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The hidden cost of AI coding

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#451

Post by jaredcwhite »

pdimitar wrote: post #97
jaredcwhite wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could Not me. I code because I love to code, and I get paid to do what I love. If that's not you…find a different profession?

Needlessly polarizing. I love coding since 12 years old (so more than 30 years at this point) but most work tasks I'm given are fairly boring and uninteresting and don't move almost any science or knowledge forward. Delegating part of that to an LLM so I can code the stuff I love is a big win for my motivation and is making me doing the work tasks with a bit more desire and pleasure. Please don't forget that most of…

"but most work tasks I'm given are fairly boring"

Part of the joy of craft is the actual process of building a thing, even if the thing you're build is itself "boring". One of my clients right now is a React/Next.js app, which in terms of architecture I find deeply problematic (I tend to advocate vanilla JS, web components, close-to-browser-metal approaches, etc.)—but I still find ways to enjoy the work I do and furthermore I'm proud of the work that I do. I find it anathema that I'd offload any of that craft to a synthetic code text extruder.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#452

Post by kcexn »

myk9001 wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

Thank you for the link, the reference you're making slipped past me. That said, I think my point still holds: software doesn't always have to displace workers, it can also help current employees scale their efforts when bringing on more people isn't possible.

While this definitely helps consumers. I don't see how it doesn't displace workers.

If the work those workers were doing before software was truly valuable. Companies would find other ways to scale, and simply pass the higher costs onwards to consumers.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#453

Post by kcexn »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #451
pdimitar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Needlessly polarizing. I love coding since 12 years old (so more than 30 years at this point) but most work tasks I'm given are fairly boring and uninteresting and don't move almost any science or knowledge forward. Delegating part of that to an LLM so I can code the stuff I love is a big win for my motivation and is making me doing the work tasks with a bit more desire and pleasure. Please don't forget that most of…

"but most work tasks I'm given are fairly boring" Part of the joy of craft is the actual process of building a thing, even if the thing you're build is itself "boring". One of my clients right now is a React/Next.js app, which in terms of architecture I find deeply problematic (I tend to advocate vanilla JS, web components, close-to-browser-metal approaches, etc.)—but I still find ways to enjoy the work I do and furt…

Would you still feel the same joy if this project was one of thousands of React/Next.js apps you have worked on?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#454

Post by kcexn »

randcraw wrote: post #348

This article resonates with me like no other has in years. I very recently retired after 40 years writing software because my role had evolved into a production-driven limbo. For the past decade I have scavenged and copied other peoples' code into bland cookie cutter utilities that fed, trained, ran, and summarized data mining ops. It has required not one whit of creative expression or 'flow', making my life's work a…

I've just finished a PhD in (specialised) topics around computer performance. And I have a similar feeling about the stagnant state of innovation in computer and software engineering over the last 15 years or so.

The vast majority of research is funded or incentivized in some way by the big internet companies. The big internet companies have a very narrow scope of problems that they are commercially interested in. They also have so much power and money that getting people to listen to diverse ideas and opinions is incredibly difficult, both commercially and academically because everyone somehow has to cater what they do to be in line with internet company practices.

And of course, the internet companies have found ways to industrialize their core competencies of data warehousing and analytics so that every year, fewer inputs (staff, hardware, software, data) are needed to achieve the same outputs.

I think that people are experiencing a loss of independence, and creative thinking. Not a loss of passion for the craft.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#455

Post by kcexn »

lrvick wrote: post #84

So long as your experience and skill allows you to produce work of higher quality than average for your industry, then you will always have a job which is to review that average quality work, and surgically correct it when it is wrong. This has always been true in every craft, and it remains true for programmers in a post LLL world. Most training data is open source code written by novice to average programmers publi…

The problem with FOSSland is that it is increasingly driven by commercial interests, not by volunteers.

I don't know the last time I encountered a used (not random hobby projects) FOSS project that wasn't funded and supported by a company (with exceptions maybe only in the GNU software suite, but even then lots of authors there are making submissions using company email addresses).

