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We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

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Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#241

Post by phil21 »

blanched wrote: post #134
phil21 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what do you / your team do? This is so funny to me, because I know it's asked in earnest but seems so obvious to me: They get actual work done. Programming isn't work. That's just a means to an end. A tool to get the actual job done. At least in most orgs. Obviously there are exceptions - but the vast economy is not a bunch of software companies. It's companies doing things to build a physical product, and softw…

I think programming is work, but I get your point :). And yes, of course - I'm mostly just curious how peoples roles at various companies are evolving as they hand off more and more to AI.

Fair, work was the wrong word to use.

I meant - create useful work product. For most companies software is a means to an end. The programmer writing code isn’t useful, it’s the end result. A lot of small to midsize companies employ a couple software guys out of necessity, and the results are usually middling at best. It’s a problem IT in general has really failed to solve very well.

I say this as someone who has picked up and put down “programming” as I needed it. It’s never been something I’ve gotten any satisfaction out of by doing, but I get huge satisfaction out of the resulting product or workflow automation or whatnot.

For my uses, if I could replace my programming and IT time with a robot I would - since me being in that role just slows down delivery to the end user. One of my first hires as a small startup was a programmer - specifically because I knew I rather sucked at it and what a pro could get done in a day took me a week. This is why AI for the low value/less complicated automation tasks is extremely compelling to me.

I’d immediately have 20 other things to work on to soak up the time savings!

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#242

Post by eudamoniac »

stackghost wrote: post #174
icase wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

writing code is the actual fun part of the job though. it’s a shame we automated that instead of the boring system design shit.

>writing code is the actual fun part of the job though. You mean typing the actual code into the editor is the fun part for you? For me, the fun part has always been "cause computer to do novel things", and actually typing/compiling/debugging the code is just a speed bump on the way to something fun.

It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle. The fun part is the doing. I don't really care what the final picture is, and once it's assembled the fun is over.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#243

Post by icase »

stackghost wrote: post #174
icase wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

writing code is the actual fun part of the job though. it’s a shame we automated that instead of the boring system design shit.

>writing code is the actual fun part of the job though. You mean typing the actual code into the editor is the fun part for you? For me, the fun part has always been "cause computer to do novel things", and actually typing/compiling/debugging the code is just a speed bump on the way to something fun.

i mean solving a problem with code that came from my own brain.

the act of typing is trivial and second nature, like breathing. but going e2e from brain to keyboard to editor to working product..that’s the thrill. and it’s dead.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#244

Post by QuantumGood »

socratic_weeb wrote: post #159
thraway3837 wrote: post #39

We replaced a 120,000 USD/year low-code/no-code platform that was running a lot of workflows. And we have another platform that is also similar that we are on track to replace by EOY. Both have been replaced by "vibe" coding. It works well. Everyone's happy. People are having fun with it. We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback. JIRA tickets get created, and we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to…

This industry's complete outsourcing of its core business value on a third party proprietary subscription based tool, Claude, made by an unprofitable company, Anthropic, is very concerning. You are all lunatics, sorry.

You seem to be referencing as core business value a combination of (1) the ability to maintain a (2) business criitical resource, but stating it as if catastrophizing from a hasty generalization. Can you clarify?

It's really not that simple. A lot of what's involved is fungible. Of course, the answer to "Was the greatest intelligence harnessed to make the greatest decision?" Is always no.

AIs can be swapped for one another, run locally, and implemented in ways that are less prone to loss of function. Loss of anyone who understands the working code is a type of risk, but that kind of issue tends to bounce between losing skill from lack of foresight due to economic savings, and overhiring / bringing back lost employees as consultants.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#246

Post by olelele »

dawnerd wrote: post #109
sunnybeetroot wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. It’s more a kin to giving an electric drill to a tradesman vs a screw driver. The tradesman will use the electric drill effectively.

People keep making this analogy not understanding that trades folks will use the right tool for the job, not just whatever is newer / more advanced. Air nailers exist but hammers are still used. Drills can screw in screws but screwdrivers are still used. You wouldn’t use an electric drill for a lot of jobs. People will also try to equate it to an electric saw vs hand saw, but again time and place for both.

In my grandmas cottage I found an old handmade mechanical screwdriver that operates from manual pressure. That’s what got replaced by today’s power tools.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#247

Post by martin1975 »

alightsoul wrote: post #144
martin1975 wrote: post #35

I guess it was only a matter of time before this niche of business developed. AI is an imprecise "programming" language, full of ambiguity (English) trying to produce precise relationships between different concepts. It certainly works great on small scale, building block type of things, but the more a project grows in complexity, components, interfacing with other heterogenous systems in other languages or APIs, und…

I can't agree with saying ai is failing, I mean if you work at a company with a lot of software engineers it can be true, but from what I see it's mostly non technical companies that adopt vibe coding to address technical problems. It's just another form of outsourcing

i use it, but i could re-create everything the AI produced, it just takes me longer (I'm a dev). And yeah, that latter part of your sentence is what freaks me out - that someone thinks they can start thinking like a dev because they have an AI bot available to them. You know, "Become a super dev in 21 days" kind of book... Then you wonder why s*t breaks left and right.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#248

Post by martin1975 »

llm_nerd wrote: post #72
xmprt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had tremendous productivity using AI on some enormous and extremely complex projects, courtesy of modularization, separation of concerns, explicit APIs, and so on. The problem I've had with AI systems is that they eventually realize it's possible to solve a problem by linking together two separate systems in subtle ways that result in spaghettification of good code. It takes active effort to get them to follow…

> It takes active effort to get them to follow strict separation of concerns and modularization 100% agreed. AI tools are a multiplier for experienced, conscientious developers who pay attention. Bad developers can still make bad code with any tool, and AI allows them to make more bad code quicker.

nailed it.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#249

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

Cyberdog wrote: post #34
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NGL I'd argue there's a certain appeal to "use AI to prototype a feature as fast as possible and focus your engineer hours on building a comprehensive testing and fuzzing plan" followed by a "remove and review everything that can be cut without breaking the tests" cleanup pass.

The “cleanup pass” never happens, though. It’ll just be new feature on top of new feature until it’s too large to refactor.

That's a leadership failure not a technical failure. If you can't dig your heels in and force time to tidy up technical debt then you need to find someone who can and let them take over as PM.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#250

Post by fuzzythinker »

zie1ony wrote: post #216
quuxplusone wrote: post #6

"Two weeks of warranty" jumped out at me. That's like "you have two weeks to find the thing we broke, or else we aren't responsible for it." In my experience, a good bug can hide for months more than two weeks! My codebases are definitely not in the target demographic for this service, though, and maybe if I were in the target group (bunch of LLM slop, trying to dig out of the hole, presumably no shipping product or…

This is a fair point. But these days bugs are not so scary anymore, so a client can vibecode a fix faster then getting me to fix it. Of course if Opus can't figure it out, I would always try to help. I have never left a client alone, warranty or not. This is just how I was raised.

How do you tell if the bug was your responsibility vs. something they changed after?
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