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The best argument I've yet heard against the effectiveness of AI tools for SW dev is the absence of an explosion of shovelware over the past 1-2 years. https:/

The best argument I've yet heard against the effectiveness of AI tools for SW dev is the absence of an explosion of shovelware over the past 1-2 years. https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware-why-ai-coding https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware... Basically, if the tools are even half as good as some proponents claim, wouldn't you expect at least a significant increase in simple games on Steam or apps in app stores over that time frame? But we're not seeing that.

Miraste 11mo ago
Interesting approach. I can think of one more explanation the author didn't consider: what if software development time wasn't the bottleneck to what he analyzed? The chart for Google Play app submissions, for example, goes down because Google made it much more difficult to publish apps on their store in ways unrelated to software quality. In that case, it wouldn't matter whether AI tools could write a billion production-ready apps, because the limiting factor is Google's submission requirements.
- parineum 11mo ago
  There are other charts besides Google play. Particularly insightful id the steam chart as steam is already full of shovelware and, in my experience, many developers wish they were making games but the pay is bad. GitHub repos is pretty interesting too but it could be that people just aren't committing this stuff. Showing zero increase is unexpected though.
zeckalpha 11mo ago
Interesting, I would make the exact opposite conclusion from the same data: if AI coding was that bad, we'd see more crapware.
aydyn 11mo ago
Are you sure we aren't seeing an increase in steam games? Charts I'm looking at show a mild exponential around 2024 https://www.statista.com/statistics/552623/number-games-released-steam/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/552623/number-games-rele... Also theres probably a bottleneck in manual review time.
raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
The shovelware is the companies getting funded… https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2EZqQ-p1XkybYp21llKCfLsME/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E... The shovelware software is coming…
rrrx3 11mo ago
The argument against this is that shovelware has a distinctly different distribution model now. App stores have quality hurdles that didn’t exist in the diskette days. The types of people making low quality software now can self publish (and in fact do, often), but they get drowned out by established big dogs or the ever-shifting firehose of our social zeitgeist if you are not where they are. Anyone who has been on Reddit this year in any software adjacent sub has seen hundreds (at minimum) of posts about “feedback on my app” or slop posts doing a god awful job of digging for market insights on pain points. The core problem with this guy’s argument is that he’s looking in the wrong places - where a SWE would distribute their stuff, not a normie - and then drawing the wrong conclusions. And I am telling you, normies are out there, right now, upchucking some of the sloppiest of slop software you could ever imagine with wanton abandon.
falkensmaize 11mo ago
I've had this same thought for some time. There should have been an explosion in startups, new product from established companies, new apps by the dozen every day. If LLMs can now reliably turn an idea into an application, where are they?
- babyshake 11mo ago
  There is a deluge, every day. Just nobody notices or uses them.
- DANmode 11mo ago
  Still figuring out if they’re adding value to 200 customers or not.

Miraste 11mo ago

Interesting approach. I can think of one more explanation the author didn't consider: what if software development time wasn't the bottleneck to what he analyzed? The chart for Google Play app submissions, for example, goes down because Google made it much more difficult to publish apps on their store in ways unrelated to software quality. In that case, it wouldn't matter whether AI tools could write a billion production-ready apps, because the limiting factor is Google's submission requirements.

parineum 11mo ago
There are other charts besides Google play. Particularly insightful id the steam chart as steam is already full of shovelware and, in my experience, many developers wish they were making games but the pay is bad. GitHub repos is pretty interesting too but it could be that people just aren't committing this stuff. Showing zero increase is unexpected though.

zeckalpha 11mo ago

Interesting, I would make the exact opposite conclusion from the same data: if AI coding was that bad, we'd see more crapware.

aydyn 11mo ago

Are you sure we aren't seeing an increase in steam games? Charts I'm looking at show a mild exponential around 2024 https://www.statista.com/statistics/552623/number-games-released-steam/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/552623/number-games-rele... Also theres probably a bottleneck in manual review time.

raw_anon_1111 11mo ago

The shovelware is the companies getting funded… https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2EZqQ-p1XkybYp21llKCfLsME/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E... The shovelware software is coming…

rrrx3 11mo ago

The argument against this is that shovelware has a distinctly different distribution model now. App stores have quality hurdles that didn’t exist in the diskette days. The types of people making low quality software now can self publish (and in fact do, often), but they get drowned out by established big dogs or the ever-shifting firehose of our social zeitgeist if you are not where they are. Anyone who has been on Reddit this year in any software adjacent sub has seen hundreds (at minimum) of posts about “feedback on my app” or slop posts doing a god awful job of digging for market insights on pain points. The core problem with this guy’s argument is that he’s looking in the wrong places - where a SWE would distribute their stuff, not a normie - and then drawing the wrong conclusions. And I am telling you, normies are out there, right now, upchucking some of the sloppiest of slop software you could ever imagine with wanton abandon.

falkensmaize 11mo ago

I've had this same thought for some time. There should have been an explosion in startups, new product from established companies, new apps by the dozen every day. If LLMs can now reliably turn an idea into an application, where are they?

babyshake 11mo ago
There is a deluge, every day. Just nobody notices or uses them.
DANmode 11mo ago
Still figuring out if they’re adding value to 200 customers or not.