6 ms·

Seeing Microsoft employees argue with an LLM for hours instead of actually just fixing the problem must be a very encouraging sight for businesses that have bui

Seeing Microsoft employees argue with an LLM for hours instead of actually just fixing the problem must be a very encouraging sight for businesses that have built their products on top of .NET.

nashashmi 1y ago
I sometimes feel like that is the right outcome for bad management and bad instructions. Only this time they can’t blame the junior engineer and are left to only blame themselves.
- qoez 1y ago
  They'll probably blame openai/the AI instead.
  - nashashmi 1y ago
    AI has reproducible outcomes. If someone else can make it work, then they should too.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - daveguy 1y ago
      This is just false. Do these models even have reproducible outcomes with a temperature of 0? Aren't they also severely restricted with a temp of 0?
      - nashashmi 1y ago
        Some randomization is intentionally introduced. We are not accounting for that. Otherwise, it should be able to give you the same information.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- snackernews 1y ago
  I think we all know they won’t. I am genuinely curious though to see the strategies they employ to absolve themselves of guilt and foolishness. Is there precedent for the entire exec and management class embracing a new trend to this kind of extent, then it blowing up in their faces?
ozim 1y ago
That is why they just fired 7k people so they don’t argue with LLM but let it do the work /s
svick 1y ago
You don't want them to experiment with new tools? The main difference now is that the experiment is public.
- gmm1990 1y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily call that just an experiment if the same requests aren't being fixed without copilot and the ai changes could get merged. I would say the copilot system isn't really there yet for these kinds of changes, you don't have to run experiments on a language framework to figure that out.
- stickfigure 1y ago
  It's pretty obviously a failed experiment. Why keep repeating it? Try again in another 3 months. The answer is probably that the Copilot team is using the rest of the engineering organization as testers. Great for the Copilot team, frustrating for everyone else.
  - raydev 1y ago
    > It's pretty obviously a failed experiment For it to be "failed" it would have to also be finished/completed. They are likely continuously making tweaks, this thing was just released.
    - vrighter 1y ago
      "This thing has just released" "It would have to be finished/completed" Do you honestly not see a problem with those two statements in such close proximity? Is it finished or is it released? The former is supposed to be a prerequisite for the latter.
      - tremon 1y ago
        What bliss it must be, to never have encountered Microsoft software before.
mikrl 1y ago
I remember before mass LLM adoption, reading an issue on GitHub where an increasingly frustrated user was failing to properly describe a blocking issue, and the increasingly frustrated maintainer was failing to get them to stick to the issue template. Now you don’t even need the frustrated end user!
- shultays 1y ago
  one day both sides will be AI so we can all relax and enjoy our mojitos
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    Well, people have been putting M-x doctor to talk with M-x eliza for decades.
  - some_random 1y ago
    when that day arrives we'll won't be relaxing, we will be put through a wood chipper
    - disqard 1y ago
      ...to turn us into soylent-flavored mojitos?
gwervc 1y ago
Especially painful when one of said employee is Stephen Toub, who is famous for his .net performance blog posts.
- svaha1728 1y ago
  I was thinking that too. He's a great programmer, and at this point I can't imagine he's having fun 'prompting' an LLM to write correct code.
  - daveguy 1y ago
    I hope he writes a personal essay about the experience after he leaves Microsoft. Not that he will leave anytime soon, but the first hand accounts of how they are talking about these systems internally are going to be even more entertaining than the wtf PRs.
    - square_usual 1y ago
      This comment thread is incredible. It's like fanfiction of a real person. Of course this engineer I respect shares my opinion. Not only that, he's obviously going to quit because of this. And then he'll write a blog post I'll get to enjoy. Anyway, this is his public, stated opinion on this: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762#issuecomment-2897683991 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762#issuecomment-2...
      - svaha1728 1y ago
        If he reiterates that comment to me after two beers in a relaxing bar I might believe him.
        daveguy 1y ago
        Hahaha. 1000% this. Also, first example from the linked video: a "not vibe coded, promise" example of an ascii space invaders clone... Of all the examples of "has a bunch of training code data since the 80s", this is the best representation of exactly what LLM coding is capable of "in 8 minutes".
empath75 1y ago
The point of this exercise for Microsoft isn't to produce usable code right now, but to use and improve copilot.
- saati 1y ago
  They can do that in private repos just as easily, this a pr stunt that backfired very badly.
lloydatkinson 1y ago
That is essentially what I tried to say in my comment there but don't think they wanted to hear it.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
LunaSea 1y ago
Microsoft closed their recently acquired advertisement buy-side platform Xander Invest because they are replacing it with an AI-only platform. They only gave their customers 9 months to migrate away. I'm expecting that Microsoft did this to artificially pump up their AI usage numbers for next year by forcibly removing non-AI alternatives. This only one example in AdTech but I expect other industries to be hit as well.
AllegedAlec 1y ago
Given that Microsoft always decided to Will Not Fix issues because they went "oh this thing is throwing errors? Just ignore them". THey're numbskulls that are high on their own farts just as much as their managers. They deserve everything that's happening to them.
pier25 1y ago
Yeah it's quite disheartening. I recently spent a couple of months studying C# and .NET and working on my first project with it. .NET, Blazor, etc are not known for a fast release schedule... but if things are going to become even slower with this AI crap I wonder if I made the right call. I'm quite happy how things are today for making web APIs but I wish Blazor and other frameworks were in a much better shape.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
  .NET has major releases every year. How is that slow for a programming platform/framework?
  - cratermoon 1y ago
    Go has a six month release cycle. Rust releases a new stable every six weeks.
    - Kwpolska 1y ago
      Six weeks works for a young language like Rust. .NET releases also include application development frameworks in addition to the language itself.
  - pier25 1y ago
    Yes but the improvements are very gradual. It takes years for something to reach maturity. At least for the web stuff which is what I know of. Eg: Minimal APIs were released in 2021 but it won't be until .NET 10 that they will have validation. Amazing that validation was not a day one priority for an API. I'm not certain if even in .NET 10 Minimal APIs will have full parity of features with MVC. Minification of static assets didn't come until .NET 9 released in 2024. This was already commonplace in the JS world a decade earlier. It could have been a quick win so long ago for .NET web apps. Blazor was released in 2018. 7 years later they still haven't fixed plenty of circuit reconnection issues. They are working on it but progress is also quite slow. Supposedly with .NET 10 session state will be able to be persist etc but it remains to be seen. OpenAPI is also hit and miss. Spec v3.1 released in 2021 is still not supported. Supposedly it will come with .NET 10. Not from .NET but they have a project called Kiota for generating clients from OpenAPI specs. It's unusable because of this huge issue that makes all properties in a type nullable. It's been open since 2023. [1] Etc. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/kiota/issues/3911 https://github.com/microsoft/kiota/issues/3911

