4 ms·

I think there are still lots of code “artisans” who are completely dogmatic about what code should look like, once the tunnel vision goes and you realise the co

I think there are still lots of code “artisans” who are completely dogmatic about what code should look like, once the tunnel vision goes and you realise the code just enables the business it all of a sudden becomes a velocity God send.

gtsop 1y ago
Two years in and we are waiting to see all you people (who are free of our tunnel vision) fly high with your velocity. I don't see anyone, am I doing something wrong? Your words predict an explosion of unimaginary magnitude for new code and for new buisnesses. Where is it? Nowhere. Edit: And dont start about how you vibed a SaaS service, show income numbers from paying customers (not buyouts)
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  There was this recent post about a Cloudflare OAuth client where the author checked in all the AI prompts, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166. The author of the library (kentonv) comments in the HN thread that he said it took him a few days to write the library with AI help, while he thinks it would have taken weeks or months to write manually. Also, while it may be technically true we're "two years in", I don't think this is a fair assessment. I've been trying AI tools for a while, and the first time I felt "OK, now this is really starting to enhance my velocity" was with the release of Claude 4 in May of this year.
  - ath92 1y ago
    But that example is of writing a green field library that deals with an extremely well documented spec. While impressive, this isn’t what 99% of software engineering is. I’m generally a believer/user but this is a poor example to point at and say “look, gains”.
- PUSH_AX 1y ago
  Do you have some magical insight into every codebase in existence? No? Ok then…
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    That’s hardly necessary. Have we seen a noticeably increased amount of newly launched useful apps?
    - PUSH_AX 1y ago
      Why is useful a metric? This is about software delivery, what one person deems useful is subjective
      - darkwater 1y ago
        > Why is useful a metric? "and you realise the code just enables the business it all of a sudden becomes a velocity God send." If a business is not useful, well, it will fail. So, so much autogenerated code for nothing.
        PUSH_AX 1y ago
        I see, I guess every business I haven’t used personally, because it wasn’t useful to me, has failed… Usefulness isn’t a good metric for this.
        imiric 1y ago
        It's not for nothing. When a profitable product can be created in a fraction of the time and effort previously required, the tool to create it will attract scammers and grifters like bees to honey. It doesn't matter if the "business" around it fails, if a new one can be created quickly and cheaply. This is the same idea behind brands with random letters selling garbage physical products, only applied to software.
      - nobleach 1y ago
        Perhaps I'm misreading the person to whom you're replying, but usefullness, while subjective, isn't typically based on one person's opinion. If enough people agree on the usefullness of something, we as a collective call it "useful". Perhaps we take the example of a blender. There's enough need to blend/puree/chop food-like-items, that a large group of people agree on the usefullness of a blender. A salad-shooter, while a novel idea, might not be seen as "useful". Creating software that most folks wouldn't find useful still might be considered "neat" or "cool". But it may not be adding anything to the industry. The fact that someone shipped something quickly doesn't make it any better.
imiric 1y ago
The issue is not with how code looks. It's with what it does, and how it does it. You don't have to be an "artisan" to notice the issues moi2388 mentioned. The actual difference is between people who care about the quality of the end result, and the experience of users of the software, and those who care about "shipping quickly" no matter the state of what they're producing. This difference has always existed, but ML tools empower the latter group much more than the former. The inevitable outcome of this will be a stark decline of average software quality, and broad user dissatisfaction. While also making scammers and grifters much more productive, and their scams more lucrative.
- airtonix 1y ago
  [dead]
- Buttons840 1y ago
  Certainly billions of people's personal data will be leaked, and nobody will be held responsible.
Buttons840 1y ago
I'm not a code "artisan", but I do believe companies should be financially responsible when they have security breaches.
cowl 1y ago
There are very good reason that code should look a certain way and it comes from years of experience and the fact that code is written once but read and modified much more. When the first bugs come up you see that the velocity was not god sent and you end up hiring one of the many "LLM code fixer" companies that are poping up like mushrooms.
- PUSH_AX 1y ago
  You’re confusing yoloing code into prod and using ai to increase velocity while ensuring it functions and is safe.
  - habinero 1y ago
    No, they're not. It's critically important if you're part of an engineering team. If everyone does their own thing, the codebase rapidly turns to mush and is unreadable. And you need humans to be able to read it the moment the code actually matters and needs to stand up to adversaries. If you work with money or personal information, someone will want to steal that. Or you may have legal requirements you have to meet. It matters.
    - PUSH_AX 1y ago
      You’ve made a sweeping statement there, there are swathes of teams working in startups still trying to find product market fit. Focusing on quality in these situations is folly, but that’s not even the point. My point is you can ship quality to any standard using an llm, even your standards. If you can’t that’s a skill issue on your part.

