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GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

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Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#451

Post by epolanski »

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329
ianbutler wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually very curious why AI use is such a bi-modal experience. I've used AI to move multi thousand line codebases between languages. I've created new apps from scratch with it. My theory is the willingness to baby sit and the modality. I'm perfectly fine telling the tool I use its errors and working side by side with it like it was another person. At the end of the day it can belt out lines of code faster than I…

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

> Change my mind.

Unit, integration, e2e, types and linters would catch most of the things you mention.

Not every software is mission critical, often the most important thing is to go as fast and possible and iterate very quickly. Good enough is better than very good in many cases.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#452

Post by dools »

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329
ianbutler wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually very curious why AI use is such a bi-modal experience. I've used AI to move multi thousand line codebases between languages. I've created new apps from scratch with it. My theory is the willingness to baby sit and the modality. I'm perfectly fine telling the tool I use its errors and working side by side with it like it was another person. At the end of the day it can belt out lines of code faster than I…

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

> But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible

I heard a similar thing from a dude when I said I use it for bash scripts instead of copying and pasting things off StackOverflow.

He was a bit "get off my lawny" about the idea of running any code you didn't write, especially bash scripts in a terminal.

It is obviously the case that I didn't write most of the code in the world by a very large margin, but even not taking it to extremes if I'm working on a team and people are writing code how is it any different? Everyone makes mistakes, I make mistakes.

I think it's a bad idea to run things that you don't at least understand what it's going to do but the speed with which ChatGPT can produce, for example, gcloud shell commands to manage resources is lightning fast (all of which is very readable, just takes a while if you want to look it up and compose the commands yourself).

If your quality control method is "making sure there are no mistakes" then it's already broken regardless of where the code comes from. Me reviewing AI code is no different from me reviewing anyone else's code.

Me testing AI code using unit or integration tests is no different from testing anyone else's code, or my own code for that matter.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#453

Post by Nullabillity »

malux85 wrote: post #447
Nullabillity wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very important caveat. In our modern economy it's difficult to not be a shill in some way, shape, or form, even if you don't quite realize it consciously. It's honestly one of the most depressing things about the stock market.

Theres a big difference between being a happy customer and being a shill.

Holding stock is not being a "happy customer". I may be happy with the headset that I bought, but the difference is that I don't make money if you buy an identical one.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#454

Post by almostdeadguy »

epolanski wrote: post #451
0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

> Change my mind. Unit, integration, e2e, types and linters would catch most of the things you mention. Not every software is mission critical, often the most important thing is to go as fast and possible and iterate very quickly. Good enough is better than very good in many cases.

> Unit, integration, e2e, types and linters would catch most of the things you mention.

Who’s writing those?

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#455

Post by deepfriedbits »

Yodel0914 wrote: post #364
thih9 wrote: post #221

I use cursor and its tab completion; while what it can do is mind blowing, in practice I’m not noticing a productivity boost. I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting the pipes wrong. I need to double and triple check the updated code - or fix the resulting errors when I don’t do that. So: boilerplate and outer app layers, yes; architecture and core libraries,…

I find chatgpt incredibly useful for writing scripts against well-known APIs, or for a "better stackoverflow". Things like "how do I use a cursor in sql" or "in a devops yaml pipeline, I want to trigger another pipeline. How do I do that?". But working on our actual codebase with copilot in the IDE (Rider, in my case) is a net negative. It usually does OK when it's suggesting the completion of a single line, but when…

I love your framing of it as a "better stackoverflow." That's so true. However, I feel like some of our complaints about accuracy and hidden bugs are temporary pain (12-36) months before the tools truly become mind-blowing productivity multipliers.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#456

Post by simonw »

scott01 wrote: post #406
simonw wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to spend time learning how to use it. This is difficult because there's no manual, and there's a widespread implication that it should just magically work well without you having to invest any effort in it. If you can figure out HOW to invest that effort it becomes really valuable. I wish I had good resources I could link you to here but I don't, which is a big part of the problem here.

You sound like you’ve had success using this tech for work. Can you tell more about your personal experience, please? I’ve tried ChatGPT a few times a year ago or so, but it was extremely frustrating, and I gave up.

Here's my "How I use LLMs and ChatGPT" series: https://simonwillison.net/series/using-llms/

Also relevant is my ai-assisted-programming tag: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming/

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#457

Post by fzeroracer »

bongodongobob wrote: post #339
0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

You. Can. Write. Tests.

The most common failure of TDD is that assuming just bolting on more tests will fix the problem of a poorly designed codebase.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#458

Post by eru »

hansonkd wrote: post #367
0xFACEFEED wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer of over 20 years - this is terrifying. I'm willing to accept that I just have "get off my lawn" syndrome or something. But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interactin…

> The more time I spend in a codebase the better idea I have of what the writer was trying to do. This whole thing of using LLMs to Code reminds me a bit of when Google Translate came out and became popular, right around the time I started studying Russian. Yes, copying and pasting a block of Russian text produced a block of english text that you could get a general idea of what was happening. But translating from en…

I had the opposite experience lately:

I was helping translate some UI text for a website from English to German, my mother tongue. I found that usually the machine came up with better translations than me.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#459

Post by abadpoli »

balder1991 wrote: post #400
hansonkd wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more time I spend in a codebase the better idea I have of what the writer was trying to do. This whole thing of using LLMs to Code reminds me a bit of when Google Translate came out and became popular, right around the time I started studying Russian. Yes, copying and pasting a block of Russian text produced a block of english text that you could get a general idea of what was happening. But translating from en…

> the intention of coding should never to be to belt out as many lines as possible That’s such an underrated statement. Especially when you consider the amount of code as a liability that you’ll have to take care later.

This presumes that it will be real humans that have to “take care” of the code later.

A lot of the people that are hawking AI, especially in management, are chasing a future where there are no humans, because AI writes the code and maintains the code, no pesky expensive humans needed. And AI won’t object to things like bad code style or low quality code.

Re: GitHub cuts AI deals with Google, Anthropic

#460

Post by Bjartr »

ianbutler wrote: post #311
thih9 wrote: post #221

I use cursor and its tab completion; while what it can do is mind blowing, in practice I’m not noticing a productivity boost. I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting the pipes wrong. I need to double and triple check the updated code - or fix the resulting errors when I don’t do that. So: boilerplate and outer app layers, yes; architecture and core libraries,…

I'm actually very curious why AI use is such a bi-modal experience. I've used AI to move multi thousand line codebases between languages. I've created new apps from scratch with it. My theory is the willingness to baby sit and the modality. I'm perfectly fine telling the tool I use its errors and working side by side with it like it was another person. At the end of the day it can belt out lines of code faster than I…

Interesting that you find the conversational approach effective. For me, I'd say 9 out of 10 code conversations get stuck in a loop with me telling the AI the next suggested iteration didn't actually change anything or changed it back to something that was already broken. Do you not experience that so often, of do you have a way to escape that?
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