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> I can't imagine how the people who have to deal with this are feeling. It's like you have a junior developer except they don't even read what you're telling t

> I can't imagine how the people who have to deal with this are feeling. It's like you have a junior developer except they don't even read what you're telling them, and have 0 agency to understand what they're actually doing. That comparison is awful. I work with quite a few Junior developers and they can be competent. Certainly don't make the silly mistakes that LLMs do, don't need nearly as much handholding, and tend to learn pretty quickly so I don't have to keep repeating myself. LLMs are decent code assistants when used with care, and can do a lot of heavy lifting, they certainly speed me up when I have a clear picture of what I want to do, and they are good to bounce off ideas when I am planning for something. That said, I really don't see how it could meaningfully replace an intern however, much less an actual developer.

sbarre 1y ago
I think that was the point of the comparison.. It's not like a regular junior developer, it's much worse.
- spacemadness 1y ago
  And yet it got the job and lots of would be juniors didn’t, and it seems to be costing the company more in compute and senior dev handholding. Nice work silicon valley.
safety1st 1y ago
These GH interactions remind me of one of those offshore software outsourcing firms on Upwork or Freelancer.com that bid $3/hr on every project that gets posted. There's a PM who takes your task and gives it to a "developer" who potentially has never actually written a line of code, but maybe they've built a WordPress site by pointing and clicking in Elementor or something. After dozens of hours billed you will, in fact, get code where the new file wasn't added to the csproj or something like that, and when you point it out, they will bill another 20 hours, and send you a new copy of the project, where the test always fails. It's exactly like this. Nice to see that Microsoft has automated that, failure will be cheaper now.
- dkdbejwi383 1y ago
  This gives me flashbacks to when my big corporate former employer outsourced a bunch of work offshore. An outsourced contractor was tasked with a very simple job as their first task - update a single dependency, which required just a bump of the version and no code changes - after three days of them seemingly struggling to even understand what they were asked to do, inability to clone the repo, failure to install the necessary tooling on their machine, they ended up getting fired from the project. Complete waste of money, and the time of those of us having to delegate and review this work.
  - 98codes 1y ago
    Makes me wonder if the pattern will continue to follow, and we start to find certain agents—maybe due to config, maybe due to the training codebase and the codebase they're pointed at—that will become the single one out of the group we can rely on. Give instructions, get good code back. That's the dream, though I think the pieces that need to fall into place for particular cases will prevent reaching that top quality bar in the general case.
    - throwanem 1y ago
      Yeah, this is what we used to call "hiring." People who think it can ever come with guarantees make incompetent and tiresome clients. I can't wait for the first AI agent programmer to realize this and start turning down jobs working for garbage people...or exploiting them at scale for pennies each, in a labor version of the "salami slicing" scheme. I don't mean humans using AI to do this, which of course has been at scale for years. I mean the first agent to discover a job prioritization heuristic on its own which leads to the same result.
- voxic11 1y ago
  Actually the AI might still be more expensive at this point. But give it a few years I'm sure they will get the costs down.
- AbstractH24 1y ago
  > These GH interactions remind me of one of those offshore software outsourcing firms on Upwork or Freelancer.com that bid $3/hr on every project that gets posted Those have long been the folks I’ve seen at the biggest risk of being replaced by AI. Tasks that didn’t rely on human interaction or much training, just brute force which can be done from anywhere. And for them, that $3/hr was really good money.
preisschild 1y ago
> That said, I really don't see how it could meaningfully replace an intern however And even if it could, how do you get senior devs without junior devs? ^^
- lazide 1y ago
  Sounds like a next quarter problem (I wish it was /s).
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  What is making it difficult for Junior devs to be hired is not AI. That is a diversion. The raise in interest rates a couple of years ago triggered many layoffs in the industry. When that happens salaries are squeezed. Experienced people work for less, and juniors have trouble finding job because they are now competing against people with plenty of experience.
- theamk 1y ago
  Simple, there are always people who are intentionally using the hard way. There is a community programming old 16-bit machines for example, which are much harder than modern tools. Or someone learning assembly language "just for fun". Some of those (or similar) people will actually learn new stuff and become senior devs. Yes, there will be much fewer of them, so they'll command a higher salary, and they will deliver amazing stuff. The rest, who spend their entire carrier being AI handlers, will never raise above junior/mid level. (Well, either that or people who cannot program by themselves will get promoted anyway, the software will get more bugs and less features, and things will be generally worse for both consumers and programmers... but I prefer not to think about this option)
PKop 1y ago
Did you miss the "except" in his sentence? He was making the point this is worse than junior devs for all reasons listed.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  I was agreeing with him, by saying that the comparison is awful. Not sure how it can be read otherwise.
  - Revisional_Sin 1y ago
    You were agreeing with him by saying his comparison was awful? That doesn't make any sense.
kaycey2022 1y ago
> It's like you have a senior phd level intelligence developer except they don't even read what you're telling them, and have 0 agency to understand what they're actually doing. Is that better?

