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> the authors vibe out while playing guitar and clipping their toenails I don't think anyone is claiming that. If you submit changes to a FOSS project and an L

> the authors vibe out while playing guitar and clipping their toenails I don't think anyone is claiming that. If you submit changes to a FOSS project and an LLM assisted you in writing them how would anyone know? Assuming at least that you are an otherwise competent developer and that you carefully review all code before you commit it. The (admittedly still controversial) claim being made is that developers with LLM assistance are more productive than those without. Further, that there is little incentive for such developers to advertise this assistance. Less trouble for all involved to represent it as 100% your own unassisted work.

EGreg 1y ago
Why would you need to carefully review code? That is so 2024. You’re bottlenecking the process and are at a disadvantage when the AI could be working 24/7. We have AI agents that have been trained to review thousands of PRs that are produced by other, generative agents, and together they have already churned out much more software than human teams can write in a year. AI “assistance” is a short intermediate phase, like the “centaurs” that Garry Kasparov was very fond of (human + computer beat both a human and a computer by itself… until the computer-only became better). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess
- amake 1y ago
  > We have AI agents that have been trained to review thousands of PRs that are produced by other, generative agents, and together they have already churned out much more software than human teams can write in a year. Was your comment tongue-in-cheek? If not, where is this huge mass of AI-generated software?
  - rvnx 1y ago
    All around you, just that it doesn’t make sense for developers to reveal that a lot of their work is now about chunking and refining the specifications written by the product owner. Admitting such is like admitting you are overpaid for your job, and that a 20 USD AI-agent can do better and faster than you for 75% of the work. Is it easy to admit that you have learnt skills for 10+ years that are progressively already getting replaced by a machine ? (like thousands of jobs in the past). More and more, developer is going to be a monkey job where your only task is to make sure there is enough coal in the steam machine. Compilers destroyed the jobs of developers writing assembler code, they had to adapt. They insisted that hand-written assembler was better. Here is the same, except you write code in natural language. It may not be optimal in all situations but it often gets the job done.
    - bonzini 1y ago
      Good luck debugging
      - TeMPOraL 1y ago
        You don't debug AI-generated code - you throw the problematic chunk away and have AI write it again, and if that doesn't help, you repeat the process, possibly with larger chunks. Okay, not in every case, but in many, and that's where we're headed. The reason is economics - i.e. the same reason approximately no one in the West repairs their clothes or appliances; they just throw the damaged thing away and buy a new one. Human labor is expensive, automated production is cheap - even more so in digital space.
        alganet 1y ago
        You don't throw away dams, bridges, factories, submarines, planes. There is a lot of man made stuff you just cannot easily replace. Instead, we maintain it. Remember, _this is not about you_. The post is about qemu. I would argue that qemu is analogous to one of these pieces of infrastructure. There is only a handful of powerful virtual machines. These are _not_ easily replaceable commodities.
        TeMPOraL 1y ago
        > You don't throw away dams, bridges, factories, submarines, planes. You don't fix their parts either, unless you absolutely have no other options. Maintenance involves replacing parts that are broken or are approaching the end of their service period. (Infrastructure in some places is also special because it's so badly funded it's not maintained at all, but that's out of scope of this analogy). > Remember, _this is not about you_. The post is about qemu. The post is about qemu. The comment, as well as most of the comment thread, is talking about coding in general. Sure, many things still get repaired - usually when they're expensive enough to dwarf marginal cost of repair labor. But if you dig into it, repair often involves treating parts as disposables, and tools as consumables.
latexr 1y ago
> Assuming at least that you are an otherwise competent developer and that you carefully review all code before you commit it. That is a big assumption. If everyone were doing that, this wouldn’t be a major issue. But as the curl developer has noted, people are using LLMs without thinking and wasting everyone’s time and resources. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielstenberg_hackerone-curl-activity-7324820893862363136-glb1 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielstenberg_hackerone-curl... I can attest to that. Just the other day I got a bug report, clearly written with the assistance of an LLM, for software which has been stable and used in several places for years. This person, when faced with an error on their first try, instead of pondering “what am I doing wrong” instead opened a bug report with a “fix”. Of course, they were using the software wrong. They did not follow the very short and simple instructions and essentially invented steps (probably suggested by an LLM) that caused the problem. Waste of time for everyone involved, and one more notch on the road to causing burnout. Some of the worst kind of users are those who think “bug” means “anything which doesn’t immediately behave the way I thought it would”. LLMs empower them, to the detriment of everyone else.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  Sure I won't disagree that those people also exist but I don't think that's who the claim is being made about. Pointing out that subpar developers exist doesn't refute that good ones exist.
  - latexr 1y ago
    The point isn’t that “subpar developers exist” but that the tool misuse far outweighs and greatly affects the correct use and even those who don’t use them. These people aren’t even “subpar developers” a lot of the time, they aren’t developers at all. But they still negatively affect and impact good developers and software in general.

