Mary​Apr 7, 2024

AI generation when writing software is a false economy. You are replacing writing code with code review. Code review is harder and requires you to already have an understanding of the domain which often means that you would’ve even able to write it yourself to begin with. If you code gen something because you don’t know how to write it yourself, you by definition cannot review it without going though an effort equivalent to writing it yourself in the first place.

Unless of course you don’t care about code review and so doom yourself into treating software like magical incantations that break randomly for no perceivable reason; but no good mage would do that, surely.

Show threadAnthropyApr 7, 2024

@mary don't get me wrong but, haha, you think datacenters run without a good supply of incense and prayers? You think no programmers ever copy anything from stack overflow without truly understanding what it does?

I mean I get your point and partially agree, but I think you underestimate how much of this world already ran on thoughts and prayers and reboots and incantations and questionable copy pasted code, way way way before LLMs were even on the horizon :P

Show threadMirco BlitzApr 7, 2024
@anthropy @mary The difference is. 1 youngster developer doing that until it hits his face vs. its the standard of programming.
Show threadAnthropyApr 7, 2024
@lindworm @mary partially agreed! but also here; I think the majority of developers are actually juniors, even excluding the fact that any senior developer is a junior in the areas they're new to (and they generally do like exploring new things instead of doing the same old), so this stuff is a lot more common than we're willing to admit heh
Show threadMirco BlitzApr 7, 2024
@anthropy @mary I can tell you from the experience of a developer working 30years in that. Nope. Sure we copy and paste but we do not miss the third step. And check! once it has hit you to be reckless, you will never do it again. If you on the other hand get code generated by the computer you are scientifically proven to value its correctness more that that of human writers. Even with obvious errors.
Show threadAnthropyApr 7, 2024
@lindworm @mary I mean sure, I think we all try to verify what we copy paste in a sense, but if you dont actually fully know the exact parameters a certain function accepts, and e.g someone else makes a subtle off-by-one or bits-instead-of-bytes kinda error and you copy paste it, then really it doesn't matter where it came from, that problem will persist until e.g the compiler/linter/IDE/test suite/etc yells at you, and if it doesn't, you got yourself an OpenSSL Heartbleed or whatever happening😅
Show threadMirco BlitzApr 7, 2024
@anthropy @mary Also if you copy and paste from stackoverflow, you copy small snippets and most of the time not complete boilerplates with bogus (malicious) library inclusions.
Show threadMirco BlitzApr 7, 2024

@anthropy @mary I get more and more code on my desk that is entitrely written by ai and has bugs, deasdtracks, datadumps and all shit in it, that the "developers" do not find anymore. "Oh it calls a library, no clue why and whats it doing, but it will be ok!1!!"

There is a shift to "Its to complex to understand, ahhh computer knows better".

Show threadAnthropy
@lindworm @mary I don't mean to exclude there's definitely a whole wave of people who know actually nothing and try to wield a new tool not made for them to build things they truly don't understand, like fools with hammers, thinking they see nails everywhere. I do very much agree you need to read and understand what you're copy pasting-- I'm just saying that this is not an absolute thing, and we are all prone to failure, and expertise and seniority doesn't imply perfection, including in copying.
Apr 7, 2024 at 4:13pmWeb
Show threadMirco BlitzApr 7, 2024

@anthropy @mary Indeed we are, but you would not let a youngster or an untrained person work on an atomic bomb :-) In IT that has become a normality and we put gasoline on that dumpster fire with AI.

Seniority does in fact not imply perfection, far from it. But it always includes experience :-)