I have a business fixing broken code/systems (especially if it is stressful and last minute); if you are tired/annoyed of something in the software market, just up your fees. For us not much changed; a lot of badly (throw the spec over the wall) outsourced software was fairly bad since forever; AI generated code is similar. I guess this will grow even faster though, as normally solid developers might take on a lot more work and get sloppy with AI.
I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
31–40 of 345 posts
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#32This seems like a support issue, not an AI issue. AI is how the code was written, but the issue would be the same if it was amateurs writing bad code. If all you want to do is support your API, a support article outlining the issues you see over and over would be something to point your customers to. Warrant your API against errors, but point out that anything more is billable work. If you're not interested, partner…
It's a support issue in a sense, but in many contexts people want to offer a better support experience than "anything more is billable work". A reputation for being helpful and customer-friendly is valuable, especially in a business where you're selling to other programmers, and you can't buy that reputation after the fact with money from support contracts.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#33Could you make a model from your API/docs and let them plug that into their AI stuff? That would be funny.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#34Hilariously, the target market for the author's API seems to be the same as the top post on HN today[0]: "traders". I think amateur "trading" attracts a specific brand of idiot that is high/left on the Dunning Kruger curve. While taking money from idiots is a viable (even admirable) business strategy, you may want to fully automate customer service to retain your sanity. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4130…
It's people who generally don't have any other skills and reject all evidence for Efficient Market Hypothesis. They legitimately think what they're doing is not gambling. No amount of empirical evidence can convince them they have no risk-adjusted alpha
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#35Yeah so every tech revolution does this right. ATMs were meant to kill banking jobs but ah theres more jobs in banking than ever. The Cloud was meant to automate away tech people, but all it did was create new tech jobs. A lot of which is cleaning up after idiots who think they can outsource everything to the cloud and get burned. LLMs are no different. The "Ideas Man" can now get from 0 to 30% without approaching a…
I seriously hope those rehires are coming back with a refined rate as well.
A healthy dickhead tax on the way back in would be smart.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#36This seems like a support issue, not an AI issue. AI is how the code was written, but the issue would be the same if it was amateurs writing bad code. If all you want to do is support your API, a support article outlining the issues you see over and over would be something to point your customers to. Warrant your API against errors, but point out that anything more is billable work. If you're not interested, partner…
This post seems to be saying that AI opened up a new avenue for people to demand free work.
If someone asked "I wrote some rough designs and interfaces, can you write me an app for free?" The author could easily detect it as a request for free work. But because the first part is hidden behind some ChatGPT generated code and the second part is disguised as a request for help, the author would be tricked into doing this free work, until they detected this pattern and write a blog post about it.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#37Earlier 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 read a "Teach yourself $language in 10 days" book in a weekend, and was banging code on Monday to create the first v0.1 in a week. Of course the code was absolutely horrendous, but it worked. I still have a copy of that old database that was used, and over the years, I have turned to it as I've learned new things and have even rewritten the UI a couple of times. It has helped me stay up to date with new trends as i…
But you're building on the context of knowing a different language.
Picking up the second, fifth, or nth language is easy, as long as it isn't the first one.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#38If you are building an API and have decent docs, it's a totally ok trade off to say "i'll lose some customers this way, but I'm not providing support". And just be upfront about it. Some stores have a no return policy with no exceptions. They lose some customers, it's ok.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#39Why don't you use AI to provide support? I'm serious actually. This sounds like something AI can do really well.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#40Why don't you use AI to provide support? I'm serious actually. This sounds like something AI can do really well.
Spoken like someone whose never been on the receiving end of any such ‘support’.