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I disagree on the effect, ChatGPT / CoPilot is making it cheaper to produce more lines of code as a solution instead of requiring better understood and tested a

I disagree on the effect, ChatGPT / CoPilot is making it cheaper to produce more lines of code as a solution instead of requiring better understood and tested abstractions. I believe this will cause an increase on the trend of technical debt. There are several talks/papers/blogs on lines of code being a cost/liability and not a product/asset. (this blog post seems to assume the inverse)

ChatGTP 4y ago
The best code is code they doesn’t exist, the best part of my job is deleting code. Maybe the bots will start to get better at deleting, but generating more code is not necessarily a good thing.
Bjorkbat 4y ago
Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. The use of technical debt is a bit “funny” in that they’re using it to refer to a deficit of software, whereas it’s more commonly used to refer to less-than-ideal code that will need to be fixed later. For that reason, I could see AI-generated code leading to more tech debt since its output is, as the authors put it, “cheap enough to waste”. People might get the idea to just have it crank out AI code snippets with no real bearing on what they actually do or no real care to refactor said snippets for reuse / readability until their house of cards collapses.
- fabianhjr 4y ago
  According to github, 46% of new code of their organization clients is copilot written. https://github.blog/2023-02-14-github-copilot-for-business-is-now-available/ https://github.blog/2023-02-14-github-copilot-for-business-i... So we get about 2-fold increase on code to debug and fix later.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    That's a problem for next quarter though If you can't create the code to begin with, what hope could you possibly have of supporting it?
    - DrewADesign 4y ago
      Can't != don't have to
  - thephyber 4y ago
    It’s worth remembering that 95% of new companies fail fairly quickly. Assume that most code written by them never lives on after. Writing code, like offering a product/service in the economy, is game theory. After a period of LOC / copypasta increase, there will be more need for development refactors. Personally, I’m trying to use LLMs to learn to upgrade my knowledge of abstractions and getting experience with refactoring using CodeMods /JsCodeShift.

ChatGTP 4y ago

The best code is code they doesn’t exist, the best part of my job is deleting code. Maybe the bots will start to get better at deleting, but generating more code is not necessarily a good thing.

Bjorkbat 4y ago

Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. The use of technical debt is a bit “funny” in that they’re using it to refer to a deficit of software, whereas it’s more commonly used to refer to less-than-ideal code that will need to be fixed later. For that reason, I could see AI-generated code leading to more tech debt since its output is, as the authors put it, “cheap enough to waste”. People might get the idea to just have it crank out AI code snippets with no real bearing on what they actually do or no real care to refactor said snippets for reuse / readability until their house of cards collapses.

fabianhjr 4y ago
According to github, 46% of new code of their organization clients is copilot written. https://github.blog/2023-02-14-github-copilot-for-business-is-now-available/ https://github.blog/2023-02-14-github-copilot-for-business-i... So we get about 2-fold increase on code to debug and fix later.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  That's a problem for next quarter though If you can't create the code to begin with, what hope could you possibly have of supporting it?
  - DrewADesign 4y ago
    Can't != don't have to
- thephyber 4y ago
  It’s worth remembering that 95% of new companies fail fairly quickly. Assume that most code written by them never lives on after. Writing code, like offering a product/service in the economy, is game theory. After a period of LOC / copypasta increase, there will be more need for development refactors. Personally, I’m trying to use LLMs to learn to upgrade my knowledge of abstractions and getting experience with refactoring using CodeMods /JsCodeShift.