarrassing to demo and is such a UX nightmare that our distributor made us commit to a new app.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#217

Post by b112 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #114
thephyber wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may have made a good living, but his customer / employer bought low quality code with lots of tech debt. That business model only works until customers are sophisticated enough to understand tech debt. In the future, more customers will be less willing to pay the same good wages for low quality code.

> but his customer / employer bought low quality code with lots of tech debt. Sarcastic reply: Isn't that most tech? Even good (above average) developer produce lots of tech debt and sometimes low quality code.

"Webdev" makes me think of wordpress, which is like planting 20 onions in your backyard, and comparing yourself to a farmer with acres of crops.

I can completely believe someone had no idea what they were doing when copy/pasting, and working on wordpress.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#218

Post by datavirtue »

busterarm wrote: post #49
hamandcheese wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the amount of skill a newb can quickly gain on their own. I taught myself to code, but it took a whole summer (aka free time that adults don't get) and I had access to my dad (who was a software engineer himself) to answer lots of questions.

I've been programming since I was 4 years old but with literally zero resources or assistance beyond "take books out from the library" for 20 years. It wasn't until I was about 28 until I had the chops to get into the industry (largely down to never having a need or opportunity to learn SQL -- also I mean as a developer, I had a prior career in IT) and even then it wasn't until I was 31 before I had the confidence en…

This is very similar to my story. Once I got on a dev team I was flabbergasted at the lack of breadth and depth of knowledge of my fellow devs. It was only a few older devs that had any clue.

Having gobs of time as a kid and in my twenties to experiment greatly enhanced my capabilities. Once I did start landing corporate jobs (which was exceedingly difficult) I was at or above architect level. As I gained more experience working on production systems I was promoted very quickly (created new positions for me etc).

I have had other architects declare I was the best they have ever met. Which sadly, isn't saying much.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#219

Post by mikewarot »

I'm on the other side of this when it comes to the C programming language. I've avoided it for decades, preferring Pascal, or even Visual Basic.

The single best thing to help someone in my place is clear and coherent documentation with working examples. It's how I learned to use Turbo Pascal so long ago, and generally the quickest way to get up to speed. It's also my biggest gripe with Free Pascal... their old help processing infrastructure binds them to horrible automatically generated naming of parameters as documentation, and nothing more.

Fortunately, CoPilot doesn't get impatient, and I know this, so I can just keep pounding away at things until I get something close to what I want, in spite of myself. ;-)

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