5 ms·

I'm expecting to see so much more poor quality software being made. We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software. Good experienced devs will be able

by Sammi 1y ago

I'm expecting to see so much more poor quality software being made. We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software. Good experienced devs will be able to make better software, but so many inexperienced devs will be regurgitating so much more lousy software at a pace never seen before, it's going to be overwhelming. Or as the original commenter described, they're already being overwhelmed.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
b112 1y ago
I'm waiting for someone to use an LLM to handle all AWS deployment, without review, and eventual bankrupcy as the result. Even better if the accountants are using LLMs. Or even better, hardware prototyping using LLMs with EEs barely knowing what they are doing. So far, most software dumbassery with LLMs can at least be fixed. Fixing board layouts, or chip designs, not as easy.
- belter 1y ago
  AWS itself is currently polluting their online documentation with GenAI generated snippets...I can only imagine what horrors lurk on their internal code base. In a move similar to the movie War Games, maybe humans are now out of the loop, and before a final commit LLMs are deciding....
conartist6 1y ago
Yes, but some of us have seen this coming for a long time now. I will have my word in the matter before all is said and done. While everyone is busy pivoting to AI I keep my head down and build the tools that will be needed to clean up the mess...
- distalx 1y ago
  Any hints on what kind of tools you're creating for the inevitable mess?
  - conartist6 1y ago
    https://github.com/bablr-lang/ https://github.com/bablr-lang/ I'm building a universal DOM for code so that we should see an explosion in code whose purpose is to help clean up other code. If you want to write code that makes changes to a tree of HTML nodes, you can pretty much write that code once and it will run in any web browser. If you want to write code that makes a new program by changing a tree of syntax nodes, there are an incredible number of different and wholly incompatible environments for that code to run in. Transform authors are likely forced to pick one or two engines to support, and anyone who needs to run a lot of codemods will probably need to install 5-10 different execution engines. Most people seem not to notice or care about this situation or realize that their tools are vastly underserving their potential just because we can't come up with the basic standards necessary to enable universal execution of codemod code, which also means there are drastically lower incentives to write custom codemods and lint rules than there could/should be
    - lsaferite 1y ago
      Where does this "universal DOM for code" sit in relation to CSTs and ASTs?
      - conartist6 1y ago
        It's an immutable btree-based format for syntax trees which contain information both abstract and concrete. Our markup language for serializing the trees is Concrete Syntax Tree Markup Language, or CSTML.
    - mdaniel 1y ago
      Who is the consumer for the JSX noise that is happening here? https://github.com/bablr-lang/language-en-ruby/blob/550ad6fd7d6b151f7afdf25f111630359fd0fcb3/test/grammar.test.js#L49-L95 https://github.com/bablr-lang/language-en-ruby/blob/550ad6fd... As two nits, https://docs.bablr.org/reference/cstml https://docs.bablr.org/reference/cstml and https://bablr.org/languages/universe/ruby https://bablr.org/languages/universe/ruby are both 404, but I suspect that latter one is just falling into the same trap as many namespaces make of using a URL when they meant it as a URN
oytis 1y ago
There are ways to fight it though. Look at Linux kernel for instance - they have been overwhelmed with poor contributions long before LLMs. The answer is to maintain standards that put as much burden on the contributor as possible, and normalizing unapologetic "no" from reviewers.
- gyesxnuibh 1y ago
  Does that work as well with non-strangers who are your coworker? I'm not sure. Also if you're organizationally changing the culture to force people to put more effort in writing the code, why are you even organizationally using LLMs...?
  - oytis 1y ago