Seeing Microsoft employees argue with an LLM for hours instead of actually just fixing the problem must be a very encouraging sight for businesses that have built their products on top of .NET.

nashashmi 1y ago

I sometimes feel like that is the right outcome for bad management and bad instructions. Only this time they can’t blame the junior engineer and are left to only blame themselves.

qoez 1y ago
They'll probably blame openai/the AI instead.
- nashashmi 1y ago
  AI has reproducible outcomes. If someone else can make it work, then they should too.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - daveguy 1y ago
    This is just false. Do these models even have reproducible outcomes with a temperature of 0? Aren't they also severely restricted with a temp of 0?
    - nashashmi 1y ago
      Some randomization is intentionally introduced. We are not accounting for that. Otherwise, it should be able to give you the same information.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
snackernews 1y ago
I think we all know they won’t. I am genuinely curious though to see the strategies they employ to absolve themselves of guilt and foolishness. Is there precedent for the entire exec and management class embracing a new trend to this kind of extent, then it blowing up in their faces?

ozim 1y ago

That is why they just fired 7k people so they don’t argue with LLM but let it do the work /s

svick 1y ago

You don't want them to experiment with new tools? The main difference now is that the experiment is public.

gmm1990 1y ago
I wouldn't necessarily call that just an experiment if the same requests aren't being fixed without copilot and the ai changes could get merged. I would say the copilot system isn't really there yet for these kinds of changes, you don't have to run experiments on a language framework to figure that out.
stickfigure 1y ago
It's pretty obviously a failed experiment. Why keep repeating it? Try again in another 3 months. The answer is probably that the Copilot team is using the rest of the engineering organization as testers. Great for the Copilot team, frustrating for everyone else.
- raydev 1y ago
  > It's pretty obviously a failed experiment For it to be "failed" it would have to also be finished/completed. They are likely continuously making tweaks, this thing was just released.
  - vrighter 1y ago
    "This thing has just released" "It would have to be finished/completed" Do you honestly not see a problem with those two statements in such close proximity? Is it finished or is it released? The former is supposed to be a prerequisite for the latter.
    - tremon 1y ago
      What bliss it must be, to never have encountered Microsoft software before.

