Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants
Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants
Code analysis firm sees no major benefits from AI dev tool when measuring key programming metrics, though others report incremental gains from coding copilots with emphasis on code review.
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Using a tool to speed up your work is not lazy. Using a tool stupidly is stupid. Anyone who thinks these tools are meant to replace humans using logic is misunderstanding them entirely.
You remind me of some of my coworkers who would rather do the same mind numbing task for hours every day rather than write a script that handles it. I judge them for thinking working smarter is "lazy" and I think it's a fair judgement. I see them as the lazy ones. They'd rather not think more deeply about the scripting aspect because it's hard. They rather zone out and mindlessly click, copy/paste, etc. I'd rather analyze and break down the problem so I can solve it once and then move onto something more interesting to solve.
sometimes working smarter is actually putting the work in so you don't have to waste time and stress about if it's going to work or not.
I get Dreamweaver vibes from AI generated code. Sure, the website works. looks exactly the way it should. works exactly how it should. that HTML source though... fucking aweful.
I can agree, AI is an augment to the tools you can use. however, it's being marketed as a replacement and a large variety of devs are using it as such.
shitty devs are enabled by shitty tools.
I get Dreamweaver vibes from AI generated code.
Same. AI seems like yet another attempt at RAD just like MS Access, Visual Basic, Dreamweaver, and even to some extent Salesforce, or ServiceNow. There are so many technologies that champion this....RoR, Django, Spring Boot...the list is basically forever.
To an extent, it's more general purpose than those because it can be used with multiple languages or toolkits, but I find it not at all surprising that the first usage of gen AI in my company was to push out "POCs" (the vast majority of which never amounted to anything).
The same gravity applies to this tool as everything else in software...which is that prototyping is easy...integration is hard (unless the organization is well structured, which, well, almost none of them are), and software executives tend to confuse a POC with production code and want to push it out immediately, only to find out that it's a Potemkin village underneath as they sometimes (or even often) were told the entire time.
So much of the software industry is "JUST GET THIS DONE FASTER DAMMIT!" from middle managers who still seem (despite decades of screaming this) to have developed no widespread means of determining either what they want to get done, or what it would take to get it done faster.
What we have been dealing with the entire time is people that hate to be dependent upon coders or other "nerds", but need them in order to create products to accomplish their business objectives.
Middle managers still think creating software is algorithmic nerd shit that could be automated...solving the same problems over and over again. It's largely been my experience that despite even Computer Science programs giving it that image, that the reality is modern coding is more akin to being a millwright. Most of the repetitive, algorithmic nerd shit was settled long ago and can be imported via modules. Imported modules are analogous to parts, and your job is to build or maintain the actual machine that produces the outcomes that are desired, making connecting parts to get the various components to interoperate as needed, repairing failing components, or spotting the shoddy welding between them that is making the current machine fail.
shitty devs are enabled by shitty tools.
No, shitty devs are enabled by piss-poor hiring practices. I'm currently working with two devs that submit mind bogglingly bad PRs all of the time, and it's 100% because we hired them in a hasty manner and overlooking issues they displayed during interviews.
Neither of these bad devs use AI to my knowledge. On the other hand I use copilot constantly and the only difference I see in my work is that it takes me less time to complete a given task. It shaves 1-2 minutes off of writing a block/function several times an hour, and that is a good thing.
so your argument is because shitty devs exist that AI can't be a shitty tool.
Shitty tools exist. shitty devs exist. allowing AI code generation only serves as an excuse for shitty devs when they're allowed to use it. "oh sorry, the AI did that." "man that didn't work? musta been that new algorithm github updated yesterday."
shitty workers use shitty tools because they don't care about the quality and consistency of the product they build.
ever seen a legitimate carpenter use one of these things to build a house?
yeah, you won't because anything built with that will never pass inspection. shitty tools are used by shitty devs.
could AI code generation get better? absolutely! is it possible to use it today? sure. should you use it? absolutely not.
as software developers we have the power to build and do whatever we want. we have amazing powers that allow us to do that, but rarely do we ever stop to ask if we should do it.
They rather zone out and mindlessly click, copy/paste, etc. I’d rather analyze and break down the problem so I can solve it once and then move onto something more interesting to solve.
From what I've seen of AI code in my time using it, it often is an advanced form of copying and pasting. It frequently takes problems that could be better solved more efficiently with fewer lines of code or by generalizing the problem and does the (IMO evil) work of making the solution that used to require the most drudgery easy.
What you seem intent on missing though, is that if you use these kinds of tools mindlessly, then you are an irresponsible idiot. If you use them properly, then you spend less time typing boring shit which a skilled programmer can easily proofread much more quickly than type or look up in docs.
Why are you typing so much in the first place?
Software development for me is not a term paper. I once encountered a piece of software in industry that was maintaining what would be a database in any sane piece of software using a hashmap and thousands of lines of code.
AI makes software like this easier to write without your eyes glazing over, but it's been my career mission to stop people from writing this type of software in the first place.
... feel free to remain within the ignorant point of view that if a tool is misusable, then it's bad.
Have fun generating your crap code that me or someone like me will come along later and delete and replace with more efficient code that's a tenth of the line count and actually works because the company needs the bugs fixed.
There it is. It's always about believing you are superior to the millions of devs whose code these tools are trained on. You're obviously far superior to the rest of us. I was wrong, this isn't about ego, it's about objective fact!
Lol, it couldn't determine the right amount of letters in the word strawberry using its training before. I'm not criticizing the training data. I'm criticizing a tool and its output.
It's amusing to me that at first it's "don't blame the tool when it's misused" and now it's "the tool is smarter than any individual dev". So which is it? Is it impossible to misuse this tool because it's standing atop the shoulders of giants? Or is it something that has to be used with care and discretion and whose bad outputs can be blamed upon the individual coders who use it poorly?
Gonna go cry myself to sleep now. I feel so inferior
That's it. Don't respond to the points and the obvious contradictions in your bad arguments only explicable by your personal hard on for the tool, just keep shit posting through it instead.