3 ms·

The other day I was reviewing the work of a peer on a relatively easy task (using a SDK to manage some remote resources given a static configuration). At sever

The other day I was reviewing the work of a peer on a relatively easy task (using a SDK to manage some remote resources given a static configuration). At several times I was like « why did you do that this way? This is so contrived ». And I should have known better but of course the answer started with « … I know but Copilot did this or that… ». Of course no test to validate properly the implementation. The sentiment expressed in the article were developers won’t even bother to validate the output of coding assistants is real. And that’s one of the biggest shame to this current hype: quality was already decreasing for the past 10 years, signs indicate this will only go downhill from here

xkcd1963 2y ago
Its actually amazing news, worse software quality means more oportunities for hackers and better tools
- mc3301 2y ago
  Or people just become satisfied with lower quality. Hand-crafted chairs from a woodworker used to be the only way to get a chair. You'd get an amazing, life-long chair with no flaws. Now that chairs are cheaply made in factories, we can have multiple different chairs with many flaws. And just toss them out and go on to the next one when needed. But... those sturdy beautiful fine-wordworker-made chairs are still being built. They are just more rare, expensive, and special than ever before.
  - myaccountonhn 2y ago
    Yeah that's where I think it's going. Quality software will have no space but a niche, and so your customers will be the top 1% that can afford it.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    You actually believe that not a single woodworker said to himself, there are only so many wealthy people, I might do better if I make some chairs from cheap wood in a hurry, not doing so much polishing or ornamentaion, and I can make twice as many and sell to the not-so-rich people? You really don't think that existed?
    - guappa 2y ago
      One of the reasons of the downfall of Florence was that they didn't enter the low quality textile market and remained on the high end stuff.
      - listenallyall 1y ago
        the fact that low-quality goods/markets existed, whether textiles or chairs, contradicts the OP's original comment and solidifies mine: "the only way to get a chair... an amazing, life-long chair with no flaws"
- nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
  I have to disagree here based on experience--the majority of software projects I've worked on really didn't care much for "quality" in any sense. A HUGE portion of work in f500 companies that are non-software firms is outsourced--these companies spend loads of cash on consulting companies (yes, those ones) that often produce results to which the description of sub-par would be a compliment. There's been various cases made public, but more often is routine and poor quality mundane work that's way over budget and barely meets requirements. If anything, the prevalence and adoption of LLM-generated code will increase the quality in a lot of places. If you've never had to wade through something that one of Those Companies wrote, you have no idea how bad it gets and how frequently this is the case. We just saw DOGE-related cuts to Accenture and Deloitte--these companies have huge contracts all over the place, not just public sector. There's a massive amount of crap out there. Most companies do not care, do not understand "quality" outside of some cargo-culted notion of "clean", have only adopted modern practices as some sort of ritual* of Things You Do without any assessment on what tangibly works or doesn't, have no understanding of how to attract skilled professionals, nor assess them, nor nurture them. Often their definition of skilled is a resume that contains the proper "experience" with whatever Java/Angular/React/we-love-containers thing they use. With the right number of "years" near it. *a recent example--company has GH Actions with CI/CD for every commit on all branches but routinely suffers delays due to misconfigurations, runner issues, and other headaches. Code Reviews for PRs exist but are basically pedantry that just slow down deployments ("change this to switch over if-else") while missing crucial bugs, randomly updating major dependencies cause vague security warning that breaks interfaces and other APIs. All this and more--and this is one of the better examples I can think of, in terms of "quality." I'm saying this as I worked at a Pretty Good consulting company that's business model changed to sub-outsourcing some of the labor to some of These Companies and often had to fix, assist, push back on, work extra to clean up, the various decisions made in these cases. I also "inherited" and worked on fixes for things left behind by some of these places. Good thing is there often was low-hanging fruit. Extra and overprovisioned cloud resources wasting $$ and the like, absurd architectures with extra dbs and queues, and all sorts of nightmares.
thunky 2y ago
Stack overflow was never a good excuse for crappy work and neither is AI. Your real problem is a people problem: hiring, management, feedback, etc.
- rmnclmnt 1y ago
  Problem is, big corporations top level management think GenAI will turn crappy developers into superstars. Happy to be an independant and not an employee to not put up with this crap
helle253 1y ago
what's funny is that I have had good experience using the opposite workflow as said coworker Do implementation with minimal (not none, tbf) AI support, ask copilot if there are any obvious issues with and otherwise check my work. This workflow has helped me catch quite a few gotchas I would have otherwise missed. Coding assistants are really helpful for validating output, I've had much more mixed results trying to use it to generate novel outputs.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  was thinking about this while reading another story about AI code review. Having an LLM write the code for me? Blecch, it doesn't do it right. Have an LLM make suggestions about my code? That's fine. If some of them are asinine I just get to laugh and feel smart while ignoring them. But if 1/5 of the suggestions are actually good? That's a win. But if 1/5 of the questions I ask an LLM are correct, that's a waste of time. Funny how the accuracy of the model matters a different amount depending on the task at hand!
- rmnclmnt 1y ago
  That’s because it’s pretty safe to safe you have experience and have seend havoc in the past. Less experienced developers are the primary vector of propagation for this « low quality » output, with seniors trying to educate and review the mess (if time permits)

