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I am a programmer, not a rubber-stamp that approves Copilot generated code

• Cheer2171 1y ago
  I am a programmer, not a rubber stamp that copy pastes StackOverflow answers I don't understand Or clones a template repo and only tweaks a few files Or imports libraries with code I've never read
  • zepolen 1y ago
    This conversation isn't for you, you're not a programmer, you're a developer, a modern day script kiddy. Programmers wrote the StackOverflow answer and wrote that library.
    • danielbln 1y ago
      This conversation is for true Scotsmen.
    • BiteCode_dev 1y ago
      Yeah, I used to be in the top 100 SO users, so I wrote a lot of SO answers, and if you used Red Hat Linux, you probably used my library. But according to your definition, I'm a script kiddy.
      • zepolen 1y ago
        Too bad parsing english wasn't your strong point.
  • Copenjin 1y ago
    I understand which category of people you are describing, but this is what a proper programmer actually does: - Check stackoverflow only for very niche issues, never finds what he needs but reaches a solution reading multiple answers and sometimes used to post a better solution for his issue - Have his own templates if he does repetitive and boring stuff (common), implements the complex logic if any first and get the rest done as fast as possible being mildly disgusted. - Imports libraries and often take a look at the code noticing stuff that could be improved. Has private forks of some popular opensource libraries that fix issues or improve performance fixing silly errors upstream. Sometimes he is allowed/has time to send the fixes back upstream. When using those libraries sometimes he finds bugs, and the first thing he does is checking the code and try to fix them directly, no tickets to the maintainers, often opens a PR with the fix directly.
• 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  > Some exec somewhere in the company decided everyone needs to be talking to AI, and they track how often you're talking with it. I ended up on a naughty list for the first time in my career, despite never having performance issues. I explain to my manager and his response is to just ask it meaningless questions. That's not a career-switching issue, that's a company-switching issue. Most people will work for at least one company in their career where the people in charge are dickheads. If you can't work around them, go find a different company to work for. You don't have to throw away an entire career because of one asshole boss. Also fwiw, resistance is more effective than you think. You'd be surprised how often a dickhead in charge is either A) easy to call the bluff of, or B) needs someone to show them they are wrong. If you feel like you're going to quit anyway, put your foot down and take a stand.
• Cheer2171 1y ago
  > said usage is actually getting monitored and performance appraisals have now started depending on the AI usage instead of (or at least in addition to) traditional metrics like number of priority bugs raised, code reviews, Function Points Analysis, etc. Really? This sounds absurd. "Instead of" means it doesn't matter how shit your work is as long as you're burning tokens? Or it doesn't matter how good your work is if you're not burning tokens? Name and shame
  • simonw 1y ago
    There are a bunch of companies out there that are tracking what percentage of their developers are using LLMs now. I heard a rumor recently that AWS are doing this, and managers are evaluated based on what percentage of their direct reports used an LLM (an Amazon-approved model) at least once over a given time period.
  • shakna 1y ago
    Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, to name a few
  • procaryote 1y ago
    If you admin a google-workspace domain, you get metrics out of the box on agent usage. I guess it's great for AI companies that they've managed to bait and switch "this will improve your productivity" to "this is how much time you're sinking into this, let's not care about if that was useful"
• overgard 1y ago
  The worst part of AI is the way it's aggressively pushed. Sometimes I have to turn off AI completions in the IDE just because it becomes extremely aggressive in showing me very wrong snippets of code in an incredibly distracting way. I hope when the hype dies down the way these tools are pushed on us in a UX sense is also dialed down a bit.
  • geekybiz 1y ago
    The most annoying is when I'm trying to think through a data structure. While I'm trying to deeply think through every member of a class, its type, relationships, etc., this zealous fellow acts like a toddler that knows no way to stay shut unless snoozed off.
  • cyberax 1y ago
    JetBrains IDEs have an option to enable AI inline suggestions on demand via a keypress. I really like it. It saves some "boring" typing, while not being annoying. I'm pretty sure Cursor also has something similar?
    • BikiniPrince 1y ago
      Yeah, it’s just horribly wrong in my experience and a complete distraction. Code completion for functions in the project is another story and that has been around for ages.
      • rurban 1y ago
        With emacs I love the github copilot auto suggestions. Light gray. Either accept it with Ctrl-Tab or ignore it.
  • matt3210 1y ago
    I really get irritated when AI is opt out. Opt out is not consent.
    • LeoPanthera 1y ago
• ale 1y ago
  The good and bad aspect of this approach to AI in tech is that it revealed really how many developers out there are merely happy with getting something to work and get it out the door before clocking out and not actually understanding the inner workings of their code.
  • csmantle 1y ago
    This is almost inevitable when something industrializes; people maximize profit by quickly shipping things that barely works. We need someone who try to excel in technology, and AI just amplifies this need.
