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Something Big Is Happening

shumer.dev

31–40 of 96 posts

Re: Something Big Is Happening

#31
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think we're in world where very soon, companies will be demanding their engineering departments converge to the lived experience of the people who are seeing something like the author. I think this part is very real. If you’re in this thread saying “I don’t get it” you are in danger much faster than your coworker who is using it every day and succeeding at getting around AI’s quirks to be productive.

Be careful here. I have more coworkers contributing slop and causing production issues than 10x’ing themselves. The real danger is if management sees this as acceptable. If so best of luck to everyone.

If a company lets faulty code get to production, that's an issue no matter how it is produced. Agentic coding can produce code at much higher volumes, but I think we're still in the early days of figuring out how to scale quality and the other nonfunctional requirements. (I do believe that we're literally talking about days, though, when it comes to some facets of some of these problems.)

But there's nothing inherent about agentic coding to lead to slop outcomes. If you're steering it as a human, you can tweak the output, by hand or agentically, until it matches your expectations. It's not currently a silver bullet.

That said, my experience is that the compressing of the research, initial draft process, and revision--all which used to be the bulk of my job--is radical.

Re: Something Big Is Happening

#33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think we're in world where very soon, companies will be demanding their engineering departments converge to the lived experience of the people who are seeing something like the author. I think this part is very real. If you’re in this thread saying “I don’t get it” you are in danger much faster than your coworker who is using it every day and succeeding at getting around AI’s quirks to be productive.

Be careful here. I have more coworkers contributing slop and causing production issues than 10x’ing themselves. The real danger is if management sees this as acceptable. If so best of luck to everyone.

> Be careful here. I have more coworkers contributing slop and causing production issues than 10x’ing themselves.

Sure, many such cases. We'll all have work for a while, if only so that management has someone to yell at when things break in prod. And break they will -- the technology is not perfected and many are now moving faster than they can actually vet the results. There is obvious risk here.

But the curve we're on is also obvious now. I'm seeing massive improvements in reliability with every model drop. And the model drops are happening faster now. There is less of an excuse than ever for not using the tools to improve your productivity.

I think the near future is going to be something like a high-speed drag race. Going slow isn't an option. Everyone will have to go fast. Many will crash. Some won't and they will win.

Re: Something Big Is Happening

#34
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful here. I have more coworkers contributing slop and causing production issues than 10x’ing themselves. The real danger is if management sees this as acceptable. If so best of luck to everyone.

> Be careful here. I have more coworkers contributing slop and causing production issues than 10x’ing themselves. Sure, many such cases. We'll all have work for a while, if only so that management has someone to yell at when things break in prod. And break they will -- the technology is not perfected and many are now moving faster than they can actually vet the results. There is obvious risk here. But the curve we're…

> I think the near future is going to be something like a high-speed drag race. Going slow isn't an option. Everyone will have to go fast. Many will crash. Some won't and they will win.

I think this is right. This is what we as engineers have to wrap our minds around. This is the game we're in now, like it or not.

> Many will crash.

Aside from alignment, and some of these bigger picture concerns, prompt injection looms large. It's an astoundingly large, possibly unsolvable vector for all sorts of mayhem. But many people are making the judgment that there's too much to be gained before the shocks hit them. So far, they're right.

Re: Something Big Is Happening

#35

I am not having the exact same experience as the author--Opus 4.6 and Codex 5.3 seem more incremental to me than what he is describing--but if we're on an exponential curve, the difference is a rounding error. 4 months ago, I tried to build an application mostly vibe-coded. I got impressively far for what I thought was possible, but it bogged down. This past weekend, my friend had OpenClaw build an application of sim…

> But I think we're in world where very soon, companies will be demanding their engineering departments converge to the lived experience of the people who are seeing something like the author. I think this part is very real. If you’re in this thread saying “I don’t get it” you are in danger much faster than your coworker who is using it every day and succeeding at getting around AI’s quirks to be productive.

We’ve got repos full of 90% complete vibe code.

They’re all 90% there.

The thing is the last 10% is 90% of the effort. The last 1% is 99% of the effort.

For those of us who can consistently finish projects the future is bright.

The sheer amount of vibe code is simply going to overwhelm us (see current state of open source)

Re: Something Big Is Happening

#37

This is a solid assessment of whats here and what is in front of us. Broad brush stroke dismissals aside, we are here. Evolve or Perish. AI is like unchecked fire, but make no mistake fire is very powerful once it was harnessed. AI leans more supplemental vs incremental than prior major tech shifts and that's worth noting. It will be the same for other sectors and verticals over time. The markets view software eats t…

yep, and for the finances to make sense, these AIs need to make a significant impact on employment rolls, ie., they need to replace humans. Personally I think its the wrong tech at the wrong time, but I don't think me and this timeline is a very good match so ymmv

Re: Something Big Is Happening

#40
I thought the article was going to delve into this.

"The future is being shaped by a remarkably small number of people".

That is a lot of power in the hands of a few people. Probably nothing to worry about. Power is hardly ever abused...

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