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I mean get onboard or fall behind, that's the situation we're all in. It can also be exciting. If you think it's still just slop and errors when managed by expe

I mean get onboard or fall behind, that's the situation we're all in. It can also be exciting. If you think it's still just slop and errors when managed by experienced devs, you're already behind.

collingreen 8mo ago
The obvious pulling ahead from early AI adopters/forcers will happen any moment now... any moment
- Rover222 8mo ago
  It's not obvious because the multiplier effect of AI is being used to reduce head count more than to drastically increase net output of a team. Which yeah is scary, but my point is if you don't see any multiplier effect from using that latest AI tools, you are either doing a bad job of using them (or don't have the budget, can't blame anyone for that), or are maybe in some obscure niche coding world?
  - emp17344 8mo ago
    >the multiplier effect of AI is being used to reduce head count more than to drastically increase net output of a team This simply isn’t how economics works. There is always additional demand, especially in the software space. Every other productivity-boosting technology has resulted in an increase in jobs, not a decrease.
    - Rover222 8mo ago
      Well that's certainly and obviously how it's working at the moment in the software industry. We're in the transition between traditional coding jobs and agentic managers (or something like that)
      - reverius42 8mo ago
        It's kind of inexplicable though, unless AI being the reason for layoffs is a lie, because it's true that historically there has always been way more demand for software than people who can make it (hence the decades of rising salaries relative to other professions). It seems like too much of a coincidence that the AI got good enough to replace humans at exactly the same time that humans in general don't need as much software made.
coldpie 8mo ago
I try these things a couple times a month. They're always underwhelming. Earlier this week I had the thing work tells me to use (claude code sonnet 4? something like that) generate some unit tests for a new function I wrote. I had a number of objections about the utility of the test cases it chose to write, but the largest problem was that it assigned the expected value to a test case struct field and then... didn't actually validate the retrieved value against it. If you didn't review the code, you wouldn't know that the test it wrote did literally nothing of value. Another time I asked it to rename a struct field across a the whole codebase. It missed 2 instances. A simple sed & grep command would've taken me 15 seconds to write and do the job correctly and cost $~0.00 compute, but I was curious to see if the AI could do it. Nope. Trillions of dollars for this? Sigh... try again next week, I guess.
- Rover222 8mo ago
  Try Opus?
  - coldpie 8mo ago
    Eh, there's a new shiny thing every 2 months. I'm waiting for the tools to settle down rather than keep up with that treadmill. Or I'll just go find a new career that's more appealing.
    - Rover222 8mo ago
      It seems that the rate of change will only accelerate.
      - coldpie 8mo ago
        I dunno. At some point the people who make these tools will have to turn a profit, and I suspect we'll find out that 98% of the AI industry is swimming naked.
        Rover222 8mo ago
irishcoffee 8mo ago
> I mean get onboard or fall behind, that's the situation we're all in. It can also be exciting. I am aware of a large company that everyone in the US has heard of, planning on laying off 30% of their devs shortly because they expect a 30% improvement in "productivity" from the remaining dev team. Exciting indeed. Imagine all the divorces that will fall out of this! Hopefully the kids will be ok, daddy just had an accident, he won't be coming home. If you think anything that is happening with the amount of money and bullshit enveloping this LLM disaster, you should put the keyboard down for a while.
driverdan 8mo ago
Fall behind what? Writing code is only one part of building a successful product and business. Speed of writing code is often not what bottlenecks success.
- Rover222 8mo ago
  Yes, the execution part has become cheap, but planning and strategizing is not much easier. But devs and organizations that keep their head in the sand will fall behind on one leg of that stool.
g947o 8mo ago
Anyone with more than 2 years of professional software engineering experience can tell this is completely nonsense.
- DontchaKnowit 8mo ago
  Well 6 years experience here and I personally saved about 4 hours of work today using claude. My coworker also just solved a problem I had been looking into for a few days in about an hour with claude. So, I think maybe you are just a bit behind the curve.
  - g947o 8mo ago
    Please stay on topic and focus on the "slop" and "fall behind" part. What's in your comment has been said maybe 1000 times just over the past day, so I'm afraid that information is not particularly helpful.
    - DontchaKnowit 8mo ago
      I mean I think I stayed exactly on topic. Used by experience devs, its not slop, and if you arent usuing the people who are areprobably going to outpace you

