There's room for all of us in this industry. What someone is unwilling to do is just an opportunity for someone else to pick up the yoke.
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I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
41–50 of 345 posts
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#42Earlier 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…
If I may make some assumptions about you:
1. You're a person of a particular frame of mind who finds it easy and natural to talk to computers in programming languages
2. You knew a different language before, perhaps one you learnt at a young age
3. You've messed around with computers for years now and have built up a conceptual model of what the hardware and software components are and how things fit together. So if a new thing comes along, you can hang it on your tree of knowledge. Consider the difficulty someone might have making hello_world.py if they don't know what an OS is, or how to edit text, or any of the basics.
None of the above generalizes to the population at large.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#43I'm always a little surprised at how many people out there want to develop software yet haven't put in the effort to gain even the most basic computer nerd programming chops. You see this all the time in the more newbie-friendly game engine communities. Maybe you don't want to pursue a career in software, but anyone can spend a week learning Python or JavaScript. I suspect/hope a lot of these people are just kids who…
A week is not anywhere close to enough to learn programming in any meaningful way for someone with no experience.
It is, however, enough to make small programs and extend from there. Especially following a book like K&R.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#44I'm always a little surprised at how many people out there want to develop software yet haven't put in the effort to gain even the most basic computer nerd programming chops. You see this all the time in the more newbie-friendly game engine communities. Maybe you don't want to pursue a career in software, but anyone can spend a week learning Python or JavaScript. I suspect/hope a lot of these people are just kids who…
A week is not anywhere close to enough to learn programming in any meaningful way for someone with no experience.
Time to expertise is down to zero in “Fake until you make it” circles. 260 week-long iterations later, having survived the “hype curve” and the “Valley of Death”, they declare themselves “battle-proven”. A.k.a. experts.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#45[flagged]
Language models aren’t AI no matter how hard you squint. When we get actual AI (not counting on anytime soon) it will be more than the annoyed developer that loses their job
We'll never have AI, because once we figure something out it stops being AI.
Modern generative stuff like LLMs and image diffusers counts at least as much as the various older used-to-be-AI things.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#46This 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…
> amateurs writing bad code
in volume, this turns into support writing the code.
I think of how the south park movie folks sent so much questionable content to the censors that the compromise in the end let through lots of the puppet sex.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#47I always make gpt fix the code it created. How else would I learn.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#48Why don't you use AI to provide support? I'm serious actually. This sounds like something AI can do really well.
For the problems given in the article, it will 100% work. It's very easy for Claude 3.5 or gpt-4o to look at documentation for a couple of API endpoints, compare it to submitted code, and point out invalid endpoints and properties. It can provide correct code also if the custom is asking for something possible.
It won't be flawless but if the issues are as basic as stated in this article, then it seems like a good option.
It will cost money to use the good models though. So I think the first step would be to make sure if they ask for an invalid endpoint it says that in so many words in the API response, and if they ask for an invalid property it states that also.
Then if that doesn't give them a clue, an LLM scans incoming support requests and automatically answers them. Or flags them for review.. To prevent abuse, it might be a person doing it but just pressing a button to send an auto-answer.
But maybe a relatively cheap bot in a Discord channel or something connected to llama 3.1 70b would be good enough to start, and people have to provide a ticket number from that bot to get an answer from a person.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#49I'm always a little surprised at how many people out there want to develop software yet haven't put in the effort to gain even the most basic computer nerd programming chops. You see this all the time in the more newbie-friendly game engine communities. Maybe you don't want to pursue a career in software, but anyone can spend a week learning Python or JavaScript. I suspect/hope a lot of these people are just kids who…
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've been programming since I was 4 years old but with literally zero resources or assistance beyond "take books out from the library" for 20 years. It wasn't until I was about 28 until I had the chops to get into the industry (largely down to never having a need or opportunity to learn SQL -- also I mean as a developer, I had a prior career in IT) and even then it wasn't until I was 31 before I had the confidence enough to interview...
On the other hand, I have a wealth of other general computer and protocol knowledge and have been working circles around most of my coworkers since day one. In the typical tech startup world I _rarely_ encounter coworkers with truly deep knowledge outside of whatever language they work in.
IMO the skill isn't about being able to "write code", it's about being able to model how things work.
Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The second one actually seems to be harder for some people. It requires separating the syntax from the semantics
Agreed on all further ones, however