I think it's totally acceptable to not make open-source contributions to those projects unless someone is paying you to.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#456

Post by kcexn »

bitwize wrote: post #68

Earlier this year, a hackernews started quizzing me about the size and scope of the projects I worked on professionally, with the implication that I couldn't really be working on anything large or complex -- that I couldn't really be doing serious development, without using a full-fat IDE like IntelliJ. I wasn't going to dox myself or my professional work just so he could reach a conclusion he's already arrived at. T…

My professional career has mostly been in IT ops. I've worked for companies that do requirements analysis and design in-house, write up a huge spec, send the spec to an offshore development house, then simply acceptance test the software that is sent back.

Companies know that the quality of the software they get back might be lower than if they hired the bestest, smartest developers in the world. But it doesn't matter because keeping the production cost of the asset low means that they can maximize long term profits.

Writing good software is not the same as writing profitable software.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#457

Post by kcexn »

kordlessagain wrote: post #387

Honestly, most of the "real engineer" rhetoric is exhausting. Here's the thing: the people most obsessed with software craftsmanship, pattern orthodoxy, and layered complexity often create some of the most brittle, hostile, constantly mutating systems imaginable. You may be able to build abstractions, but if you're shipping stuff that users have to re-learn every quarter because someone needed to justify a promotion…

There was a time when "engineer" was a respected term reserved for a profession. Engineers were highly paid because they're brought onto projects that are high-complexity and high-value. Companies are hoping not to pay for engineering work more than once.

Some countries still treat the title "Engineer" as a protected title. Though I often now see it prefixed with professional or accredited or something so that people know they aren't an "engineer" they're an "Engineer".

I think most people who write software who think of the work they're doing as "real engineering" are like the draftsmen who draw up floor plans for local government approvals in civil engineering offices. If you're doing it over and over again, it's probably not engineering, it's probably just regular skilled Labor.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#459

Post by 59nadir »

Spivak wrote: post #128
dxroshan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I've noticed in that respect is that I just read what it does and then immediately reason why it's there .... How if it hallucinate and gives you wrong code and explanation? It is better to read documentations and tutorials first.

Even when it hallucinates it still solves most of the unknown unknowns which is good for getting you unblocked. It's probably close enough to get some terms to search for.

Have you tried using AI only for things you already know for a while? I almost only do so (because I haven't found that LLMs speed up my actual process much) and I can tell you that the things that LLMs generally leave out/forget/don't "know" about are plentiful, they will result in tons of debugging and usually require me to "metagame" heavily and ask pointed questions that someone who didn't have my knowledge simply wouldn't know to ask in order to solve the issues with the code they generate. A LLM can't even give you basic OpenGL code in C for doing some basic framebuffer blitting without missing stuff that'll cost you potentially hours or a whole day in debugging time.

Add to this that someone who uses a LLM to "just do things" for them like this is very unlikely to have much useful knowledge and so can't really resolve these issues themselves it's a recipe for disaster and not at all a time saver over simply learning and doing yourself.

For what it's worth I've found that LLMs are pretty much only good for well understood basic theory that can give you a direction to look in and that's about it. I used to use GitHub Copilot (which years ago was (much?) better than Cursor with Claude Sonnet just a few months ago) to tab complete boilerplate and stuff but concluded that overall, I wasn't really saving time and energy because as nice as tab-completing boilerplate sometimes was, it also invariably turned into "It suggested something interesting, let's see if I can mold it into something useful" taking up valuable time, leading nowhere good in general and just generally being disruptive.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#460

Post by andybak »

celsius1414 wrote: post #386
andybak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people love programming > Other people see all that as an means to an end I think it's worth pointing out that most people are both these things at different times. There's things I care about and want a deep understanding of but there's plenty of tasks I want to just "go away". If I had an junior coder - I'd be delegating these. Instead I use AI when I can. There's also tasks where I want a jump start. I pref…

You likely don’t have a say in the matter, but you should have a junior developer. That’s where senior developers come from.

You presume I work for a company!
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