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AI code and software craft

alexwennerberg.com

31–40 of 157 posts

Re: AI code and software craft

#31

> But there are serious limits. [Your coding agent] will lie to you, they don't really understand things, and they often generate bad code. I think that really high quality code can be created via coding agents. Not in one prompt, but instead an orchestration of planning, implementing, validating, and reviewing. Its still engineering work. The code still matters. Its just a different tool to write the code. I'd compa…

>I think that really high quality code can be created via coding agents. Not in one prompt, but instead an orchestration of planning, implementing, validating, and reviewing.

Do you have any advice to share (or resources)? Have you experienced it yourself?

Re: AI code and software craft

#32
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think it's the same at all. when weaving was displaced, yes some people were pissed about losing their livelihood, but the quality of the cloth didn't diminish. when CNC came for machining, no one really bitched, because the computers were just removing the time consuming effort of moving screws by hand. when computers write code, or screenplays, the quality right now is objectively much worse. that might chan…

The result being worse generally doesn't stop humans from being displaced. Clothes made today are notably worse than the handmade ones.

Is clothes today really worse?

We have clothes and materials like gortex now that blocks rain and snow no handmade jacket could ever hope to perform at the same level to be lightweight AND dry.

Re: AI code and software craft

#34
post #8
post #3

This argument is basically just the 1800s Luddite vs Industrialist argument recast for a new age. Group A thinks quality is about human agency, and that machines are being used to bypass the apprenticeship system and produce inferior goods. Group B thinks efficiency is the highest priority, and craft is just vanity. Of course as we know we went a third way, and human roles just shifted. I think one promising shift di…

It has nothing to do with luddites. Software quality about speed of delivery and lack of bugs. If you're fine with software which gets a little bit harder to work on every time you make a change and which might blow up in unexpected ways, AI is totally fine. Ive yet to meet many AI champions who are explicit about their desire to make that trade off though. Even the ones who downplay software quality arent super happ…

> If you're fine with software which gets a little bit harder to work on every time you make a change and which might blow up in unexpected ways,

human written code is similarly fine. Save for very few human individuals.

Re: AI code and software craft

#35
On a side track, I wish to express my fears regarding AI

Unfortunately for the general populace, most technological improvements in information technology, for the past 5 decades, has lead to loss of political control and lessened their leverage for political change.

With AI, this change is going to be accelerated a 100 times.

With current AI slop, and more importantly, almost indistinguishable from reality, AI based content, the populace is going slowly learning to reject what they see and what they hear from mass media.

AI has muddied the pool so much, that every fish, us, cannot see the whole pool. What this will lead to, is for political figures and bad actors to, much more easily almost with no effort at all, create isolation among people.

No event will create a mass uprising, because no event can be believed by a common mass. It will be easy to generate an alternative reality using the same AI.

Now, the political class and the billionaire class, are free to act with impunity, because the last check on their power, the power of mass media to form public opinion, to inspire the masses to demand change or accountability, has eroded to the point of no return. (They have already captured the institutions of public power)

I fear for the future of humanity.

Edit : There are already troubling signs from the billionaire class regarding this. There is a narrative to "ensure guardrails" for AI, sort of giving the populace the idea that once that is done, AI is acceptable. This is like saying, "better have a sleeve on the knife, so that no one can cut with it, but use it as a prop in a movie"

They are creating this narrative that AI is inevitable.

They are fear mongering that AI is going to take jobs, which it will, but it also goads the capable ones to get on to the bandwagon and advance AI further.

Re: AI code and software craft

#36

The AI code takeover will not free engineers up to do craftsmanship. It will annihilate the last vestiges of craftsmanship forever.

New technology does not eliminate old technology or craftsmanship. It just shifts who uses it and what for.

- Power tools didn't annihilate the craftsmanship of hand-tool woodworking. Fine woodworkers are still around and making money using hand tools, as well as hobbyists. But contractors universally switched to power tools because they help them make more money with less labor/cost/time.

- A friend of mine still knits on a loom because she likes using a loom. Some people knit by hand because they like that better. Neither of them stopped just because of large automated looms.

- Blacksmiths still exist and make amazing metal crafts. That doesn't mean there isn't a huge market for machine cast or forged metal parts.

In the future there'll just be the "IDE people" and the "Agent Prompt people", both plugging away at whatever they do.

Re: AI code and software craft

#37
I feel like one of the things that's not said enough, and which I think is conflating the effectiveness of AI in the eyes of actual software engineers, is that, for the most part, most code produced IS lousy. The craft of programming has been watered down so much in favor of results, and so much code is disposable or write-and-use once, that quality just became less relevant.

I remember when I first started out programming 20 years ago, there was time to craft good quality code. Then there were more and more pushes to get more code out faster, and no one really cared about the quality. Bugs became part of the cost of doing business. I think GenAI for code fits well in the more recent paradigm, and comparing it with hand-crafted code of yore is a bit disingenuous, as appealing as it may be, because most code hasn't been that good for a long time.

I am sad to admit it, but AI is just fitting in where poor coding practices have already existed, and flourishing in that local maxima.

Re: AI code and software craft

#38
post #3

This argument is basically just the 1800s Luddite vs Industrialist argument recast for a new age. Group A thinks quality is about human agency, and that machines are being used to bypass the apprenticeship system and produce inferior goods. Group B thinks efficiency is the highest priority, and craft is just vanity. Of course as we know we went a third way, and human roles just shifted. I think one promising shift di…

> I think one promising shift direction is humans do NOT like to talk to bots, especially not for anything important. It's biological.

Let me tell you why I like shopping from amazon instead of going to a super market...

But also the older I get I keep wanting to visit the store in person. It's not to see the other human, I just want to hold the thing I want to buy and need it immediately instead of waiting. I feel like there isn't enough time anymore.

Re: AI code and software craft

#39

> But there are serious limits. [Your coding agent] will lie to you, they don't really understand things, and they often generate bad code. I think that really high quality code can be created via coding agents. Not in one prompt, but instead an orchestration of planning, implementing, validating, and reviewing. Its still engineering work. The code still matters. Its just a different tool to write the code. I'd compa…

> Not in one prompt, but instead an orchestration of planning, implementing, validating, and reviewing

Lots of times I could just write it myself and be done with it

Re: AI code and software craft

#40
post #2

Enterprise software tends to particularly bad because it's being sold to managers who won't use it themselves. Consumer software tends to be more user-friendly (or it won't sell), but popular software isn't always what you want. When writing software for yourself, there is a bias towards implementing just the features you want and never mind the rest. Sometimes the result can be pretty sloppy, but it works. However,…

Enterprise software is also particularly bad because many of the customers get to demand that things work the way they want. Leading to a million weird functions, toggles, configurability because some manager in charge of making a big purchase demanded that first it must do X, many of these features left with not even a single user after the original requester leaves. While consumer software the individual consumers just get what they are given, and a single product manager/team decide what's best.
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