    > Does that work as well with non-strangers who are your coworker? Yeah, OK, I guess you have to be a bit less unapologetic than Linux kernel maintainers in this case, but you can still shift the culture towards more careful PRs I think. > why are you even organizationally using LLMs Many people believe LLMs make coders more productive, and given the rapid progress of gen AI it's probably not wise to just dismiss this view. But there need to be guardrails to ensure the productivity is real and not just creating liability. We could live with weaker guardrails if we can trust that the code was in a trusted colleague's head before appearing in the repo. But if we can't, I guess stronger guardrails are the only way, aren't they?
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      I don’t want to just dismiss the productivity increase. I feel 100% more productive on throw away POCs and maybe 20% more productive on large important code bases. But when I actually sit down and think it through, I’ve wasted multiple days chasing down subtle bugs that I never would have introduced myself. It could very well be that there’s no productivity gain for me at all. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the numbers showed that was the case. But let’s say I am actually getting 20%. If this technology dramatically increases the output of juniors and mid level technical tornadoes that’s going to easily erase that 20% gain. I’ve seen codebases that were dominated my mid level technical tornadoes and juniors, no amount of guardrails could ever fix them. Until we are at the point where no human has to interact with code (and I’m skeptical we will ever get there short of AGI) we need automated objective guardrails for “this code is readable and maintainable”, and I’m 99.999% certain that is just impossible.
belter 1y ago
Please, somebody make the Is MongoDB webscale? video for LLMs...
- tristramb 1y ago
  And for extra credit, create it using an LLM.
LunicLynx 1y ago
Did anyone say react in the windows start menu? Folks, we already have bad software. Everywhere. And nobody cares.
- kevindamm 1y ago
  People care, it's just that they're not the ones shipping as often.
- Sammi 1y ago
  Windows usage share is slowly and surely falling. People care, they're just slow to realise. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202506 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide... If you want to sell high quality software, then you must be patient. Several decades worth of patient.
Aeolun 1y ago
Honestly, I expect LLM’s or the combination of algorithms that make them usable (Claude Code), to get better fast enough that we’ll never reach that phase. All the good devs know what the current problem with LLM assisted coding are, and a lot of them are working to mitigate and/or fix those problems.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
I'm showing my age, but this is almost exactly analogous to the rise of Visual Basic in the late nineties. The promise then was similar: "non-programmers" could use a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG editor to build applications. And, IMO, VB was actually a good product. The problem is that it attracted "developers" who were poor/inexperienced, and so VB apps developed a reputation for being incredibly janky and bad quality. The same thing is basically happening with AI now, except it's not constrained to a single platform, but instead it's infecting the entire software ecosystem.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  We turned our back on VB. Do we have the collective will to turn our back on AI? If so I suspect it’ll take a catalyzing event for it to begin. My hunch tells me no, no we don’t have the will.
  - AnotherGoodName 1y ago
    Fwiw I honestly think it was a mistake to turn our back on vb. Yes there were a lot of crappy barely functioning programs made in it. But they were programs that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Eg. For small businesses automating things vb was amazing and even if the program was barely functional it was better than nothing.
    - hnaccount_rng 1y ago
      Came here looking for this comment! I think we will need to find a way to communicate “this code is the result of serious engineering work and all tradeoffs have been thought about extensively” and “this code has been vibecoded and no one really cares”. Both sides of that spectrum have their place and absolutely will exist. But it’s dangerous to confuse the two