  • troupo 1y ago
    I find it to be actually a boon for small throw away side projects that I don't care about, and just want to have [1] Actual code/projects? Detrimental [1] E.g. I spent an evening on this: https://github.com/dmitriid/mop https://github.com/dmitriid/mop
    • deleted 1y ago
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  • almostgotcaught 1y ago
    whenever people complain about someone being "merely happy with getting something to work and get it out the door before clocking out" i wonder to myself if i'm dealing with someone that has The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism on their nightstand, or has never read Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, or simply does not understand the significance of these two essays. like ... you expect people to actually be committed to "the value of a hard day's work" for its own sake? when owners aren't committed to value of a hard day's worker? and you think that your position is the respectable/wise one? lol
    • hansmayer 1y ago
• lovecg 1y ago
  Steelmanning the "we must force tool usage" position: it's possible that a tool does increase productivity, but there's either a steep learning curve (productivity only improves after sustained usage) or network effects (most people must use it for anyone to benefit). No opinion on whether or not this applies to the current moment. But maybe someone should try forcing Dvorak layout on everyone or something like that for a competitive edge!
  • resonious 1y ago
    I once had a boss who saw me use Vim and was really impressed with how quickly I could jump around files and make precision edits. He tried getting the other devs (not many, < 5) to use Vim too but it didn't quite pan out. I would guess that interest, passion, and motivation all play a role here. It's kind of like programming itself. If you sit people down and make them program for awhile, some will get good at it and some won't.
    • eCa 1y ago
      > I would guess that interest, passion, and motivation all play a role here. And, to use less pointed language, people’s brains are wired differently. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another, even with similar interest, passion, and motivation.
      • rkomorn 1y ago
        I agree with this. I was using emacs for a while, but when I switched to vim, something about the different modes just really meshed with how I thought about what I was doing, and I enjoyed it way more and stuck to it for a couple of decades. I see people that I'd say are more proficient with their emacs, VS Code, etc setups than I am with my vim setup, so I don't think there's anything special about vim other than "it works for me".
      • mabster 1y ago
        I worked with a developer that copied and pasted A LOT and would keep his fingers on the old copy and paste buttons (Ctrl-Ins, etc.). I've even seen him copy and paste single letters. He's one of the most productive developers I've ever worked with.
• sandspar 1y ago
  User: list crafts that software has automated GPT-5: Typesetting and paste-up, film prepress/stripping, CMYK color separations, halftone screening, darkroom compositing/masking, airbrush photo retouching, optical film compositing/titling, photochemical color timing, architectural hand drafting, cartographic scribing and map lettering, music engraving, comic book lettering, fashion pattern grading and marker making, embroidery digitizing and stitching, screen-print color separations
• sreekanth850 1y ago
  Adapt or perish.
  • coolThingsFirst 1y ago
    AI is coming for you John Connor.
    • sreekanth850 1y ago
      I see where you’re coming from, but there’s a small difference. Coding itself is mostly a routine tasks, turning ideas into working code. Humans really stand out in the important parts:creative thinking, planning and architecting the system, deciding what it should do, how it should do, finding problems, checking code quality, and making smart decisions that a tool can’t. AI can help with the routine work, but the creative and thinking parts are still human.And this is exactly where developers should focus and evolve themselves.
      • Copenjin 1y ago
        > creative thinking, planning and architecting the system, deciding what it should do, how it should do, finding problems, checking code quality, and making smart decisions that a tool can’t. Are you aware that there are people that think that even now AI can do everything you describe?
        • sreekanth850 1y ago
          Then its a problem.
        • aforwardslash 1y ago
          It can. The reason crappy software has existed since...ever is because people are notoriously bad at thinking, planning and architecting systems. When someone does a "smart decision", it often translates to the nightmare of someone else 5 or 10 years down the line. Most people shouldn't be making "smart decisions"; they should be making boring decisions, as most software is actually a glorified crud. There are exceptions, obviously, but don't think you're special - your code also sucks and your design is crap :) the goal is often to be less sucky and less crappier than one would expect; in the end, its all ones and zeros, and the fancy abstractions exist to dumb down the ones and zeros to concepts humans can grasp. A machine can and will, obviously, produce better results and better reasoning than an average solution designer; it can consider a multitude of options a single person seldom can; it can point out from the get-go shortcomings and domain-specific pitfalls a human wouldnt even think of in most cases. So go ahead, try it. Feed it your design and ask about shortcomings; ask about risk management strategies; ask about refactoring and maintenance strategies; you'd probably be surprised.
• petesergeant 1y ago
  > If they’re really so confident on the LLM’s effectiveness, why not just keep it voluntary, why force it on people? For people who are so confident (which, I'm not), it's an obvious step; developers who don't want to use it must either be luddites or afraid it'll take their jobs. Moving sales people to digital CRMs from paper files, moving accountants to accounting software from paper ledgers and journals, moving weavers to power looms, etc etc -- there would have been enthusiasts and holdouts at every step. The PE-bro who's currently boasting to his friends that all code at a portfolio has to be written first with Claude Code and developers are just there to catch the very rare error would have been boasting to his friends about replacing his whole development team with a team that cost 1/10 the price in Noida. Coding agents can't replace developers _right now_, and it's unclear whether scaling the current approach will allow them to at any point, but at some point (and maybe that's not until we get true AGI) they will be able to replace a substantial chunk of the developer workforce, but a significant chunk of developers will be highly resistant to it. The people you're complaining about are simply too early.
  • hooverd 1y ago
    It tracks with the trend of computing being something you passively consume rather than something you do. Don't learn how anything works! Deskill yourself! Not that LLMs aren't a force multiplier.