I mean get onboard or fall behind, that's the situation we're all in. It can also be exciting. If you think it's still just slop and errors when managed by experienced devs, you're already behind.

collingreen 8mo ago

The obvious pulling ahead from early AI adopters/forcers will happen any moment now... any moment

Rover222 8mo ago
It's not obvious because the multiplier effect of AI is being used to reduce head count more than to drastically increase net output of a team. Which yeah is scary, but my point is if you don't see any multiplier effect from using that latest AI tools, you are either doing a bad job of using them (or don't have the budget, can't blame anyone for that), or are maybe in some obscure niche coding world?
- emp17344 8mo ago
  >the multiplier effect of AI is being used to reduce head count more than to drastically increase net output of a team This simply isn’t how economics works. There is always additional demand, especially in the software space. Every other productivity-boosting technology has resulted in an increase in jobs, not a decrease.
  - Rover222 8mo ago
    Well that's certainly and obviously how it's working at the moment in the software industry. We're in the transition between traditional coding jobs and agentic managers (or something like that)
    - reverius42 8mo ago
      It's kind of inexplicable though, unless AI being the reason for layoffs is a lie, because it's true that historically there has always been way more demand for software than people who can make it (hence the decades of rising salaries relative to other professions). It seems like too much of a coincidence that the AI got good enough to replace humans at exactly the same time that humans in general don't need as much software made.

coldpie 8mo ago

I try these things a couple times a month. They're always underwhelming. Earlier this week I had the thing work tells me to use (claude code sonnet 4? something like that) generate some unit tests for a new function I wrote. I had a number of objections about the utility of the test cases it chose to write, but the largest problem was that it assigned the expected value to a test case struct field and then... didn't actually validate the retrieved value against it. If you didn't review the code, you wouldn't know that the test it wrote did literally nothing of value. Another time I asked it to rename a struct field across a the whole codebase. It missed 2 instances. A simple sed & grep command would've taken me 15 seconds to write and do the job correctly and cost $~0.00 compute, but I was curious to see if the AI could do it. Nope. Trillions of dollars for this? Sigh... try again next week, I guess.

Rover222 8mo ago
Try Opus?
- coldpie 8mo ago
  Eh, there's a new shiny thing every 2 months. I'm waiting for the tools to settle down rather than keep up with that treadmill. Or I'll just go find a new career that's more appealing.
  - Rover222 8mo ago
    It seems that the rate of change will only accelerate.
    - coldpie 8mo ago
      I dunno. At some point the people who make these tools will have to turn a profit, and I suspect we'll find out that 98% of the AI industry is swimming naked.
      - Rover222 8mo ago

irishcoffee 8mo ago

> I mean get onboard or fall behind, that's the situation we're all in. It can also be exciting. I am aware of a large company that everyone in the US has heard of, planning on laying off 30% of their devs shortly because they expect a 30% improvement in "productivity" from the remaining dev team. Exciting indeed. Imagine all the divorces that will fall out of this! Hopefully the kids will be ok, daddy just had an accident, he won't be coming home. If you think anything that is happening with the amount of money and bullshit enveloping this LLM disaster, you should put the keyboard down for a while.

driverdan 8mo ago

Fall behind what? Writing code is only one part of building a successful product and business. Speed of writing code is often not what bottlenecks success.

Rover222 8mo ago
Yes, the execution part has become cheap, but planning and strategizing is not much easier. But devs and organizations that keep their head in the sand will fall behind on one leg of that stool.

g947o 8mo ago

Anyone with more than 2 years of professional software engineering experience can tell this is completely nonsense.

DontchaKnowit 8mo ago
Well 6 years experience here and I personally saved about 4 hours of work today using claude. My coworker also just solved a problem I had been looking into for a few days in about an hour with claude. So, I think maybe you are just a bit behind the curve.
- g947o 8mo ago
  Please stay on topic and focus on the "slop" and "fall behind" part. What's in your comment has been said maybe 1000 times just over the past day, so I'm afraid that information is not particularly helpful.
  - DontchaKnowit 8mo ago
    I mean I think I stayed exactly on topic. Used by experience devs, its not slop, and if you arent usuing the people who are areprobably going to outpace you