I'm not really sure what point this article is trying to make
I don’t think there is anything important in there.
The AI Situation in Software Development
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#52You have to be able to write the software yourself in order to judge the results and get good software out. Otherwise the system claims the goals are met, the tests pass, and the human driving the system puts up a new PR. If they don’t know any better it must seem like the AI system is better than them and knows what it’s doing.
All the loops and agents don’t protect you from generating garbage.
Which sucks because then how are you supposed to improve your skills when you’re just getting the answers all day… answers you can’t verify?
People are more confident than they ought to be. Always have been. But AI throws gas on that fire.
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#53AI coding is not that efficient. 2x increase at best, depending on the usage. Doesn't seem like a lot is gonna change tbh.
I have agents that have been running nonstop for several days working through tasks. At some point I have to go to sleep, and wake up to more progress.
Even with preplanning and post hoc analysis thrown in, I am seeing way more than 2x return on my investment. Where are your numbers coming from?
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#54With previous engineering trends like blockchains and microservices, you could choose not to jump on the bandwagon. However the coding agents trend is different and is changing the very fabric (sry for Claudeism) of software engineering, for better or worse. I do know we will never go back to mainly programming through code again, that’s for sure.
I'm starting to think there is no AI bandwagon per-se - instead the bandwagon most people associate with AI-assisted development is more a bandwagon of sloppy code and low standards - which irresponsible use of AI enables but isn't a prerequisite for (outsourcing sweatshops have been practicing it long before the dawn of LLMs).
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#55One aspect AI is weak in is controlling complexity. If you tell it to implement something it will go ahead and implement it, without considering how much complexity it adds to the system or weighing alternatives. An experienced engineer on the other hand may decide the feature is too minor relative to the complexity it adds, and may decide to not do the feature. Or he may make some clever compromises to get most of t…
Have you found any solutions to this? It would be a big unlock to give it this kind of judgement
Just ask it to do it. You can ask it to do a line reduction cleanup pass before each commit. I don’t know why they default to adding complexity because they are capable of doing it better just by asking.
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but on the other hand, if you asked an LLM to implement a spec and it was like “I skipped this part because I didn’t like the complexity tradeoff” most people would be like “wtf why doesn’t Claude just listen to me”
Right, and that's why humans are still needed in the loop.
I use openspec in addition with the /grill-me skill and it really helps clearing the path before starting to code. I think the goal of engineering, when using AI, is to maximize your value upfront instead of every five minutes.
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#57AI coding is not that efficient. 2x increase at best, depending on the usage. Doesn't seem like a lot is gonna change tbh.
I have agents that have been running nonstop for several days working through tasks. At some point I have to go to sleep, and wake up to more progress. Even with preplanning and post hoc analysis thrown in, I am seeing way more than 2x return on my investment. Where are your numbers coming from?
> wake up to more progress
I wonder how that progress is being measured. Lines of code or counts of PRs? Sure... but I thought the matter of measuring productivity by lines of code was already well-understood as being misguided.
I'm having trouble reconciling all that supposed productivity with the real world where software isn't getting better, delivered faster, or becoming cheaper - unlike virtually all breakthroughs in industrialization (printing press, weaving loom, etc) which led to a quick increase in at least one of such factors.
I'm not denying that AI helps with and excels at parts of the software development lifecycle, but from my experience those parts overall contribute to a small increase in output or merely shift the work elsewhere (where it may just not be part of whatever measurement is being used).
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are still companies who refuse to believe this and still put Senior+ devs through hell during an interview process with junior level algorithm memorization. In all aspects there will be dinosaurs and deniers and there will be embracers.
How can you assess the output of coding agents if you don't know about algorithms and other fundamentals of software engineering?
User acceptance testing.
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#59And you immediately give up your IP for someone else to use. The 4th option, if you have something in your mind worth building, is to just build the thing, without an LLM.
Sure if you use remote AI services, but any companies working on niche markets where they want to protect their IP, or they simply work with sensitive stuff, will rely on local AI instead.
There’s no company that has “no sensitive stuff”, from HR to financials to customer data to board presentations to engineering IP and they all, without exception , entrust their data to cloud services for at least a decade now. Even governments do that, although they sometimes use special regions.
So I don’t think AI will be much different.
Re: The AI Situation in Software Development
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who are trying to sell you AI and people who are now dependent on it are desperate for you to believe in its inevitability.
i used to think i love coding. putting some music on and getting into the zone churing code was the best feeling. stragnely i dont miss that feeling and kind of dread going back to it
I'd say I "miss" it as in its a great kind of feeling, but it's hard to get when you now know there's a way better way of getting things done