• monster_truck 1y ago
  I feel bad for my friends that are married with kids working at places like microsoft, telling me how their copilot usage is tracked and they fear that if they don't hit some arbitrary weekly metric they will fall victim to the next wave of layoffs.
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • teiferer 1y ago
    Even married people with kids can switch companies. Sometimes that implies a pay cut, but not always. And if they really tied their livelihood to working at the same company for next decade because they maxed out their lifestyle relative to the income generated by that company, then that falls all on them and I don't actually feel that bad for them.
    • zwnow 1y ago
      Absolutely, programmers are paid exceptionally well compared to a lot of other jobs. If they live paycheck to paycheck they are doing things wrong, especially when having family.
      • ViscountPenguin 1y ago
        The hedonic treadmill really gets away from some people. I've had coworkers on 7 figures talk about how they couldn't possibly retire because the costs of living in (HCOL city) are far too high for that. When you dig down into it, there's usually some insane luxury that they're completely unwilling to give up on. If you're a software engineer in the United States, or in London, you can almost certainly FIRE.
        • zwnow 1y ago
          Yup it's insane to me. I am a software developer in Germany making 30k (after taxes) and manage to save up 600-700€ a month while still living really good (rural area, no car). Absolutely not enough to retire early but easily enough to not live paycheck to paycheck. Making 6 figures in the USA and not being able to afford life is so cryptic to me.
• charcircuit 1y ago
  >why not just keep it voluntary, why force it on people? People hate learning new tools, even if they are more efficient. People would rather avoid doing things than learning a tool to do it efficiently. Even in this thread you can see simeone who is / was a Vim holdout. But the improvement from Vim to IDE will be a fraction of the difference compared to AI integrated IDEs.
  • notrealyme123 1y ago
    I tried cursor but it felt impossible for me to create novelty there. It just only work on things which have been, more or less, in the training data. Saying that the people are the problem instead of the tool is a lazy argument IMO. "Its not the companies fault, its the customer"
  • yrds96 1y ago
    Did people force React? Cloud infrastructure? Microservices? You get it. I know there are people still using PHP 5 and deploying via FTP, but most people moved on to be better professionals and use better tools. Many people are doing this to AI, too, me included. The problem is that some big companies and influential people treat AI as a silver bullet and convince investors and customers to think the same way. These people aren't thinking about how much AI can help people be productive. They are just thinking about how much revenue it can give until the bubble pops.
    • procaryote 1y ago
      Forcing react, cloud infra and microservices makes a lot more sense than forcing certain development tools. One is the common system you work, the other is what you use to essentially edit text.
      • aforwardslash 1y ago
        Its basically the same. It abstracts away a layer of complexity, so you focus on different stuff. The inherent disadvantage of using these shortcuts/abstractions is only obvious if you actually understand their inner workings and their shortcomings - being cloud services or llm-generated code. Today you have "frontend programmers" that couldn't implement a simple algorithm even if their life depended on it; thats not necessarily bad - it democratizes access to tech and lowers the entry bar. These devs up in arms against ai tools are just gatekeepers - they see how easy is to produce slop and feel threatened by it. AI is a tool; in most cases will improve the speed and quality of your work; in some cases, it wont. Just like everything else.
• quantummagic 1y ago
  They said the same thing about the loom. "I'm an artist, no machine can replace me!" Now it's all done by machine, and none of us worry about it. We're in the early stages of the same process with AI; history rhyme.
  • huflungdung 1y ago
    [dead]
  • overgard 1y ago
    That may be the case some day, but I don't think it's going to happen with LLMs. They get too many things wrong via hallucinations (likely unfixable) and often they can go deep into an (incorrect) rabbit hole burning a ton of tokens at the same time. Useful tools, but I think the idea that they'll replace programmers is (wishful? eek) thinking.
    • quantummagic 1y ago
      Yup.. took the loom 200 years, and it won't be overnight for AI either. But it will eat away at the edges, and do the simple things first. It already is, for those who embrace it.
    • anal_reactor 1y ago
      People 70+ still often don't trust the computers because the machines make too many mistakes and are unreliable. There's no arguing with them.
      • overgard 1y ago
        Are you trying to say I'm old? Machines are deterministic.. LLM's are very much not.
  • sumuyuda 1y ago
    High quality hand made clothes still exist and people do want to pay for them. Mass produced clothing made in sweats shops are what the majority of the people buy because that is where the capitalist companies drove the production.
• huflungdung 1y ago
  [dead]
• rdtsc 1y ago
  > If they’re really so confident on the LLM’s effectiveness, why not just keep it voluntary, why force it on people? The results will be there in the outcome of the shipped product for all to see. It’s a bit like returning to the office. If it’s such an obvious no-brainer performance booster with improved communication and collaboration, they wouldn’t have to force people to do it. Teams would chomp at the bit to do it to boost their own performance.
  • BiteCode_dev 1y ago
    That's assuming this is most people's objective when they are at work. And even if it was, that's also assuming this benefit would be superior to the benefit of remote work for the individual.