xkcd1963 2y ago

Its actually amazing news, worse software quality means more oportunities for hackers and better tools

mc3301 2y ago
Or people just become satisfied with lower quality. Hand-crafted chairs from a woodworker used to be the only way to get a chair. You'd get an amazing, life-long chair with no flaws. Now that chairs are cheaply made in factories, we can have multiple different chairs with many flaws. And just toss them out and go on to the next one when needed. But... those sturdy beautiful fine-wordworker-made chairs are still being built. They are just more rare, expensive, and special than ever before.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  Yeah that's where I think it's going. Quality software will have no space but a niche, and so your customers will be the top 1% that can afford it.
- listenallyall 2y ago
  You actually believe that not a single woodworker said to himself, there are only so many wealthy people, I might do better if I make some chairs from cheap wood in a hurry, not doing so much polishing or ornamentaion, and I can make twice as many and sell to the not-so-rich people? You really don't think that existed?
  - guappa 2y ago
    One of the reasons of the downfall of Florence was that they didn't enter the low quality textile market and remained on the high end stuff.
    - listenallyall 1y ago
      the fact that low-quality goods/markets existed, whether textiles or chairs, contradicts the OP's original comment and solidifies mine: "the only way to get a chair... an amazing, life-long chair with no flaws"
nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
I have to disagree here based on experience--the majority of software projects I've worked on really didn't care much for "quality" in any sense. A HUGE portion of work in f500 companies that are non-software firms is outsourced--these companies spend loads of cash on consulting companies (yes, those ones) that often produce results to which the description of sub-par would be a compliment. There's been various cases made public, but more often is routine and poor quality mundane work that's way over budget and barely meets requirements. If anything, the prevalence and adoption of LLM-generated code will increase the quality in a lot of places. If you've never had to wade through something that one of Those Companies wrote, you have no idea how bad it gets and how frequently this is the case. We just saw DOGE-related cuts to Accenture and Deloitte--these companies have huge contracts all over the place, not just public sector. There's a massive amount of crap out there. Most companies do not care, do not understand "quality" outside of some cargo-culted notion of "clean", have only adopted modern practices as some sort of ritual* of Things You Do without any assessment on what tangibly works or doesn't, have no understanding of how to attract skilled professionals, nor assess them, nor nurture them. Often their definition of skilled is a resume that contains the proper "experience" with whatever Java/Angular/React/we-love-containers thing they use. With the right number of "years" near it. *a recent example--company has GH Actions with CI/CD for every commit on all branches but routinely suffers delays due to misconfigurations, runner issues, and other headaches. Code Reviews for PRs exist but are basically pedantry that just slow down deployments ("change this to switch over if-else") while missing crucial bugs, randomly updating major dependencies cause vague security warning that breaks interfaces and other APIs. All this and more--and this is one of the better examples I can think of, in terms of "quality." I'm saying this as I worked at a Pretty Good consulting company that's business model changed to sub-outsourcing some of the labor to some of These Companies and often had to fix, assist, push back on, work extra to clean up, the various decisions made in these cases. I also "inherited" and worked on fixes for things left behind by some of these places. Good thing is there often was low-hanging fruit. Extra and overprovisioned cloud resources wasting $$ and the like, absurd architectures with extra dbs and queues, and all sorts of nightmares.

thunky 2y ago

Stack overflow was never a good excuse for crappy work and neither is AI. Your real problem is a people problem: hiring, management, feedback, etc.

rmnclmnt 1y ago
Problem is, big corporations top level management think GenAI will turn crappy developers into superstars. Happy to be an independant and not an employee to not put up with this crap

helle253 1y ago

what's funny is that I have had good experience using the opposite workflow as said coworker Do implementation with minimal (not none, tbf) AI support, ask copilot if there are any obvious issues with and otherwise check my work. This workflow has helped me catch quite a few gotchas I would have otherwise missed. Coding assistants are really helpful for validating output, I've had much more mixed results trying to use it to generate novel outputs.

dingnuts 1y ago
was thinking about this while reading another story about AI code review. Having an LLM write the code for me? Blecch, it doesn't do it right. Have an LLM make suggestions about my code? That's fine. If some of them are asinine I just get to laugh and feel smart while ignoring them. But if 1/5 of the suggestions are actually good? That's a win. But if 1/5 of the questions I ask an LLM are correct, that's a waste of time. Funny how the accuracy of the model matters a different amount depending on the task at hand!
rmnclmnt 1y ago
That’s because it’s pretty safe to safe you have experience and have seend havoc in the past. Less experienced developers are the primary vector of propagation for this « low quality » output, with seniors trying to educate and review the mess (if time permits)