3 ms·

If your devs can't work without something writing their code for them, why are you hiring them?

tom85 2y ago
Maybe they are just faster with AI.
cheema33 2y ago
> If your devs can't work without something writing their code for them, why are you hiring them? I am currently in the process of hiring a backend engineer. Anybody who does not use AI to aid development work gets an automatic disqualification. In my experience, a good engineer using AI tools will run circles around a good engineer not using AI tools.
- majewsky 2y ago
  > In my experience, a good engineer using AI tools will run circles around a good engineer not using AI tools. Even supposing that is true, what if you have a choice between a bad engineer who uses AI and a good engineer that won't?
- bccdee 2y ago
  "A good cyclist using training wheels will go circles around a good cyclist who doesn't." No, training wheels only help bad cyclists. You can't generalize that and assume they will make a good cyclist even better. AIs generate deeply mediocre code. This is better than anything a person who can't code on their own would produce, but an experienced developer will have to spend all their time babysitting the AI to get it to behave properly.
  - smabie 2y ago
    Turns out mediocre code is fine most of the time though
    - bccdee 2y ago
      Not really. Today's mediocre code is tomorrow's technical debt. LLMs often inject subtle bugs or misunderstand the context they're being used in and have to be badgered into respecting the parameters of requests. Would you rather write code yourself, or ask a first-year student to write it for you while you watch over their shoulder and tell them to go back and try again every time you notice a mistake? Which of these do you think is faster and better in the long run for the quality of your codebase?
- necovek 2y ago
  This is very much like saying "good engineer using StackOverflow will run circles around a good engineer who isn't". AI does help an engineer who embarks on a new voyage through unfamiliar APIs to guide them with usage patterns, but some people become much more efficient by going through the library docs. Typing out the code is the smallest part of a "good engineer's" job (and even so, having to adapt most of AI generated code is slower than typing it out yourself once you do understand the APIs). I do think it might work well for MVP-style quick prototyping, but using this as an applicant qualification criteria seems so weird (even when building an MVP, you want some tension between building it quickly and building it the right way).
Shawnecy 2y ago
I don't think it's so split between they can and can't. It's probably more about how it impacts velocity.
johannes1234321 2y ago
It's not about "being able" it is about being efficient. There are many cases where current AI can provide boilerplate and good examples for doing something specific, which eases things a lot. There is a lot, of course, one can't take 1:1 into the final product, but it helps to find the right libraries, helps to find patterns, the right parts/functions to use where verification in the applicable documentation or source is a lot simpler than finding it in the docs to begin with. Using it as a tool, while not a source of truth can be good. And don't get me started about writing all the boilerplate which sometimes is needed, which is too complex for a simple editor shortcut, but too tedious for me as a human. That I review and fix a lot faster than create by hand.

Maybe they are just faster with AI.

> If your devs can't work without something writing their code for them, why are you hiring them? I am currently in the process of hiring a backend engineer. Anybody who does not use AI to aid development work gets an automatic disqualification. In my experience, a good engineer using AI tools will run circles around a good engineer not using AI tools.

majewsky 2y ago
> In my experience, a good engineer using AI tools will run circles around a good engineer not using AI tools. Even supposing that is true, what if you have a choice between a bad engineer who uses AI and a good engineer that won't?
bccdee 2y ago
"A good cyclist using training wheels will go circles around a good cyclist who doesn't." No, training wheels only help bad cyclists. You can't generalize that and assume they will make a good cyclist even better. AIs generate deeply mediocre code. This is better than anything a person who can't code on their own would produce, but an experienced developer will have to spend all their time babysitting the AI to get it to behave properly.
- smabie 2y ago
  Turns out mediocre code is fine most of the time though
  - bccdee 2y ago
    Not really. Today's mediocre code is tomorrow's technical debt. LLMs often inject subtle bugs or misunderstand the context they're being used in and have to be badgered into respecting the parameters of requests. Would you rather write code yourself, or ask a first-year student to write it for you while you watch over their shoulder and tell them to go back and try again every time you notice a mistake? Which of these do you think is faster and better in the long run for the quality of your codebase?
necovek 2y ago
This is very much like saying "good engineer using StackOverflow will run circles around a good engineer who isn't". AI does help an engineer who embarks on a new voyage through unfamiliar APIs to guide them with usage patterns, but some people become much more efficient by going through the library docs. Typing out the code is the smallest part of a "good engineer's" job (and even so, having to adapt most of AI generated code is slower than typing it out yourself once you do understand the APIs). I do think it might work well for MVP-style quick prototyping, but using this as an applicant qualification criteria seems so weird (even when building an MVP, you want some tension between building it quickly and building it the right way).

Shawnecy 2y ago

I don't think it's so split between they can and can't. It's probably more about how it impacts velocity.

johannes1234321 2y ago

It's not about "being able" it is about being efficient. There are many cases where current AI can provide boilerplate and good examples for doing something specific, which eases things a lot. There is a lot, of course, one can't take 1:1 into the final product, but it helps to find the right libraries, helps to find patterns, the right parts/functions to use where verification in the applicable documentation or source is a lot simpler than finding it in the docs to begin with. Using it as a tool, while not a source of truth can be good. And don't get me started about writing all the boilerplate which sometimes is needed, which is too complex for a simple editor shortcut, but too tedious for me as a human. That I review and fix a lot faster than create by hand.