  • vineyardmike 1y ago
    I don't want to wade into the actual effectiveness of RTO nor LLMs at boosting productivity, but if you buy into the claims made by advocates, it seems pretty obvious that the "in office boosts communication" claim is only true if your coworker (the other side of the conversation) is in office. Not everyone has the same priorities, so you'd have to mandate compliance to see the benefits. Similarly, many people don't like learning new tools, and don't like changing their behavior. Especially if it's something they enjoy vs something good for the business. It's 2025 and people will have adamantly used vim for 25 years; some people aren't likely to change what they're comfortable with. Regardless of what is good for productivity (which vim may or may not be), developers are picky about their tools, and its hard to convince people to try new things. I think the assumption that people will choose to boost their own productivity is questionable, especially in the face of their own comfort or enjoyment, and if "the business" must wait for them to explore and discover it on their own time, they risk forgoing profits associated with that employee's work.
    • gherkinnn 1y ago
      I don't see how using vim is in any way bad for business, what a terrible example. And I don't even use it myself. Your argument also hinges on "business" knowing what is good for productivity, which they generally don't. Admittedly, neither do many programmers, else we'd have a lot less k8s.
• germandiago 1y ago
  You want some advice from a 16 years-in-industry person? Not so long, but long enough: software, as all industries, are driven by metrics. Metrics we understand, but that managers miss to understand sometimes. You are a means to produce. With the advent of AI, some very hyped people think and wish they could get rid of programmers. You know what I am doing in the meantime? I built a business. I am just finishing the beta deploymet test now. It can go wrong? Yes. But otherwise, be faced to be a number, a production chain thing in the future. Besides that, when they can get rid of you, you are going to be in a bad positio to move at that time. Invest time now in an alternative strategy, if you can. Of course, I know nothing about you so I might be totally wrong. If you already have financial safety for the rest of your life, this does not apply as hard. I am trying to buy more freedom on my side. I already had some, but not enough. You will not be free with a manager to report to, even if you are thinking you are doing a better job than he thinks. Or even if you are objetively doing it. They will care about delivery in a rush, politics, self-interest (this is not different from any human, but you will depend on them), etc. Just choose freedom :D
• not_that_d 1y ago
  I am living this but the CEOs of my company are also "active" programmers. Even when I already hear from them that "it helps them in language they do not know" (which is also my experience) I get frown upon if on meetings I do not say that I am "Actively using AI to GENERATE whole files of code". I use AI as rubber duck, generate repetitive code or support me when going into an new language or technology, but as soon as I understand it, most of the code given for complete, non hobby, enterprise level projects contains either inefficient code or just plain mistakes which takes me ages to fix for new technologies.
• _ZeD_ 1y ago
  what baffles me is how much more rage is coming from any other creative workers (painters, filmmakers, musicians) than from programmers. Why are programs - the result of the ingenuity of people working in software field - not protected against AI slop stuff. Why is there not any kind of narrative out there describing how fake and soulless is code written by any AI agent?
  • Copenjin 1y ago
    Because there already was slop written by humans, and I think that in many cases the AI slop is better looking.
  • protocolture 1y ago
    >not protected against AI slop stuff. Programmers are by and large not assholes adverse to sharing, which is why we have copyleft and stack overflow.. Coding is also a process, a process that you may need to go through many times. The creation and maintenance of expert systems Artists tend to want to win it big once, never innovate, and use the government to force people to send them money.
  • eloisant 1y ago
    Because for other workers the threat is much bigger. I'm not a painter, filmmaker or musician, but now I can make a picture, a short movie or a song. Yes it will be mediocre, but if I'm fine with mediocre I no longer need those professionals. Programs on the other hand still need developers to make. Also, we've seen decades of tooling evolution that (1) made developers more productive (2) failed to replace developers.
  • _shadi 1y ago
    > Why is there not any kind of narrative out there describing how fake and soulless is code written by any AI agent? because soulless code does not matter. For other fields the result is more subjective, I don't like movies with desaturated color palette, a lot of people like them, maybe LLMs can produce new genre of movies, which people who appreciate classic films or music find it soulless, and find it sad that the peasants kind of like these films and the whole thing a risk for their careers or whole craft and the human effort in making their art work. In code its objective, either the result work or not work, I guess you can stretch "it works" to have a different meaning that can include maintainability where it starts to get more subjective, but at the end of the day you will also can get to a point where the whole thing can collapse under its weight. I think this is the main difference in reaction to LLMs between different fields, fields that are subjective and more to sensitive to receiver taste you can notice a rage(I think range is an overstatement) against it, while fields where the result is objective the reaction from people is simply saying it does or doesn't work.
• visarga 1y ago
  The forcing argument has merit, it should not be forced, in fact they should say very little about how we do our work. But the "rubber-stamp" framing is wrong, if it were true then you would not be needed at all. It's actually harder to use gen AI than to code manually. Gen AI has a rapid pace and overwhelming quantity of code you need to ensure is not broken in non-obvious ways. You need to layer constraints, tests, feedback systems for self repair and handle memories across contexts. I recently vibe coded 100K LOC across dozens of apps, I feel the rush of power in coding agents but also the danger. At any moment they could hallucinate, misunderstand or use a different premise than you did. Going past 1000 LOC requires sustained focus, it will quickly unravel into a mess otherwise.