      - wafflemaker 1y ago
        There's a simple way to communicate it. Just leave in the emoticons added in comments by the LLM. Wrote it initially as a joke, but maybe it's not that dumb? I already do it on LinkedIn. I'm job hunting and post slop from time to time to game LinkedIn algorithms to get better positioning among other potential candidates. And not to waste anybody's time, I leave in the emotes at beginning of sentences just so people in the know know it's just slop (so as not to waste their time).
thfuran 1y ago
>We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software I think we already are. We're about to be drowning in a cesspit. The support for the broken software is going to be replaced by broken LLM agents.
p_v_doom 1y ago
> Good experienced devs will be able to make better software I lowkey disagree. I think good experienced devs will be pressured to write worse software or be bottlenecked by having to deal with bad software. Depends on company and culture of course. But consider that you as expereinced dev now have to explain things that go completely over the head of the junior devs, and most likely the manager/PO, so you become the bottleneck, and all pressure will come down on you. You will hear all kinds of stuff like "80% there is enough" and "dont let perfect be the enemy of good" and "youre blocking the team, we have a deadline" and that will become even worse. Unless you're lucky enough to work in a place with actually good engineering culture.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  I think the recent post about the Cloudflare engineer who built an OAuth implementation, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166, shows otherwise (note the Cloudflare engineer, kentonv, comments a bunch in the discussion). The author, who is clearly an expert, said it took him days to complete what would have taken him weeks or months to write manually. I love that thread because it clearly shows both the benefits and pitfalls of AI codegen. It saved this expert a ton of time, but the AI also created a bunch of "game over" bugs that a more junior engineer probably would have checked in without a second thought.
  - bornfreddy 1y ago
    There was also a review of that code about a week later [0] which highlights the problems with LLM-generated code. Even looking strictly at coding, the hard thing about programming is not writing the code. It is understanding the problem and figuring out an elegant and correct solution, and LLM can't replace that process. They can help with ideas though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215667
    - kentonv 1y ago
      > There was also a review of that code about a week later [0] which highlights the problems with LLM-generated code. Not really. This "review" was stretching to find things to criticize in the code, and exaggerated the issues he found. I responded to some of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44217254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44217254 Unfortunately I think a lot of people commenting on this topic come in with a conclusion they want to reach. It's hard to find people who are objectively looking at the evidence and drawing conclusions with an open mind.
imiric 1y ago
> I'm expecting to see so much more poor quality software being made. We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software. That's my expectation as well. The logical outcome of this is that the general public will eventually get fed up, and there will be an industry-wide crash, just like in 1983 and 2000. I suppose this is a requirement for any overly hyped technology to reach the Plateau of Productivity.
lelanthran 1y ago
> Good experienced devs will be able to make better software, No, they won't. It's a race to the bottom. I can take extra time to produce something that won't fall over on the first feature addition, that won't need to be rewritten with a new approach when the models get upgraded/changed/whatever and will reliably work for years with careful addition of new code. I will get underbid by a viber who produced a turd in an afternoon, and has already spent the money from the project before the end of the week.

