3 ms·

I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write be

by ein0p 2y ago

I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write better software with these tools. The talk of "replacement" is going to be premature until we get something remotely resembling AGI. Unless your problems are so simple that a monkey could solve them, AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them end to end. At best it'll fill in the easy parts, which you probably don't want to do anyway. Write a test. Simple refactor. Bang out some simple script to pay down some engineering debt. I've yet to see a system that doesn't crap out in the very beginning on the real problems that I solve on a daily basis. I'm by no means a naysayer - I work in this field and use AI many times daily.

paradite 2y ago
Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: - AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code) - I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.
- 000ooo000 2y ago
  >Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: I assume you also believe you'll be one of the developers AI doesn't replace.
  - paradite 2y ago
    I'm actively transitioning out of a "software engineer" role to be more open minded on how to coexist with AI while still contributing value. Prompt engineering, organizing code for AI agents to be more effective, guiding non-technical people to understand how to leverage AI, etc. I'm also building products myself and selling them myself.
- ein0p 2y ago
  See, the thing is, to determine which abstractions are "right and proper" you _already need a software engineer_ who knows those kinds of things. Moreover, that engineer needs to ability to read that code, understand it, and plan its evolution over time. He/she also needs to be able to fix the bugs, because there will be bugs.
  - paradite 2y ago
    I think your main thesis is that "AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them end to end." My belief is that we can't solve them today (agree with you), but we can solve them in foreseeable future (in 3 years). So it is really a matter of different beliefs. And I don't think we will be able to convince each other to switch belief. Let's just watch what happens?
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      I'm with you 100% of the way on this one. Am coding with Claude 3.5 right now using Aider. The future is clear at this point. It won't get worse and there's still so much low hanging fruit. Expertise is still useful to guide it, but we're all product managers now.
      - ein0p 2y ago
        There are a lot more photographers now than there ever were painters, and the size of the industry is much larger than it used to be. It is true that our work will change, but personally I think that's great - I don't enjoy the initial hump that you usually have to overcome before you begin to actually solve real problems, and AI is often able to take me over that hump, or fill in things that don't matter. E.g. I'm a backend person but need a frontend for the demo - I'm able to do that on my own now, without spending days figuring out some harebrained web framework and CSS stack - something I probably wouldn't do at all if there wasn't no AI.
        hollerith 2y ago
        Your analogy fails because the economy still needed human workers to take the photographs whereas there is a possibility that in 5 or 10 years, the economy will have no need and no use for most people.
- orwin 2y ago
  > 'proper abstraction' I assume you're not talking about chatgpt4o, because in my experience it's absolutely dogshit at abstracting code meaningfully. Good at finding design patterns, sure, but if your AI don't understand how to state machine, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to use it. It's great at writing tests and documentation though.
  - paradite 2y ago
    GPT-4o is at least 1 order of magnitude behind Claude 3.5 Sonnet in coding. I use latter.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      Claude is better most of the time on the simpler stuff, but o1 is better on some of the more difficult problems that Claude craps out on. Really $40/mo is not too much to pay for both.
      - paradite 2y ago
        That's the kind of thing I'd love to know more about. You should join my Discord channel so we can chat more: https://discord.gg/S44tzqHqU4 https://discord.gg/S44tzqHqU4
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  Today an AI told me that non-behavioral change in my codebase was going to give us a 10x improvement on our benchmarks. Frankly, if you were writing code that is worse structured than what GPT or whatever generates today then you are just a mediocre developer.

by ein0p 2y ago

paradite 2y ago

Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: - AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code) - I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.

000ooo000 2y ago
>Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: I assume you also believe you'll be one of the developers AI doesn't replace.
- paradite 2y ago
  I'm actively transitioning out of a "software engineer" role to be more open minded on how to coexist with AI while still contributing value. Prompt engineering, organizing code for AI agents to be more effective, guiding non-technical people to understand how to leverage AI, etc. I'm also building products myself and selling them myself.
ein0p 2y ago
See, the thing is, to determine which abstractions are "right and proper" you _already need a software engineer_ who knows those kinds of things. Moreover, that engineer needs to ability to read that code, understand it, and plan its evolution over time. He/she also needs to be able to fix the bugs, because there will be bugs.
- paradite 2y ago
  I think your main thesis is that "AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them end to end." My belief is that we can't solve them today (agree with you), but we can solve them in foreseeable future (in 3 years). So it is really a matter of different beliefs. And I don't think we will be able to convince each other to switch belief. Let's just watch what happens?
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    I'm with you 100% of the way on this one. Am coding with Claude 3.5 right now using Aider. The future is clear at this point. It won't get worse and there's still so much low hanging fruit. Expertise is still useful to guide it, but we're all product managers now.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      There are a lot more photographers now than there ever were painters, and the size of the industry is much larger than it used to be. It is true that our work will change, but personally I think that's great - I don't enjoy the initial hump that you usually have to overcome before you begin to actually solve real problems, and AI is often able to take me over that hump, or fill in things that don't matter. E.g. I'm a backend person but need a frontend for the demo - I'm able to do that on my own now, without spending days figuring out some harebrained web framework and CSS stack - something I probably wouldn't do at all if there wasn't no AI.
      - hollerith 2y ago
        Your analogy fails because the economy still needed human workers to take the photographs whereas there is a possibility that in 5 or 10 years, the economy will have no need and no use for most people.
orwin 2y ago
> 'proper abstraction' I assume you're not talking about chatgpt4o, because in my experience it's absolutely dogshit at abstracting code meaningfully. Good at finding design patterns, sure, but if your AI don't understand how to state machine, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to use it. It's great at writing tests and documentation though.
- paradite 2y ago
  GPT-4o is at least 1 order of magnitude behind Claude 3.5 Sonnet in coding. I use latter.
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Claude is better most of the time on the simpler stuff, but o1 is better on some of the more difficult problems that Claude craps out on. Really $40/mo is not too much to pay for both.
    - paradite 2y ago
      That's the kind of thing I'd love to know more about. You should join my Discord channel so we can chat more: https://discord.gg/S44tzqHqU4 https://discord.gg/S44tzqHqU4
UncleMeat 2y ago
Today an AI told me that non-behavioral change in my codebase was going to give us a 10x improvement on our benchmarks. Frankly, if you were writing code that is worse structured than what GPT or whatever generates today then you are just a mediocre developer.