  • therein 1y ago
    It is not harder if you don't care about or even understand what could go wrong. It is harder if you care and want to be as confident of this code as if it is your own hand-written code. Feels like you are assuming everyone has your diligence and the diligence that exists in the industry isn't already rapidly decaying due to what's happening.
    • bagacrap 1y ago
      Feels like he's overestimating his own diligence. After all a couple weeks is not enough time to discover all the shortcomings of this output.
• avhception 1y ago
  Just yesterday I made some notes about a program I'd like to write (hobby project, to be open sourced). After that, the thought of using an LLM to turn the notes into an implementation squished the joy right out of me. The better the code generated by LLMs get, the less there is of an incentive to say "no". Granted, we're not nearly there yet (even though media reports and zealous tech bros say otherwise). But - and this is especially true for organizations that already had a big code quality problem before the LLMs showed up - if the interpreter / compiler accepts the code and it superficially looks like it does what it should, there is pressure to simply accept it. Why say no when we could be done now and move on!? Rubber-stamp it and let's go! Sigh. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, reading the raves about LLMs every day grinds me down.
• krackers 1y ago
  I find LLM generated code ends up pushing review/maintenance burden onto others. It "looks" right at first glance, and passes superficial tests, so it's easy to get merged. But then as you build on top of it, you realize the foundations are hastily put together, so a lot of it needs to be rewritten. Fine for throwaway or exploratory work, but heaven help you if you're working in a project where people use LLMs to "fix" bugs generated by previous LLM generated code. So yes it does increase "velocity" for the person A who can get away with using it. But then the decrease in velocity for person B trying to build on top of that code is never properly tracked. It's like a game of hot potato, if you want to game the metrics you better be the one working on greenfield code (although I suppose maintenance work has never been looked at favorably in performance review; but now the cycle of code rot is accelerated)
  • Gigachad 1y ago
    This has been described a lot as “workslop”, work that superficially looks great but pushes the real burden on the receiver of the work rather than the producer.
  • loveparade 1y ago
    That sounds more like an organizational problem. If you are an employee that doesn't care about maintainability of code, e.g. a freelancer working on a project you will never touch again after your contract is over, your incentive has always been to write crappy code as quickly as possible. Previously that took the form of copying cheap templates, copying and pasting code from StackOverflow as-is without adjustments, not caring about style, using tools to autogenerate bindings, and so on. I remember a long time ago I took over a web project that a freelancer had worked on, and when I opened it I saw one large file of mixed python and HTML. He literally just copied and pasted whole html pages into the render statements in the server code. The same is true for many people submitting PRs to OSS. They don't care about making real contributions, they just want to put something on their resume. AI is probably making it more common, but it really isn't a new issue, and is not directly related to LLMs.
    • tschumacher 1y ago
• Nio1024 1y ago
  I don’t think AI is anywhere near the point of replacing humans yet. The main issue here is whether the use of these tools is forced or voluntary. I’ve seen quite a few companies where the boss tries to fully adopt AI productivity tools, but faces strong resistance during implementation.From the employees’ perspective, the boss might be moving too aggressively without considering the practical realities. From the boss’s perspective, it’s frustrating to see the pushback.This tension seems to be a common challenge at the current stage of AI adoption.
  • Nio1024 1y ago
    Just to add,many people tend to overestimate the power of AI. At least for now, vibe coding doesn’t play a significant role in building complex software. I recently read a Stack Overflow research report showing that:“Most respondents are not vibe coding (72%), and an additional 5% are emphatic it not being part of their development workflow.”It also noted that in a future with advanced AI, the #1 reason developers would still ask another human for help is “When I don’t trust AI’s answers” (75%).This clearly shows that human developers remain the ultimate
  • zwnow 1y ago
    It wont replace humans in the foreseeable future as they can not reason or react to changes they werent trained on. Bosses are jumping on a hype train making decisions in fields they barely have expertise in, which is the frustrating part. They listen to false promises of other "founders". Bosses not listening to their employees always has been a key factor to frustration at work, these businesses have no right to succeed.
• bloppe 1y ago
  If tech companies are this stupid, it ought to be very easy to disrupt and usurp them by simply shipping competing code that works. In that sense, the author is painting an incredibly bright picture of the future of the software industry: one where founders don't have to be particularly talented to hit the jackpot.
  • numpy-thagoras 1y ago
    "...one where founders don't have to be particularly talented to hit the jackpot." That's where we're at right now anyways. "If tech companies are this stupid, it ought to be very easy to disrupt and usurp them by simply shipping--" And that's how we got here. The code rot issue will blow up a lot more over the next few years, that we can finally complete the sentence and start "shipping competing code that works". I worry that mopping up this catastrophe is going to be a task that people will again blindly set AI upon without the deep knowledge of what exactly to do, rather than "to do in general, over there, behind that hill".
  • ehnto 1y ago
    Saving misguided AI codebases is going to be quite lucrative for contract work I suspect. A lot of non-technical people are going to get surprisingly far into their product without realising they are on a bad path. It already happens now when a non-technical founder doesn't get a good technical hire. The surprising thing for developers though, is how often a shit codebase makes millions of dollars before becoming an issue. As much as I love producing rock solid software, I too would take millions of dollars and a shit codebase over a salary and good code.
