3 ms·

I've come to the same conclusion: If you just want a huge volume of code written as fast as possible, and don't care about 1. how big it is, 2. how fast it runs

I've come to the same conclusion: If you just want a huge volume of code written as fast as possible, and don't care about 1. how big it is, 2. how fast it runs, 3. how buggy it is, 4. how maintainable or understandable it is, or 5. the overall craftsmanship and artistry of it, then you're probably seeing huge productivity gains! And this is fine for a lot of people and for a lot of companies: Quality really doesn't matter. They just care about shitting out mediocre code as fast as possible. If you do care about these things, it will take you overall longer to write the code with an LLM than it would by hand-crafting it. I started playing around with Claude on my hobby projects, and found it requires an enormous amount of exhausting handholding and post-processing to get the code to the point where I am really happy with it as a consistent, complete, expressive work of art that I would be willing to sign my name to.

citizenpaul 11mo ago
>shitting out mediocre code as fast as possible. This really is what businesses want and always have wanted. I've seen countless broken systems spitting out wrong info that was actively used by the businesses in my career, before AI. They literally did not want it fixed when I brought it up because dealing with errors was part of the process now in pretty much all cases. I don't even try anymore unless I'm specifically brought on to fix a legacy system. >that I would be willing to sign my name to. This right here is what mgmt thinks is the big "problem" that AI solves. They have always wanted us to magically know what parts are "good enough" and what parts can slide but for us to bear the burden of blame. The real problem is same as always bad spec. AI won't solve that but it will in their eyes remove a layer in their poor communication. Obviously no SWE is going to build a system that spit out wrong info and just say "hire people to always double check the work" or add it to so-so's job duties to check, but that really is the solution most places seem to go with by lack of decision. Perhaps there is some sort of failure of SWE's to understand that businesses don't care. Accounting will catch the expensive errors anyway. Then Execs will bull whip middle managers and it will go away.
- swatcoder 11mo ago
  The adversarial tension was all that ever made any of it work. The "Perfectionist Engineer" without a "Pragmatic Executive" to press them into delivering something good enough would of course still been in their workshop, tinkering away, when the market had already closed. But the "Pragmatic Executive" without the "Perfectionist Engineer" around to temper their naive optimism would just as soon find themselves chased from the market for selling gilded junk. You're right that there do seem to be some execs, in the naive optimism that defines them, eager to see if this technology finally lets them bring their vision to market without the engineer to balance them. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
  - pdimitar 11mo ago
    That's a nice balanced wholesome take, only the problem is that the "Pragmatic Executive" is more like "Career-driven frenzied 'ship it today at all costs' psychopath executive". You are describing a push-and-pull / tug-of-war balanced relationship. In reality that's absolutely exactly never balanced. The engineer has 1% say, the other 99% go to the executive. I so wish your take was universally applicable. In my 24 years of career, it was not.
    - citizenpaul 11mo ago
      >The engineer has 1% say, the other 99% go to the executive. This has also been my experience. Not to mention "fighting back" usually comes at personal cost in various ways from reputation to creating more unpaid work for yourself, including the time you spend on trying to make things right that now means you are behind on your "real work".
      - pdimitar 11mo ago
        Don't forget you "no longer work well with others" if you start standing up to mediocrity that everyone else is either too stupid to notice, or too afraid to fight back against because they don't want to harm their career. I am mostly starting to make my peace with all this and learning when is a good time to really fight (hint: almost never). And I don't quite buy HN's group-think of "find a better job, duh". The market has been difficult in the last years and also the "better jobs" are nowhere nearly as accessible as privileged people believe. Best way to handle things, I have found, is to dress the decisions in money and time. Position yourself as a realist who speaks numbers and if you are lucky -- meaning you don't get contested by other techies who simply want to shine in front of the boss -- then you will have at least the product people on your side. All that being said, of course at one point you should leave. In no form of relationship, work, friends, intimate, should you let yourself be walked all over for a long time. Start fighting the good fight in the company... and start polishing your resume and go do interviews.
matwood 11mo ago
> Quality really doesn't matter. It does matter, but it's one requirement among many. Engineers think quality metrics as you listed are the most important requirements, but that's not typically true.

citizenpaul 11mo ago

>shitting out mediocre code as fast as possible. This really is what businesses want and always have wanted. I've seen countless broken systems spitting out wrong info that was actively used by the businesses in my career, before AI. They literally did not want it fixed when I brought it up because dealing with errors was part of the process now in pretty much all cases. I don't even try anymore unless I'm specifically brought on to fix a legacy system. >that I would be willing to sign my name to. This right here is what mgmt thinks is the big "problem" that AI solves. They have always wanted us to magically know what parts are "good enough" and what parts can slide but for us to bear the burden of blame. The real problem is same as always bad spec. AI won't solve that but it will in their eyes remove a layer in their poor communication. Obviously no SWE is going to build a system that spit out wrong info and just say "hire people to always double check the work" or add it to so-so's job duties to check, but that really is the solution most places seem to go with by lack of decision. Perhaps there is some sort of failure of SWE's to understand that businesses don't care. Accounting will catch the expensive errors anyway. Then Execs will bull whip middle managers and it will go away.

swatcoder 11mo ago
The adversarial tension was all that ever made any of it work. The "Perfectionist Engineer" without a "Pragmatic Executive" to press them into delivering something good enough would of course still been in their workshop, tinkering away, when the market had already closed. But the "Pragmatic Executive" without the "Perfectionist Engineer" around to temper their naive optimism would just as soon find themselves chased from the market for selling gilded junk. You're right that there do seem to be some execs, in the naive optimism that defines them, eager to see if this technology finally lets them bring their vision to market without the engineer to balance them. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
- pdimitar 11mo ago
  That's a nice balanced wholesome take, only the problem is that the "Pragmatic Executive" is more like "Career-driven frenzied 'ship it today at all costs' psychopath executive". You are describing a push-and-pull / tug-of-war balanced relationship. In reality that's absolutely exactly never balanced. The engineer has 1% say, the other 99% go to the executive. I so wish your take was universally applicable. In my 24 years of career, it was not.
  - citizenpaul 11mo ago
    >The engineer has 1% say, the other 99% go to the executive. This has also been my experience. Not to mention "fighting back" usually comes at personal cost in various ways from reputation to creating more unpaid work for yourself, including the time you spend on trying to make things right that now means you are behind on your "real work".
    - pdimitar 11mo ago
      Don't forget you "no longer work well with others" if you start standing up to mediocrity that everyone else is either too stupid to notice, or too afraid to fight back against because they don't want to harm their career. I am mostly starting to make my peace with all this and learning when is a good time to really fight (hint: almost never). And I don't quite buy HN's group-think of "find a better job, duh". The market has been difficult in the last years and also the "better jobs" are nowhere nearly as accessible as privileged people believe. Best way to handle things, I have found, is to dress the decisions in money and time. Position yourself as a realist who speaks numbers and if you are lucky -- meaning you don't get contested by other techies who simply want to shine in front of the boss -- then you will have at least the product people on your side. All that being said, of course at one point you should leave. In no form of relationship, work, friends, intimate, should you let yourself be walked all over for a long time. Start fighting the good fight in the company... and start polishing your resume and go do interviews.

matwood 11mo ago

> Quality really doesn't matter. It does matter, but it's one requirement among many. Engineers think quality metrics as you listed are the most important requirements, but that's not typically true.