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Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

mikelovesrobots.substack.com

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Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#361

Post by camdenreslink »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #340
rsynnott wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If (a) companies lay too many people off because the magic robots will make engineers unnecessary and (b) the pipeline collapses, because being a software engineer is an undesirable career because it is being replaced by robots and (c) it emerges that the robots are kinda bullshit, then there's going to be one hell of a shortage. When I started a CS degree in 2003, we were still kinda in the "dot com crash has happen…

I believe we are vastly underestimating the number of programmers needed, as some companies reap unusually high rewards from hiring programmers. Companies like Google can pay huge sums of money to programmers because they make even higher sums of money from the programmer's work. This means that they inflate programmer salaries, which makes it impossible for most companies that could benefit from software development…

If a company could benefit from software developers but can’t afford them, then they can purchase Saas offerings written by companies that can afford developers. I don’t think we’ve run out of opportunities to improve the business world with software quite yet.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#362

Post by nemomarx »

safety1st wrote: post #331
wolvesechoes wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The original premise of the site was for startup founders and hackers to discuss startup founder and hacker things. Good that people finally open their eyes. > But, also I am not one of them, I am a capitalist, I own a small business And that's a false-consciousness at its finest. You are closer to these workers than to those that really own capital.

Not really. I grew up below the poverty line. Everyone I knew was working class. Some of these people are still very dear to me. However, I did something which virtually none of them did. I wanted to get out. So I identified a skillset that the world desperately wanted, and I spent thousands of hours learning how to build and sell with that skillset. Frequently I was criticized or ridiculed or simply ignored, but it…

Ironically, this is actually pretty close to what Marx writes in capital. Small owner operated businesses for artisans are a model he talks about, and owning your own tools and means of creating value and so on.

The state owning things on your behalf is not very true to the spirit of it at all, I would say.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#363

Post by larve »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #334
sarchertech wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I generate between 10-100k lines of code per day these days. That’s absolute nonsense.

He said "generate". This is trivial to do. And probably this is what Amodei meant when he said 90% of code would be AI by now. It doesn't meant that generated code is actually useful and gets checked in.

Trivial is a pretty big word in this context. Expanding an idea into some sort of code is indeed a matter of waiting. The idea, the prompt, the design of the overall workflow to leverage the capabilities of llms/agents in a professional/long-lived codebase context is far from trivial, imo.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#364

Post by philipwhiuk »

dash2 wrote: post #321
searls wrote: post #73

The answer is that we're making it right now. AI didn't speed me up at all until agents got good enough, which was April/May of this year. Just today I built a shovelware CLI that exports iMessage archives into a standalone website export. Would have taken me weeks. I'll probably have it out as a homebrew formula in a day or two. I'm working on an iOS app as well that's MUCH further along than it would be if I hand-r…

Yeah, I released a new version of a little open source project based almost entirely on vibe-coding with Claude/Codex. It was more fun than bashing out my own code, and despite all the problems others have mentioned (ignored instructions, not using libraries, etc.), it was probably faster than if I'd added the new features myself.

> was probably faster

That sure doesn't sound like 10x

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#365

Post by larve »

sarchertech wrote: post #223
larve wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have linked my github above. I don't know how that fares in the bigger scope of things, but I went from 0 opensource to hundreds of tools and frameworks and libraries. Putting a number on "productivity" makes no sense to me, I would have no idea what that means. I generate between 10-100k lines of code per day these days. But is that a measure of productivity? Not really...

>I generate between 10-100k lines of code per day these days. That’s absolute nonsense.

You can look at my GitHub, and I stream full unedited sessions on https://youtube.com/@program-with-ai

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#366

Post by dangus »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #343
culopatin wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today a friend of mine connected me with his uncle who wanted to develop an MVP for his company. He claimed he didn’t want to distract his engineers on this project, but that “it shouldn’t take you more than 5hs to do this with vibe coding”. I promptly declined, if it takes 5hs why are you reaching out to me? It would take more than 5hs just to bring me into the loop of what you want vs your own engineers. If vibe co…

I have fully vibe coded several apps at this point (none professionally, but stuff I actively use in my life). One thing I don't think everyone understands is that it still takes time. I need to do countless rounds of testing, describing the exact problem I find, rinse and repeat again and again for hours and hours. I happen to enjoy this way of working and I do think it's faster than writing the code myself, but it'…

I find that the main way it saves time is in situations where yes I know how to write code but I am looking to write something in a domain I’m less familiar with.

And regex.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#367

Post by philipwhiuk »

larve wrote: post #16

In case the author is reading this, I have the receipts on how there's a real step function in how much software I build, especially lately. I am not going to put any number on it because that makes no sense, but I certainly push a lot of code that reasonably seems to work. The reason it doesn't show up online is that I mostly write software for myself and for work, with the primary goal of making things better, not…

I mean it's definitely shovelware, I'll give you that.

https://github.com/go-go-golems/ai-in-action-app/blob/main/c...

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#368

Post by philipwhiuk »

thewarrior wrote: post #10

While I agree with the points he’s raising let me play devils advocate. There’s a lot more code being written now that’s not counted in these statistics. A friend of mine vibe coded a writing tool for himself entirely using Gemini canvas. I regularly vibe code little analyses or scripts in ChatGPT which would have required writing code earlier. None of these are counted in these statistics. And yes AI isn’t quite goo…

But that isn't the argument presented. The argument is that it's 10x to developer productivity, not just 'the odd script'.

And if it's not that, then the silly money valuations don't make any sense.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#369

Post by wolvesechoes »

safety1st wrote: post #331
wolvesechoes wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The original premise of the site was for startup founders and hackers to discuss startup founder and hacker things. Good that people finally open their eyes. > But, also I am not one of them, I am a capitalist, I own a small business And that's a false-consciousness at its finest. You are closer to these workers than to those that really own capital.

Not really. I grew up below the poverty line. Everyone I knew was working class. Some of these people are still very dear to me. However, I did something which virtually none of them did. I wanted to get out. So I identified a skillset that the world desperately wanted, and I spent thousands of hours learning how to build and sell with that skillset. Frequently I was criticized or ridiculed or simply ignored, but it…

> Not really. I grew up below the poverty line. Everyone I knew was working class. Some of these people are still very dear to me.

It wouldn't be false consciousness if you would be from wealthy family.

Yes, working people should climb the ladder, but without government intervention and putting collars on wealthy necks there won't be any ladder for them. There would be no small business owners like you. This is why I think you are very wrong when stating you are not one of them. In a sense that is true, but in other you have more common interest with those without any capital that with those really wealthy. But those really wealthy definitely want you to think otherwise.

And I have an impression your view of Marxism is forged on Reddit posts and not Marxists literature.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#370

Post by lbreakjai »

caro_kann wrote: post #318
SchemaLoad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my experience, it excels in blank canvas projects. Where you've got nothing and want something pretty basic. The tools can probably set up a fresh React project faster than me. But at least every time I've tried them on an actual work repo they get reduced to almost useless. Which is why they generate so much hype. They are perfect for tech demos, then management wonders why they aren't seeing results in…

Even scaffolding a new project is not easy work, especially a new stack or new versions of existing tools. For example, I have never been able to create a Vue 3 project with Vite and Tailwind setup correctly. I tried top SOTA models. Maybe my prompting skills are not good, but everytime it fails to set up a project correctly. Everytime it gives me some old configurations that's not relevant anymore.

LLMs are probably the worst tool for the job. Code generators have been a thing forever. Why use a LLM when you can do "npm create vite@latest my-vue-app -- --template vue" ?
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