  • fancyfredbot 1y ago
    Yes this is only bad news if you are working for morons. Unfortunately a lot of people are in that situation. You can basically forget about disruption. Meritocracy is dead, long live the Peter principle.
  • xigoi 1y ago
    Unfortunately, companies will force their employees to use shitty software anyway. See Microsoft Teams.
• mock-possum 1y ago
  This feels like it would have been better off as a topic level reply to that Reddit thread, than as a short whiny blog post, or as a post to HN
• gngoo 1y ago
  Okay, but now what? Clearly, the industry is trending towards an entirely new style of doing programming. What are the longterm options going to be for those who don't enjoy this? Especially when there is a good chunk of people embracing it and adopting tools faster than any other tools for this proffesion have been adopted in the past. How will this end?
  • 8484481841 1y ago
    For the great majority, the longterm option is going to be choosing another career.
  • eloisant 1y ago
    Ask people who thought compilers were stupid, generating wrong code and decided they preferred to keep writing assembly code...
• ayaros 1y ago
  "Needless to say, they’d still want you to take the responsibility. If bugs or tickets get raised on the shipped code, it’s you who gets fired, not the copilot or chatgpt - though the larger narrative or news headlines next day would still be, 'AI is eating jobs'!" I'm also reminded of that legendary old IBM quote from 1979: "A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision."
• p0w3n3d 1y ago
  I totally agree, the employer requires me to take ownership of the code I pushed to the repository. I should not be enforced to use some tool if I think that the tool does wrong. In a larger scope, I tend to break many "rules" when I code, because I say that my experience proves against it, and this is what makes me unique. Of course nowadays, I need to convince my team to approve it, but sometimes things that are written differently are free from certain flaws that I want in this very case to avoid. -- EDIT -- I think that this management trend comes from the bad management principles. There's a joke that a bad manager is a person who knowingly that one woman delivers a baby in 9 months, will consider that nine women deliver a baby in one month. I'd say similar principle comes in here - they were bought by the commercials on how AI makes things faster, they have put the numbers into their spreadsheet and now they expect the numbers they pay get similar to the numbers on the sheet. And if the numbers do not fit, they start pushing.
• alganet 1y ago
  What I don't like about this take is that it implies that it could be that way. It implies the LLM could do the job of writing, leaving the programmer to just approve it. It sounds anti-LLM, but it actually helps support the illusion that LLMs can do more than they actually can. I don't think an LLM can write serious software on its own. If it could, there would be some extraordinary evidence, but all there is are some people spreading rumours. If you ask them for simple evidence of comparable performance (like a video), they shy away or answer vaguely. The thing is not there yet, and I understand the optimism of some, but I also must emphasize that it's not looking great for LLM coding enthusiasts right now. There's no amount of proselitism that can make up for the lack of substance in their claims. Maybe they can trick investors and some kids, but that's not going to cut it in the long run. Therefore, this is not a problem. I don't need to worry about it. If (or when) some evidence appears, I can then worry about it. This hasn't happened yet.
• xkbarkar 1y ago
  As a response to the AI negativity in the thread. Remember that this thing is in its infancy. Current models are the embryos of what is to come. Code quality of the current models is not replacing skilled software engineers, network or ops engineers. Tomorrows models may well do that though. Venting the frustrations of this is all very well but I sincerely hope those who wish to stay in the industry, learn to get ahead of AI and utilize and control it. Set industry standards (now) and fight technically incompetent lawmakers before they steer us into disaster. We have no idea what the effect of tomorrows LLMs is going to have, autonomous warfare is not that far away eg. All while todays tech talent spends energy bickering on HN about the loss of being the code review King. Everyone hated the code review royalty anyway. No one mourns them. Move on.
  • awesan 1y ago
    If managers are pushing a clearly not-working tool, it makes perfect sense for workers to complain about this and share their experiences. This has nothing to do with the future. No one knows for sure if the models will improve or not. But they are not as advertised today and this is what people are reacting to.
  • sirwhinesalot 1y ago
    Current LLMs are already trained on the entirety of the interwebs, including very likely stuff they really should not have had access to (private github repos and such). GPT-5 and other SoTA models are only slightly better than their predecessors, and not for every problem (while being worse in other metrics). Assuming there is no major architectural breakthrough[1], the trajectory only seems to be slowing down. Not enough new data, new data that is LLM generated (causing a "recompressed JPEG" sort of problem), absurd compute requirements for training that are only getting more expensive. At some point you hit hard physical limits like electricity usage. [1]: If this happens, one side effect is that local models will be more than good enough. Which in turn means all these AI companies will go under because the economics don't add up. Fun times ahead, whichever direction it goes.
    • Macha 1y ago
• Zababa 1y ago
  Interesting to see how programmers seems to be separating into people embracing those tools and people rejecting them. I wonder if it's linked to liking the act of coding itself vs liking the results.
• Ekaros 1y ago
  I myself are among people I would trust least to approve any code. In general I am way too trusting that others either know better or have properly thought through their work. In scenarios were especially the later might not be true it seems like a inevitable failure. And I am not even sure any fixes will be thought trough either... Which makes me rather sceptical of whole thing.
• deleted 1y ago
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• throw-10-13 1y ago
  Working with AI is like working with an ADHD intern that says they understand the problem but then gets distracted by every possible thing and then tries to gaslight you into thinking their mistakes are your fault. Its exhausting, infuriating, and a waste of time.
