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AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

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Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#52

Post by j3k3 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #37

I’m seeing a real distinction emerge between “software engineering” and “research”. AI is simply amazing for exploratory research — 10x ability to try new ideas, if not more. When I find something that has promise, then I go into SWE mode. That involves understanding all the code the AI wrote, fixing all the dumb mistakes, and using my decades of experience to make it better. AI’s role in this process is a lot more l…

Thats because an LLM can access breadth at any given moment that you cannot. That's the advantage it has.

E.g. quite often a sound (e.g. music) brings back memories of a time when it was being listened to etc.

Our brains need something to 'prompt' (ironic I know) for stuff in the brain to come to the front. But the human is the final judge (or should be) if what is wrong / good quality vs high quality. A taste element is necessary here too.

Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#53

Post by nhaehnle »

tyleo wrote: post #21

I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.

I believe the article exaggerates to make a point. Yes, good engineering can also be assisted with LLM-based agents, but there is a delta.

Good engineering requires that you still pay attention to the result produced by the agent(s).

Bad engineering might skip over that part.

Therefore, via Amdahl's law, LLM-based agents overall provide more acceleration to bad engineering than they do to good engineering.

Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#54

Post by bdangubic »

bensyverson wrote: post #36
tyleo wrote: post #21

I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.

In corporate app development, I would see tests to check that the mocks return the expected values. Like, what are we even doing here?

we use this https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen

Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#55

Post by myrak »

furyofantares wrote: post #45
tyleo wrote: post #21

I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.

Well, it's made bad engineering massively easier and good engineering a little easier. So much so that many people who were doing good engineering before have opted to move to doing three times as much bad engineering instead of doing 10% more good engineering.

[dead]

Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#56

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tyleo wrote: post #21

I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.

Even if you agree with the OP, there's a large portion of applications where it simply doesn't matter if the quality of the software is good or terrible as long as it sufficiently works.

Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#57

Post by j3k3 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #46

Naw, I just yesterday caught something in test that would've made it to prod without AI. It happens all the time. You can't satisfy every single paranoia, eventually you have to deem a risk acceptable and ship it. Which experiments you do run depends on what can be done in what limited time you have. Now that I can bootstrap a for-this-feature test harness in a day instead of a week, I'm catching much subtler bugs. I…

Change 'good' for 'disciplined'.

Problem is.. discipline is hard for humans. Especially when exposed to a thing that at face-value seems like it is really good and correct.

Re: AI didn't simplify software engineering: It just made bad engineering easier

#60

Post by steve_adams_86 »

bensyverson wrote: post #36
tyleo wrote: post #21

I disagree with the premise. It made all engineering easier. Bad and good. I believe vibe coding has always existed. I've known people at every company who add copious null checks rather than understanding things and fixing them properly. All we see now is copious null checks at scale. On the other hand, I've also seen excellent engineering amplified and features built by experts in days which would have taken weeks.

In corporate app development, I would see tests to check that the mocks return the expected values. Like, what are we even doing here?

  # abstract internals for no reason
  func doThing(x: bool)
    if (x)
      return true
    else
      return false
  
  # make sure our logic works as expected
  assert(doThing(true))
  
  # ???
  
  # profit
It's excellent software engineering because there are tests
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