by Sammi 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

b112 1y ago

I'm waiting for someone to use an LLM to handle all AWS deployment, without review, and eventual bankrupcy as the result. Even better if the accountants are using LLMs. Or even better, hardware prototyping using LLMs with EEs barely knowing what they are doing. So far, most software dumbassery with LLMs can at least be fixed. Fixing board layouts, or chip designs, not as easy.

belter 1y ago
AWS itself is currently polluting their online documentation with GenAI generated snippets...I can only imagine what horrors lurk on their internal code base. In a move similar to the movie War Games, maybe humans are now out of the loop, and before a final commit LLMs are deciding....

conartist6 1y ago

Yes, but some of us have seen this coming for a long time now. I will have my word in the matter before all is said and done. While everyone is busy pivoting to AI I keep my head down and build the tools that will be needed to clean up the mess...

distalx 1y ago
Any hints on what kind of tools you're creating for the inevitable mess?
- conartist6 1y ago
  https://github.com/bablr-lang/ https://github.com/bablr-lang/ I'm building a universal DOM for code so that we should see an explosion in code whose purpose is to help clean up other code. If you want to write code that makes changes to a tree of HTML nodes, you can pretty much write that code once and it will run in any web browser. If you want to write code that makes a new program by changing a tree of syntax nodes, there are an incredible number of different and wholly incompatible environments for that code to run in. Transform authors are likely forced to pick one or two engines to support, and anyone who needs to run a lot of codemods will probably need to install 5-10 different execution engines. Most people seem not to notice or care about this situation or realize that their tools are vastly underserving their potential just because we can't come up with the basic standards necessary to enable universal execution of codemod code, which also means there are drastically lower incentives to write custom codemods and lint rules than there could/should be
  - lsaferite 1y ago
    Where does this "universal DOM for code" sit in relation to CSTs and ASTs?
    - conartist6 1y ago
      It's an immutable btree-based format for syntax trees which contain information both abstract and concrete. Our markup language for serializing the trees is Concrete Syntax Tree Markup Language, or CSTML.
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    Who is the consumer for the JSX noise that is happening here? https://github.com/bablr-lang/language-en-ruby/blob/550ad6fd7d6b151f7afdf25f111630359fd0fcb3/test/grammar.test.js#L49-L95 https://github.com/bablr-lang/language-en-ruby/blob/550ad6fd... As two nits, https://docs.bablr.org/reference/cstml https://docs.bablr.org/reference/cstml and https://bablr.org/languages/universe/ruby https://bablr.org/languages/universe/ruby are both 404, but I suspect that latter one is just falling into the same trap as many namespaces make of using a URL when they meant it as a URN

oytis 1y ago

There are ways to fight it though. Look at Linux kernel for instance - they have been overwhelmed with poor contributions long before LLMs. The answer is to maintain standards that put as much burden on the contributor as possible, and normalizing unapologetic "no" from reviewers.

gyesxnuibh 1y ago
Does that work as well with non-strangers who are your coworker? I'm not sure. Also if you're organizationally changing the culture to force people to put more effort in writing the code, why are you even organizationally using LLMs...?
- oytis 1y ago
  > Does that work as well with non-strangers who are your coworker? Yeah, OK, I guess you have to be a bit less unapologetic than Linux kernel maintainers in this case, but you can still shift the culture towards more careful PRs I think. > why are you even organizationally using LLMs Many people believe LLMs make coders more productive, and given the rapid progress of gen AI it's probably not wise to just dismiss this view. But there need to be guardrails to ensure the productivity is real and not just creating liability. We could live with weaker guardrails if we can trust that the code was in a trusted colleague's head before appearing in the repo. But if we can't, I guess stronger guardrails are the only way, aren't they?
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    I don’t want to just dismiss the productivity increase. I feel 100% more productive on throw away POCs and maybe 20% more productive on large important code bases. But when I actually sit down and think it through, I’ve wasted multiple days chasing down subtle bugs that I never would have introduced myself. It could very well be that there’s no productivity gain for me at all. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the numbers showed that was the case. But let’s say I am actually getting 20%. If this technology dramatically increases the output of juniors and mid level technical tornadoes that’s going to easily erase that 20% gain. I’ve seen codebases that were dominated my mid level technical tornadoes and juniors, no amount of guardrails could ever fix them. Until we are at the point where no human has to interact with code (and I’m skeptical we will ever get there short of AGI) we need automated objective guardrails for “this code is readable and maintainable”, and I’m 99.999% certain that is just impossible.

belter 1y ago

Please, somebody make the Is MongoDB webscale? video for LLMs...

tristramb 1y ago
And for extra credit, create it using an LLM.

LunicLynx 1y ago

Did anyone say react in the windows start menu? Folks, we already have bad software. Everywhere. And nobody cares.

kevindamm 1y ago
People care, it's just that they're not the ones shipping as often.
Sammi 1y ago
Windows usage share is slowly and surely falling. People care, they're just slow to realise. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202506 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide... If you want to sell high quality software, then you must be patient. Several decades worth of patient.

Aeolun 1y ago

Honestly, I expect LLM’s or the combination of algorithms that make them usable (Claude Code), to get better fast enough that we’ll never reach that phase. All the good devs know what the current problem with LLM assisted coding are, and a lot of them are working to mitigate and/or fix those problems.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

I'm showing my age, but this is almost exactly analogous to the rise of Visual Basic in the late nineties. The promise then was similar: "non-programmers" could use a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG editor to build applications. And, IMO, VB was actually a good product. The problem is that it attracted "developers" who were poor/inexperienced, and so VB apps developed a reputation for being incredibly janky and bad quality. The same thing is basically happening with AI now, except it's not constrained to a single platform, but instead it's infecting the entire software ecosystem.