  • jjav 1y ago
    Funny, in that just moments ago I was describing AI coder to friends as a very drunk intern high on crack. My experience is that using AI as a fancy code completion tool works very well and saves me a lot of time. But, trying to let it define how to do things aka vibe coding, is a recipe for endless disaster. AI coder can do great things but it needs someone to first define the architecture and forcefully guide it in the right direction at every step. If let loose, things go haywire.
    • throw-10-13 1y ago
      I basically just use it every now and then to summarize api docs for me, every time I try to use it to solve a real problem it just flounders in context polluted by its previous failed attempts. I generally find the whole process to be more frustrating and time consuming than just writing the code myself. I am not interested in entire new architectural paradigms required to enable a mediocre code ad-lib bot.
• serf 1y ago
  interesting to see the phrase 'programmer' coming back en masse - especially as someone who never really stopped using it. I thought we were all 'full stack engineeers' now, otherwise the resume got thrown into the circular file? Great. I wait with anticipation for the slide back to 'Calculator'.
  • DocTomoe 1y ago
    Also, as someone who had lived through the cringeworthy programmer -> 'coder' transition (with coder originally having had a 'code monkey'-vibe), I am happy to see we're returning to adult words.
• DocTomoe 1y ago
  That's a bit like an 1950s era pilot raging against autopilots because 'I am a pilot, not a rubber-stamp that does autopilot surveillance.' Today, no commercial pilot would get the idea that they are there to fly straight for eight hours. They are there for when bad things happen. I expect software development to go into a similar direction.
• cHaOs667 1y ago
  "If they’re really so confident on the LLM’s effectiveness, why not just keep it voluntary, why force it on people?" To answer this question: To justify the investment. No, for real, LLM solutions costs a shitload of money, and every investment needs to be justified on a management level. That's the reason they are enforcing it. My bigger problem is that there are a whole lot of "developers" who do not read the generated code properly, why do you end up in review sessions where the developer does not know what is happening and why the code acts in a particular way. And we have not yet discussed clean code principles throughout the whole solution...
• conradludgate 1y ago
  By some metrics (commit count, lines of code, latency to bug fix), I'm one of the most productive engineers in my org. My peers are constantly surprised that I still use zero LLMs in my development routine. I'm holding on as much as I can. I love the thrill of programming and I'm definitely not holding the team back, although there have been idle threats about it being bad that seniors are not using AI enough. My super power is that I've meticulously shaped the codebase I maintain to fit in my head at all times. It's only possible because I've been hands on with all of it. In my downtime I do idle refactors and often throw it away, just to explore more ideas to build even more implicit context. I think we're going to have to have a generational shift in LLM context management before we get to something as capable. I certainly don't doubt we'll get there one day. But I will definitely feel depressed whenever that day comes. Solving architectural problems is my job, implementing the software is my reward - this is something that makes me happy to wake up every day. I accept that I'm a minority in the world of software development
  • rester324 1y ago
    Those metrics don't imply any level of productivity though. I could write 1000s of lines of code across hundreds of commits each day without delivering any value to anyone
    • conradludgate 1y ago
      The irony here is that LLMs are great according to these metrics
    • bagacrap 1y ago
      You could not do that where I work because no one would sign off on your changes.
• sidcool 1y ago
  I have seen HN leaning negative on LLM code assistance. I like it personally. But should be thoroughly reviewed.
• bgwalter 1y ago
  They force it on people because the U.S. is great at inventing new religions and selling them to people. It does not matter if it works. It does not matter if a company has a profit. If company A buys $10 million non-working services from company B and B buys $10 million non-working services from A, both have $10 million revenue on paper. They also have $10 million expenses, but revenue and hype is enough to warrant a P/E of 100. Every company that sells the hot air or whose CEO has friends who sell the hot air needs to force "AI" on its employees in order to keep up appearances. In two years, when everything crashes, they will create a new religion and sell it.
• rednafi 1y ago
  I’ve yet to find answers to these two questions: - If AI is making everyone so productive, why don’t we see that reflected in any existing productivity metrics? - Why do companies feel the need to introduce 996 when AI is supposedly making us obsolete?
  • tonyedgecombe 1y ago
    Also if their AI products are so great why are they hiring like crazy.
  • hitarpetar 1y ago
    AFAIK it's mostly AI startups doing 996, and it's driven by AGI mania/longtermist cult beliefs, not productivity per se
• brailsafe 1y ago
  I find them useful for a few tasks that I'd procrastinate on and delay anyway, but for others, it would honestly be faster for me to just apply my skills without getting to an LLM review mode. I've found that using an LLM poisons my flow in a way that is a bit draining, whereas if I just put the work in to maintain context in my head, it's faster and more enjoyable. Things like low-risk documentation, updating and creating unit tests along with fixing them in agent mode, describing how some code works etc.. are all at least a little useful for me.
  • bagacrap 1y ago
    Why is documentation low risk? Because you don't personally suffer if it's wrong? I would rather a piece of code not be documented than for it to be documented by AI and lead me down a garden path of misunderstanding.