sbarre 1y ago

I think that was the point of the comparison.. It's not like a regular junior developer, it's much worse.

spacemadness 1y ago
And yet it got the job and lots of would be juniors didn’t, and it seems to be costing the company more in compute and senior dev handholding. Nice work silicon valley.

safety1st 1y ago

These GH interactions remind me of one of those offshore software outsourcing firms on Upwork or Freelancer.com that bid $3/hr on every project that gets posted. There's a PM who takes your task and gives it to a "developer" who potentially has never actually written a line of code, but maybe they've built a WordPress site by pointing and clicking in Elementor or something. After dozens of hours billed you will, in fact, get code where the new file wasn't added to the csproj or something like that, and when you point it out, they will bill another 20 hours, and send you a new copy of the project, where the test always fails. It's exactly like this. Nice to see that Microsoft has automated that, failure will be cheaper now.

dkdbejwi383 1y ago
This gives me flashbacks to when my big corporate former employer outsourced a bunch of work offshore. An outsourced contractor was tasked with a very simple job as their first task - update a single dependency, which required just a bump of the version and no code changes - after three days of them seemingly struggling to even understand what they were asked to do, inability to clone the repo, failure to install the necessary tooling on their machine, they ended up getting fired from the project. Complete waste of money, and the time of those of us having to delegate and review this work.
- 98codes 1y ago
  Makes me wonder if the pattern will continue to follow, and we start to find certain agents—maybe due to config, maybe due to the training codebase and the codebase they're pointed at—that will become the single one out of the group we can rely on. Give instructions, get good code back. That's the dream, though I think the pieces that need to fall into place for particular cases will prevent reaching that top quality bar in the general case.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    Yeah, this is what we used to call "hiring." People who think it can ever come with guarantees make incompetent and tiresome clients. I can't wait for the first AI agent programmer to realize this and start turning down jobs working for garbage people...or exploiting them at scale for pennies each, in a labor version of the "salami slicing" scheme. I don't mean humans using AI to do this, which of course has been at scale for years. I mean the first agent to discover a job prioritization heuristic on its own which leads to the same result.
voxic11 1y ago
Actually the AI might still be more expensive at this point. But give it a few years I'm sure they will get the costs down.
AbstractH24 1y ago
> These GH interactions remind me of one of those offshore software outsourcing firms on Upwork or Freelancer.com that bid $3/hr on every project that gets posted Those have long been the folks I’ve seen at the biggest risk of being replaced by AI. Tasks that didn’t rely on human interaction or much training, just brute force which can be done from anywhere. And for them, that $3/hr was really good money.

preisschild 1y ago

> That said, I really don't see how it could meaningfully replace an intern however And even if it could, how do you get senior devs without junior devs? ^^

lazide 1y ago
Sounds like a next quarter problem (I wish it was /s).
surgical_fire 1y ago
What is making it difficult for Junior devs to be hired is not AI. That is a diversion. The raise in interest rates a couple of years ago triggered many layoffs in the industry. When that happens salaries are squeezed. Experienced people work for less, and juniors have trouble finding job because they are now competing against people with plenty of experience.
theamk 1y ago
Simple, there are always people who are intentionally using the hard way. There is a community programming old 16-bit machines for example, which are much harder than modern tools. Or someone learning assembly language "just for fun". Some of those (or similar) people will actually learn new stuff and become senior devs. Yes, there will be much fewer of them, so they'll command a higher salary, and they will deliver amazing stuff. The rest, who spend their entire carrier being AI handlers, will never raise above junior/mid level. (Well, either that or people who cannot program by themselves will get promoted anyway, the software will get more bugs and less features, and things will be generally worse for both consumers and programmers... but I prefer not to think about this option)

PKop 1y ago

Did you miss the "except" in his sentence? He was making the point this is worse than junior devs for all reasons listed.

surgical_fire 1y ago
I was agreeing with him, by saying that the comparison is awful. Not sure how it can be read otherwise.
- Revisional_Sin 1y ago
  You were agreeing with him by saying his comparison was awful? That doesn't make any sense.

kaycey2022 1y ago

> It's like you have a senior phd level intelligence developer except they don't even read what you're telling them, and have 0 agency to understand what they're actually doing. Is that better?