gtsop 1y ago

Two years in and we are waiting to see all you people (who are free of our tunnel vision) fly high with your velocity. I don't see anyone, am I doing something wrong? Your words predict an explosion of unimaginary magnitude for new code and for new buisnesses. Where is it? Nowhere. Edit: And dont start about how you vibed a SaaS service, show income numbers from paying customers (not buyouts)

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
There was this recent post about a Cloudflare OAuth client where the author checked in all the AI prompts, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166. The author of the library (kentonv) comments in the HN thread that he said it took him a few days to write the library with AI help, while he thinks it would have taken weeks or months to write manually. Also, while it may be technically true we're "two years in", I don't think this is a fair assessment. I've been trying AI tools for a while, and the first time I felt "OK, now this is really starting to enhance my velocity" was with the release of Claude 4 in May of this year.
- ath92 1y ago
  But that example is of writing a green field library that deals with an extremely well documented spec. While impressive, this isn’t what 99% of software engineering is. I’m generally a believer/user but this is a poor example to point at and say “look, gains”.
PUSH_AX 1y ago
Do you have some magical insight into every codebase in existence? No? Ok then…
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  That’s hardly necessary. Have we seen a noticeably increased amount of newly launched useful apps?
  - PUSH_AX 1y ago
    Why is useful a metric? This is about software delivery, what one person deems useful is subjective
    - darkwater 1y ago
      > Why is useful a metric? "and you realise the code just enables the business it all of a sudden becomes a velocity God send." If a business is not useful, well, it will fail. So, so much autogenerated code for nothing.
      - PUSH_AX 1y ago
        I see, I guess every business I haven’t used personally, because it wasn’t useful to me, has failed… Usefulness isn’t a good metric for this.
      - imiric 1y ago
        It's not for nothing. When a profitable product can be created in a fraction of the time and effort previously required, the tool to create it will attract scammers and grifters like bees to honey. It doesn't matter if the "business" around it fails, if a new one can be created quickly and cheaply. This is the same idea behind brands with random letters selling garbage physical products, only applied to software.
    - nobleach 1y ago
      Perhaps I'm misreading the person to whom you're replying, but usefullness, while subjective, isn't typically based on one person's opinion. If enough people agree on the usefullness of something, we as a collective call it "useful". Perhaps we take the example of a blender. There's enough need to blend/puree/chop food-like-items, that a large group of people agree on the usefullness of a blender. A salad-shooter, while a novel idea, might not be seen as "useful". Creating software that most folks wouldn't find useful still might be considered "neat" or "cool". But it may not be adding anything to the industry. The fact that someone shipped something quickly doesn't make it any better.

imiric 1y ago

The issue is not with how code looks. It's with what it does, and how it does it. You don't have to be an "artisan" to notice the issues moi2388 mentioned. The actual difference is between people who care about the quality of the end result, and the experience of users of the software, and those who care about "shipping quickly" no matter the state of what they're producing. This difference has always existed, but ML tools empower the latter group much more than the former. The inevitable outcome of this will be a stark decline of average software quality, and broad user dissatisfaction. While also making scammers and grifters much more productive, and their scams more lucrative.

airtonix 1y ago
[dead]
Buttons840 1y ago
Certainly billions of people's personal data will be leaked, and nobody will be held responsible.

Buttons840 1y ago

I'm not a code "artisan", but I do believe companies should be financially responsible when they have security breaches.

cowl 1y ago

There are very good reason that code should look a certain way and it comes from years of experience and the fact that code is written once but read and modified much more. When the first bugs come up you see that the velocity was not god sent and you end up hiring one of the many "LLM code fixer" companies that are poping up like mushrooms.

PUSH_AX 1y ago
You’re confusing yoloing code into prod and using ai to increase velocity while ensuring it functions and is safe.
- habinero 1y ago
  No, they're not. It's critically important if you're part of an engineering team. If everyone does their own thing, the codebase rapidly turns to mush and is unreadable. And you need humans to be able to read it the moment the code actually matters and needs to stand up to adversaries. If you work with money or personal information, someone will want to steal that. Or you may have legal requirements you have to meet. It matters.
  - PUSH_AX 1y ago
    You’ve made a sweeping statement there, there are swathes of teams working in startups still trying to find product market fit. Focusing on quality in these situations is folly, but that’s not even the point. My point is you can ship quality to any standard using an llm, even your standards. If you can’t that’s a skill issue on your part.