Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

fly.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 1001 posts

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#821

Post by fud101 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #210

> Does an intern cost $20/month? Because that’s what Cursor.ai costs. > Part of being a senior developer is making less-able coders productive, be they fleshly or algebraic. Using agents well is both a both a skill and an engineering project all its own, of prompts, indices, and (especially) tooling. LLMs only produce shitty code if you let them. A junior developer often has negative value to a team, because they're…

So what is the end game here, we don't have any juniors? That's what we're celebrating? This whole thing makes no damn sense, we're just becoming more efficient at producing bad code at scale, which will be maintained by a workforce that is growing less proficient at that with the increasing adoption of AI - skills will decline and eventually we'll be living with more buggy software, maintained by underpaid, unappreciated and overwhelmed grey beards and it will be too late to turn back.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#822

Post by jurgenaut23 »

Something that I feel is missed in every such post or debate is that, maybe, this isn’t a yes/no question.

Fast forward 10 years, the skeptics will be right on a few things, and the fanboys will be right on other things.

I for one know this isn’t just a “fad” like NFTs were, but I cannot help but feel skeptical about the sweeping claims of software engineering’s doomsday.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#823

Post by sfn42 »

r0s wrote: post #624

Weird to claim the llm does all the boring learning and boilerplate for you as a selling point, but then also insist we still need to responsibly read all the output, and if you can't understand it's a "skill issue". Also the emphasis on greenfield projects? Starting is by FAR the easiest part. That's not impressive to me. When do we get to code greenfield for important systems? Reminds me of the equally absurd examp…

I think the point is that the person orchestrating the agent(s) reviews the code. It doesn't make sense to have 5 Juniors using agents to submit PRs and a senior or two reviewing it all. You just have the senior(s) orchestrating agents and reviewing it themselves. Maybe one or two juniors because we still need to train new devs, but maybe the junior doesn't even use an LLM. Maybe the junior writes code manually so they can learn programming properly before they start being an "AI lead".

Everyone is still responsible for the code they produce. I review my own PRs before I expect others to, and I don't even use AI. I think what the article describes seems interesting though.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#825

Post by kubb »

pera wrote: post #800

It's fascinating how over the past year we have had almost daily posts like this one, yet from the outside everything looks exactly the same, isn't that very weird? Why haven't we seen an explosion of new start-ups, products or features? Why do we still see hundreds of bug tickets on every issue tracking page? Have you noticed anything different on any changelog? I invite tptacek, or any other chatbot enthusiast arou…

Most likely there’s a slight productivity increase.

The enthusiasts have a cognitive dissonance because they are pretty sure this is huge and we’re living in the future, so they go through various denial strategies when the execs ask them where the money is.

In this case it’s blame. These darned skeptics are ruining it for everyone.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#826

Post by m0llusk »

> If you were trying and failing to use an LLM for code 6 months ago †, you’re not doing what most serious LLM-assisted coders are doing.

Translation: Drop your work and current tools every few months to pick up the shiny new thing or you aren't cool or even sane.

Reality: Your favorite cool new tool will be integrated into development work as it is proven, documented, and time allows. This idea that development must leap onto the latest shiny new thing every few months is extremely corrosive to reasonable business practice. The needs of the many outweigh the preferences of the lead developer.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#827

Post by dcow »

matthewsinclair wrote: post #691

I think this article is pretty spot on — it articulates something I’ve come to appreciate about LLM-assisted coding over the past few months. I started out very sceptical. When Claude Code landed, I got completely seduced — borderline addicted, slot machine-style — by what initially felt like a superpower. Then I actually read the code. It was shockingly bad. I swung back hard to my earlier scepticism, probably even…

[flagged]

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#828

Post by benregenspan »

One other thing that might feed into skepticism is that, for the average person who does not actively choose to use LLMs, the most regular LLM interaction is likely to be with AI Overviews in Google search, which are generally a pretty unfortunate experience. For example my last search with an AI Overview, for interpretation of blood pressure reading, resulted in the output: "Systolic pressure (top number): 123 mmHg, which is within the normal range of less than 120 mmHg".

The fact that LLMs can generate this kind of output is not incompatible with the OP's argument about how useful they can be when combined with agents and code review. But search is the lowest-friction way for anyone to interact with LLMs currently, and right now it's a pretty poor advertisement.

Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts

#830

Post by simonw »

pera wrote: post #800

It's fascinating how over the past year we have had almost daily posts like this one, yet from the outside everything looks exactly the same, isn't that very weird? Why haven't we seen an explosion of new start-ups, products or features? Why do we still see hundreds of bug tickets on every issue tracking page? Have you noticed anything different on any changelog? I invite tptacek, or any other chatbot enthusiast arou…

"Why haven't we seen an explosion of new start-ups, products or features?"

You're posting this question on a forum hosted by YC. Here's a story from March 2024: "YC’s latest W24 batch includes 240 companies. A significant portion of the companies have some AI component, with 63% tagged as “Artificial Intelligence” — a notable increase from 51% in the preceding S23 batch and 29% before that.". https://jamesin.substack.com/p/analysis-of-ycs-latest-w24-ba...

I've not seen the same analysis for more recent batches.

Post reply on HN