EGreg 1y ago

Why would you need to carefully review code? That is so 2024. You’re bottlenecking the process and are at a disadvantage when the AI could be working 24/7. We have AI agents that have been trained to review thousands of PRs that are produced by other, generative agents, and together they have already churned out much more software than human teams can write in a year. AI “assistance” is a short intermediate phase, like the “centaurs” that Garry Kasparov was very fond of (human + computer beat both a human and a computer by itself… until the computer-only became better). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess

amake 1y ago
> We have AI agents that have been trained to review thousands of PRs that are produced by other, generative agents, and together they have already churned out much more software than human teams can write in a year. Was your comment tongue-in-cheek? If not, where is this huge mass of AI-generated software?
- rvnx 1y ago
  All around you, just that it doesn’t make sense for developers to reveal that a lot of their work is now about chunking and refining the specifications written by the product owner. Admitting such is like admitting you are overpaid for your job, and that a 20 USD AI-agent can do better and faster than you for 75% of the work. Is it easy to admit that you have learnt skills for 10+ years that are progressively already getting replaced by a machine ? (like thousands of jobs in the past). More and more, developer is going to be a monkey job where your only task is to make sure there is enough coal in the steam machine. Compilers destroyed the jobs of developers writing assembler code, they had to adapt. They insisted that hand-written assembler was better. Here is the same, except you write code in natural language. It may not be optimal in all situations but it often gets the job done.
  - bonzini 1y ago
    Good luck debugging
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      You don't debug AI-generated code - you throw the problematic chunk away and have AI write it again, and if that doesn't help, you repeat the process, possibly with larger chunks. Okay, not in every case, but in many, and that's where we're headed. The reason is economics - i.e. the same reason approximately no one in the West repairs their clothes or appliances; they just throw the damaged thing away and buy a new one. Human labor is expensive, automated production is cheap - even more so in digital space.
      - alganet 1y ago
        You don't throw away dams, bridges, factories, submarines, planes. There is a lot of man made stuff you just cannot easily replace. Instead, we maintain it. Remember, _this is not about you_. The post is about qemu. I would argue that qemu is analogous to one of these pieces of infrastructure. There is only a handful of powerful virtual machines. These are _not_ easily replaceable commodities.
        TeMPOraL 1y ago
        > You don't throw away dams, bridges, factories, submarines, planes. You don't fix their parts either, unless you absolutely have no other options. Maintenance involves replacing parts that are broken or are approaching the end of their service period. (Infrastructure in some places is also special because it's so badly funded it's not maintained at all, but that's out of scope of this analogy). > Remember, _this is not about you_. The post is about qemu. The post is about qemu. The comment, as well as most of the comment thread, is talking about coding in general. Sure, many things still get repaired - usually when they're expensive enough to dwarf marginal cost of repair labor. But if you dig into it, repair often involves treating parts as disposables, and tools as consumables.

latexr 1y ago

> Assuming at least that you are an otherwise competent developer and that you carefully review all code before you commit it. That is a big assumption. If everyone were doing that, this wouldn’t be a major issue. But as the curl developer has noted, people are using LLMs without thinking and wasting everyone’s time and resources. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielstenberg_hackerone-curl-activity-7324820893862363136-glb1 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danielstenberg_hackerone-curl... I can attest to that. Just the other day I got a bug report, clearly written with the assistance of an LLM, for software which has been stable and used in several places for years. This person, when faced with an error on their first try, instead of pondering “what am I doing wrong” instead opened a bug report with a “fix”. Of course, they were using the software wrong. They did not follow the very short and simple instructions and essentially invented steps (probably suggested by an LLM) that caused the problem. Waste of time for everyone involved, and one more notch on the road to causing burnout. Some of the worst kind of users are those who think “bug” means “anything which doesn’t immediately behave the way I thought it would”. LLMs empower them, to the detriment of everyone else.

fc417fc802 1y ago
Sure I won't disagree that those people also exist but I don't think that's who the claim is being made about. Pointing out that subpar developers exist doesn't refute that good ones exist.
- latexr 1y ago
  The point isn’t that “subpar developers exist” but that the tool misuse far outweighs and greatly affects the correct use and even those who don’t use them. These people aren’t even “subpar developers” a lot of the time, they aren’t developers at all. But they still negatively affect and impact good developers and software in general.