Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

research.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 245 posts

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#41

Post by skywhopper »

zackproser wrote: post #34

After reading this I'm wondering how the indy code autocomplete tools are going to be able to compete longterm with this giant feedback rich data machine Google has built...do engineering orgs of sufficient scale ultimately hoard their tooling for competitive advantage, thereby leaving independent players to cater to developers outside of Google? Feels like yes...but plenty of inventions trickle out in various forms.

I’m not seeing any evidence that any of this is actually good for Google’s business. Their observations that half of code checked in is from suggestions by an LLM is not really surprising in a regimented dev platform with tons of boilerplate. That stat tells us nothing about actual code quality, development velocity, or skill curves over time, much less business impact.

What product of Google’s has been improved by this feedback loop? The trajectory of Google search itself in the past year has been steadily downhill. And what other products of theirs I use don’t really change much, at least not in positive ways. Gmail is just gradually being crushed from every side by other app widgets scrounging for attention. Chrome has added… genAI features and more spyware? Great.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#42

Post by Tao3300 »

refulgentis wrote: post #37
jprete wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of no review process that produces the same level of understanding as does authorship, because the author must build the model from scratch and so must see all the details, while the reviewer is able to do less work because they're fundamentally riding on the author's understanding. In fact, in a high-trust system, e.g. a good engineering culture in a tech company, the reviewer will learn even less, because th…

So the software lifecycle ends up with a sort of Zeno's paradox, each incremental maintainer understands the system less...fascinating, ty!

On sufficiently large and old code bases, yes, this is exactly the case.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#43

Post by bongodongobob »

irrational wrote: post #32
bongodongobob wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right because it's impossible for people to learn things themselves. Knowledge must only be passed down by The Gatekeeper. I'm starting to feel like the programming community is just mad things are easier to learn now.

Are they learning? Or are they just accepting the results, as long as it appears to more or less do what they want, and moving on? The danger seems to be code that is syntactically correct and compiles without errors, but is logically incorrect.

Oh come on, the user is talking about building UIs. I don't know how else you learn. Your attitude just reeks of high-horse. As if it was better to learn things from stackoverflow.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#44

Post by mensetmanusman »

skywhopper wrote: post #41
zackproser wrote: post #34

After reading this I'm wondering how the indy code autocomplete tools are going to be able to compete longterm with this giant feedback rich data machine Google has built...do engineering orgs of sufficient scale ultimately hoard their tooling for competitive advantage, thereby leaving independent players to cater to developers outside of Google? Feels like yes...but plenty of inventions trickle out in various forms.

I’m not seeing any evidence that any of this is actually good for Google’s business. Their observations that half of code checked in is from suggestions by an LLM is not really surprising in a regimented dev platform with tons of boilerplate. That stat tells us nothing about actual code quality, development velocity, or skill curves over time, much less business impact. What product of Google’s has been improved by t…

Google prints money until search goes away. Nothing else they work on has to succeed.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#45

Post by Tao3300 »

danpalmer wrote: post #22
endisneigh wrote: post #7

Anyone who works at Google knows they are force feeding the employees with this stuff. Same thing they’re doing with the general public and search. Anyone who worked at google during + can see this is the same half hearted type of force feeding that will fail, with the rationalizations to boot. Disclaimer: I hold google stock but don’t work at google

I work at Google, this stuff is available, entirely optional, and in fact the most recent stuff is still something you have to sign up for and get on an opt-in basis in return for providing feedback/answering surveys.

> entirely optional

Optional. I'll bet.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#46

Post by Tao3300 »

bigiain wrote: post #14

I'm looking forward to the day that some spicy autocomplete regurgitates an obvious chunk of AGPL code that it's stolen without permission or attribution - and it ends up in some critical part of Googles money printing machine, and the outside world finds out about it. I'm gonna need a _lot_ of popcorn.

They probably just buy the other party.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#47

Post by bitwize »

Today on Facebook I saw a headline: "Marvel Fans Want to See Miley Cyrus as Rogue in the MCU". And I thought to myself: Which Marvel fans?

And now...

> Just five years later, in 2024, there is widespread enthusiasm among software engineers about how AI is helping write code.

Which software engineers?

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#49

Post by zackproser »

skywhopper wrote: post #41
zackproser wrote: post #34

After reading this I'm wondering how the indy code autocomplete tools are going to be able to compete longterm with this giant feedback rich data machine Google has built...do engineering orgs of sufficient scale ultimately hoard their tooling for competitive advantage, thereby leaving independent players to cater to developers outside of Google? Feels like yes...but plenty of inventions trickle out in various forms.

I’m not seeing any evidence that any of this is actually good for Google’s business. Their observations that half of code checked in is from suggestions by an LLM is not really surprising in a regimented dev platform with tons of boilerplate. That stat tells us nothing about actual code quality, development velocity, or skill curves over time, much less business impact. What product of Google’s has been improved by t…

What you say tracks - but I'm wondering what happens if they manage to unlock some meaningful velocity increase to the point where they can begin tackling other domains and shuttling out products at a higher rate...Agree with your thoughts on search - it's f'ing unusable now and frustrating to look at.

Re: AI in software engineering at Google: Progress and the path ahead

#50

Post by zackproser »

zackproser wrote: post #49
skywhopper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not seeing any evidence that any of this is actually good for Google’s business. Their observations that half of code checked in is from suggestions by an LLM is not really surprising in a regimented dev platform with tons of boilerplate. That stat tells us nothing about actual code quality, development velocity, or skill curves over time, much less business impact. What product of Google’s has been improved by t…

What you say tracks - but I'm wondering what happens if they manage to unlock some meaningful velocity increase to the point where they can begin tackling other domains and shuttling out products at a higher rate...Agree with your thoughts on search - it's f'ing unusable now and frustrating to look at.

Meaningful velocity increase while keeping quality high enough for the services to function in production and charge users..
Post reply on HN