• brushfoot 1y ago
  I'm a solopreneur. Yesterday, in 90 minutes, I developed an enhancement that would have taken a full day before. I did it by writing a detailed Markdown spec and feeding it to Copilot Agents running Sonnet 4.5. Copilot worked on it on a server somewhere while I ate lunch. When I returned, I reviewed the PR. It wasn't perfect; one of the dozen or so tests that Copilot had generated didn't actually test what it purported to. So, I fixed that by hand. It wasn't a big deal. It was still quicker and took less cognitive effort than writing the entire PR myself. I'll confess that part of me is pleased to be dismissed with epithets like "AI-pilled," because properly using LLMs is an enormous competitive advantage. The more negative sentiment around them there is, the less likely the competition is to be inclined to learn and master them.
  • hitarpetar 1y ago
    it seems like one of the most important parts of being an AI booster is getting to feel better than everyone else
• carlosjobim 1y ago
  I can't think about a more just punishment than what God is giving to programmers right now with AI generated code. It was you who for decades did everything in your might to make programming as difficult as possible for normal people, inventing the most petty rules and complications in every place imaginable in order to protect your guild from intruders. Being able to program does not require intelligence, it requires being able to memorize an immense number of random gotchas and grammar rules which makes code not work if you forget to honour them. Things such as: - If you add 2+2 your answer will be 22 unless you do it in the "right" way. - Your code not compiling if you have "mixed tabs and spaces", and of course all text editors also hide tabs and spaces. - Your code failing if you have forgotten a ; or a " or a ) or a } etc etc - Having to set up a complicated development environment instead of being able to program straight away on the machine. So at least I'm laughing while I'm praising God for punishing programmers with AI code. It helps normal people to work through your Byzantine and evil rules and empowers them to make functional programs, while you are left to tear your hair and grind your teeth when reviewing our AI-generated code. Now you know how we felt all these years!
  • rester324 1y ago
    You realize that what you write makes zero sense. Those rules will all be there regardless if you generate your code by hand or with AI. So you should ask your god to give you higher cognitive skills instead
    • carlosjobim 1y ago
      Memorizing random rules was a skill. Now the AI will memorize those rules, and it's just not a skill anymore. The skill will instead be in architecting your program or system. Which requires more cognitive skills and intelligence than route memorization.
• tasuki 1y ago
  > I am a programmer, not a rubber-stamp that approves Copilot generated code That's just, like, you opinion? Anyway, I don't see what the fuss is about. It's one of the two... - Either the LLMs are very good and replace programmers. Yay, automation - we always cheer for that! Instead of working, humanity can, like, go fishing or something. - Or the LLMs aren't that good and don't replace programmers. Yay, jobs!
  • bagacrap 1y ago
    Unfortunately the MBAs don't seem to want to judge LLMs on their merits, so we're stuck with option 3: LLMs aren't good but still displace programmers. And also capitalism, so if you're out of work you also don't get to have a home.
• Suzuran 1y ago
  You're a programmer, not a rubber stamp? The unemployment line is over there then, you aren't wanted.
• IT4MD 1y ago
  You should try Ops. US: This is a horrifically bad idea. Mgmt: We MUST have this. Do it, I don't care US: implements horrifically bad idea Mgmt: Why does this not work? Why is this taking months? Our IT group sucks.
• osigurdson 1y ago
  If people can carve out an easy / chill policing role in which all there is to do is watch dashboards many will take it. The key for orgs is to avoid making roles like this.
• palmotea 1y ago
  Roles are evolving, and don't be a luddite! We're not programmers anymore, we're people someone to take the blame with the AI goes wrong. After all, you are hired to do the impossible job of reviewing all the code and catching all the mistakes. A perfect job for a machine, er, human! Embrace the change! Progress!
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• billy99k 1y ago
  This is starting to remind me of the switch from ASM -> C or more recently, the switch from pure HTML/Javascript to frameworks. Technology advances and if you don't follow the advancements, you will suddenly find yourself laid off with no job prospects. This happened to my cousin last year. He's in his early 50s and was the subject matter expert on decades old technology, which nobody really uses anymore. He was laid off and when he tried to get another software development job, many interviewers laughed at him for his outdated tools and techniques he used. He ended up getting a job as a mechanic and will most likely not get back into IT.
• halis 1y ago
  I find that my usage varies based on a cycle of: 1) Using the LLM like crazy to help refactor code, extract components for re-use to speed up things in the long run 2) The refactoring has sped up the work significantly, but now I need to pause and address technical debt that the LLM introduced.
  • bagacrap 1y ago
    I don't think you're using the term technical debt correctly. Technical debt occurs when you intentionally choose to do something the expedient way even if it causes you to invest more time later, usually due to an important deadline, which means that an hour before the deadline is worth more than an hour after the deadline. What technical debt is not: something done poorly due to a skill issue.
• rglullis 1y ago
  "I am a computer, not someone that checks the calculations done by ENIAC" -- Lost Letters from the 1950's, Vol 1.
• replyifuagree 1y ago
  You want to pay me bank to rubber stamp bad code? Weird flex but alright!
• arvigeus 1y ago
  > usage is actually getting monitored and performance appraisals have now started depending on the AI usage This is one of the easiest statistic to game. AI is master BS generator, just give it shitty prompts and toss away the code.