mikrl 1y ago

I remember before mass LLM adoption, reading an issue on GitHub where an increasingly frustrated user was failing to properly describe a blocking issue, and the increasingly frustrated maintainer was failing to get them to stick to the issue template. Now you don’t even need the frustrated end user!

shultays 1y ago
one day both sides will be AI so we can all relax and enjoy our mojitos
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  Well, people have been putting M-x doctor to talk with M-x eliza for decades.
- some_random 1y ago
  when that day arrives we'll won't be relaxing, we will be put through a wood chipper
  - disqard 1y ago
    ...to turn us into soylent-flavored mojitos?

gwervc 1y ago

Especially painful when one of said employee is Stephen Toub, who is famous for his .net performance blog posts.

svaha1728 1y ago
I was thinking that too. He's a great programmer, and at this point I can't imagine he's having fun 'prompting' an LLM to write correct code.
- daveguy 1y ago
  I hope he writes a personal essay about the experience after he leaves Microsoft. Not that he will leave anytime soon, but the first hand accounts of how they are talking about these systems internally are going to be even more entertaining than the wtf PRs.
  - square_usual 1y ago
    This comment thread is incredible. It's like fanfiction of a real person. Of course this engineer I respect shares my opinion. Not only that, he's obviously going to quit because of this. And then he'll write a blog post I'll get to enjoy. Anyway, this is his public, stated opinion on this: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762#issuecomment-2897683991 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762#issuecomment-2...
    - svaha1728 1y ago
      If he reiterates that comment to me after two beers in a relaxing bar I might believe him.
      - daveguy 1y ago
        Hahaha. 1000% this. Also, first example from the linked video: a "not vibe coded, promise" example of an ascii space invaders clone... Of all the examples of "has a bunch of training code data since the 80s", this is the best representation of exactly what LLM coding is capable of "in 8 minutes".

empath75 1y ago

The point of this exercise for Microsoft isn't to produce usable code right now, but to use and improve copilot.

saati 1y ago
They can do that in private repos just as easily, this a pr stunt that backfired very badly.

lloydatkinson 1y ago

That is essentially what I tried to say in my comment there but don't think they wanted to hear it.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

LunaSea 1y ago

Microsoft closed their recently acquired advertisement buy-side platform Xander Invest because they are replacing it with an AI-only platform. They only gave their customers 9 months to migrate away. I'm expecting that Microsoft did this to artificially pump up their AI usage numbers for next year by forcibly removing non-AI alternatives. This only one example in AdTech but I expect other industries to be hit as well.

AllegedAlec 1y ago

Given that Microsoft always decided to Will Not Fix issues because they went "oh this thing is throwing errors? Just ignore them". THey're numbskulls that are high on their own farts just as much as their managers. They deserve everything that's happening to them.

pier25 1y ago

Yeah it's quite disheartening. I recently spent a couple of months studying C# and .NET and working on my first project with it. .NET, Blazor, etc are not known for a fast release schedule... but if things are going to become even slower with this AI crap I wonder if I made the right call. I'm quite happy how things are today for making web APIs but I wish Blazor and other frameworks were in a much better shape.

Kwpolska 1y ago
.NET has major releases every year. How is that slow for a programming platform/framework?
- cratermoon 1y ago
  Go has a six month release cycle. Rust releases a new stable every six weeks.
  - Kwpolska 1y ago
    Six weeks works for a young language like Rust. .NET releases also include application development frameworks in addition to the language itself.
- pier25 1y ago
  Yes but the improvements are very gradual. It takes years for something to reach maturity. At least for the web stuff which is what I know of. Eg: Minimal APIs were released in 2021 but it won't be until .NET 10 that they will have validation. Amazing that validation was not a day one priority for an API. I'm not certain if even in .NET 10 Minimal APIs will have full parity of features with MVC. Minification of static assets didn't come until .NET 9 released in 2024. This was already commonplace in the JS world a decade earlier. It could have been a quick win so long ago for .NET web apps. Blazor was released in 2018. 7 years later they still haven't fixed plenty of circuit reconnection issues. They are working on it but progress is also quite slow. Supposedly with .NET 10 session state will be able to be persist etc but it remains to be seen. OpenAPI is also hit and miss. Spec v3.1 released in 2021 is still not supported. Supposedly it will come with .NET 10. Not from .NET but they have a project called Kiota for generating clients from OpenAPI specs. It's unusable because of this huge issue that makes all properties in a type nullable. It's been open since 2023. [1] Etc. [1] https://github.com/microsoft/kiota/issues/3911 https://github.com/microsoft/kiota/issues/3911