Henchman21 1y ago
We turned our back on VB. Do we have the collective will to turn our back on AI? If so I suspect it’ll take a catalyzing event for it to begin. My hunch tells me no, no we don’t have the will.
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  Fwiw I honestly think it was a mistake to turn our back on vb. Yes there were a lot of crappy barely functioning programs made in it. But they were programs that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Eg. For small businesses automating things vb was amazing and even if the program was barely functional it was better than nothing.
  - hnaccount_rng 1y ago
    Came here looking for this comment! I think we will need to find a way to communicate “this code is the result of serious engineering work and all tradeoffs have been thought about extensively” and “this code has been vibecoded and no one really cares”. Both sides of that spectrum have their place and absolutely will exist. But it’s dangerous to confuse the two
    - wafflemaker 1y ago
      There's a simple way to communicate it. Just leave in the emoticons added in comments by the LLM. Wrote it initially as a joke, but maybe it's not that dumb? I already do it on LinkedIn. I'm job hunting and post slop from time to time to game LinkedIn algorithms to get better positioning among other potential candidates. And not to waste anybody's time, I leave in the emotes at beginning of sentences just so people in the know know it's just slop (so as not to waste their time).

thfuran 1y ago

>We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software I think we already are. We're about to be drowning in a cesspit. The support for the broken software is going to be replaced by broken LLM agents.

p_v_doom 1y ago

> Good experienced devs will be able to make better software I lowkey disagree. I think good experienced devs will be pressured to write worse software or be bottlenecked by having to deal with bad software. Depends on company and culture of course. But consider that you as expereinced dev now have to explain things that go completely over the head of the junior devs, and most likely the manager/PO, so you become the bottleneck, and all pressure will come down on you. You will hear all kinds of stuff like "80% there is enough" and "dont let perfect be the enemy of good" and "youre blocking the team, we have a deadline" and that will become even worse. Unless you're lucky enough to work in a place with actually good engineering culture.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
I think the recent post about the Cloudflare engineer who built an OAuth implementation, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166, shows otherwise (note the Cloudflare engineer, kentonv, comments a bunch in the discussion). The author, who is clearly an expert, said it took him days to complete what would have taken him weeks or months to write manually. I love that thread because it clearly shows both the benefits and pitfalls of AI codegen. It saved this expert a ton of time, but the AI also created a bunch of "game over" bugs that a more junior engineer probably would have checked in without a second thought.
- bornfreddy 1y ago
  There was also a review of that code about a week later [0] which highlights the problems with LLM-generated code. Even looking strictly at coding, the hard thing about programming is not writing the code. It is understanding the problem and figuring out an elegant and correct solution, and LLM can't replace that process. They can help with ideas though. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215667
  - kentonv 1y ago
    > There was also a review of that code about a week later [0] which highlights the problems with LLM-generated code. Not really. This "review" was stretching to find things to criticize in the code, and exaggerated the issues he found. I responded to some of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44217254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44217254 Unfortunately I think a lot of people commenting on this topic come in with a conclusion they want to reach. It's hard to find people who are objectively looking at the evidence and drawing conclusions with an open mind.

imiric 1y ago

> I'm expecting to see so much more poor quality software being made. We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software. That's my expectation as well. The logical outcome of this is that the general public will eventually get fed up, and there will be an industry-wide crash, just like in 1983 and 2000. I suppose this is a requirement for any overly hyped technology to reach the Plateau of Productivity.

lelanthran 1y ago

> Good experienced devs will be able to make better software, No, they won't. It's a race to the bottom. I can take extra time to produce something that won't fall over on the first feature addition, that won't need to be rewritten with a new approach when the models get upgraded/changed/whatever and will reliably work for years with careful addition of new code. I will get underbid by a viber who produced a turd in an afternoon, and has already spent the money from the project before the end of the week.