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I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

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Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#81

Post by thomasahle »

tdignan wrote: post #79

OP should set up an AI chatbot to triage his customer support. It probably wouldn't be that hard to send that code right back to GPT and get a fix suggestion to the customer instantly. Stick your documentation for each endpoint in a vector database, and use RAG to give them a quick fix. If it doesn't work let them go to level 2 support for a fee .

These kind of support requests are also a big issue for open source projects.

Hanging out at the DSPy discord, we get a lot of people who need help with "their" code. The code often uses hallucinated API calls, but they insist it "should work" and our library simply is buggy.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#83

Post by FanaHOVA »

alexeiz wrote: post #55

I had a related episode at work when my coworker asked me why his seemingly trivial 10 line piece of code was misbehaving inexplicably. It turned out he had two variables `file_name` and `filename` and used one in place of another. I asked him how he ended up with such code, he said he used copilot to create it. Using code from a generative AI without understanding what it does is never a good idea.

Copilot wouldn't make a typo. He just made that up and / or broke the code himself.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#84

Post by foobarchu »

jprete wrote: post #11
TillE wrote: post #3

I'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…

Coding requires a willingness to understand and manipulate systems made of unbreakable rules. Most people don't want to deal with such an uncompromising method of communication.

Counterintuitively, it also requires a willingness to break what appear at first to be unbreakable rules. Most of the worst programmers I know seem to see their work as "how can I accomplish a task without breaking what I see as the rules", without having fully understood the system. That quickly turns into copypasta, extra layers of abstraction, over configurability, and many of the other plagues of programming.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#85

Post by efilife »

emseetech wrote: post #66
Laakeri wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he made a good living out of it, so in the end it was a good idea?

It certainly puts a ceiling on a career. And I'd argue it probably gave him a pretty rough shelf life. At some point he has to understand what he's doing. Unless he's so good at selling his services he can consistently find new clients. And if that's the case, he'd probably kill it in sales.

Cope. People often make money on things they know nothing about

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#86

Post by bruce511 »

A tiered approach to sales can help here.

Cheap version offers minimal support. (Although you still have to sift "bug reports" into my problem/ your problem.)

Standard version allows for more support (but still rate limited.)

Developer version charges for time spent, in advance.

This helps because people only expect free support if you don't explicitly offer something else. If you offer paid support them it's reasonable and expected that there are limits on free support.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#87

Post by Glyptodon »

alexeiz wrote: post #55

I had a related episode at work when my coworker asked me why his seemingly trivial 10 line piece of code was misbehaving inexplicably. It turned out he had two variables `file_name` and `filename` and used one in place of another. I asked him how he ended up with such code, he said he used copilot to create it. Using code from a generative AI without understanding what it does is never a good idea.

At least for me stupid bugs like this turn out to be some of the most time wasting to debug, no AI involved. Like accidentally have something quoted somewhere, or add an 's' to a variable by accident and I may not even correctly process what the error message is reporting at first. Always feel a bit silly after.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#88

Post by jpc0 »

mrbombastic wrote: post #17
TillE wrote: post #3

I'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.

Until I decided to start "reinventing the wheel" and just not using abstractions from popular libraries and frameworks I really struggled to actually understand what is happening.

I feel like a week isn't anywhere near close enough but depending on what you want to do it gets you to start tinkering. Ironically I do wish that I had started working on embedded with microcontrollers than starting with web purely because there isn't space for absurd abstractions.

On web even the DOM API is a huge abstraction over rendering calls to OpenGL/DirectX/Vulkan and I never could grok what is happening with the DOM API until I played with the underlying tech and learnt about trees and parsers and how that would be stored.

I still use the DOM and love the abstraction, but sometimes I just wish I could use an immediate mode approach instead of the retained mode that the DOM is...

Someone with a week of knowledge, or even someone who has spent 10 years building react may not understand half of that unless they have actively tried to learn it. Thwy might have an idea if they had formal education but a self taught programmer. They have been building houses using lego blocks, I you give them mortar and bricks you are setting them up for failure.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#89

Post by Noumenon72 »

Glyptodon wrote: post #87
alexeiz wrote: post #55

I had a related episode at work when my coworker asked me why his seemingly trivial 10 line piece of code was misbehaving inexplicably. It turned out he had two variables `file_name` and `filename` and used one in place of another. I asked him how he ended up with such code, he said he used copilot to create it. Using code from a generative AI without understanding what it does is never a good idea.

At least for me stupid bugs like this turn out to be some of the most time wasting to debug, no AI involved. Like accidentally have something quoted somewhere, or add an 's' to a variable by accident and I may not even correctly process what the error message is reporting at first. Always feel a bit silly after.

These kinds of problems are often avoidable by linters or asking ChatGPT what is wrong, though I was just tearing my hair wondering why TSC_COMPILE_ERROR wasn't skipping TypeScript because I spelled it TSX_COMPILE_ERROR in my environment variable.

Re: I'm tired of fixing customers' AI generated code

#90

Post by dylan604 »

fragmede wrote: post #70
FredPret wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

not "at large", but there's very much a segment of smart people who's expertise lies elsewhere, and they just haven't taken the time to learn the basics of programming. as someone who's spent a lot of time programming, I love meeting brilliant people who could program but don't just because they've gone a different way.

Some people forget how easy programming can be when you know nothing and just try stuff to see what works. Working in a procedural manner with everything in a global scope is simple to get stuff working. Not everything has to be extrapolated out into namespaces, functions, classes. It's nightmare code to maintain later, but going from blank page to working code is totally possible.

I think sometimes we forget not everything has to be written to a git repo with a highly developed structure ready for multiple people to work on. Is it a good habit, hellznaw, but people start somewhere and progress. That was the point that I was trying to make. It is totally possible to have a career as a programmer and have no credentialed degrees in CS or even programming. I know from personal experience.

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