2 ms·

I think the point is just it doesn’t have to get worse, so there are things you can do to prevent / change it if it is deteriorating.

Sharlin 6d ago
Yes, but it doesn't matter if nobody actually does that. Either because 1. they don't care 2. the rest of the team doesn't care 3. the powers that be actively discourage it because velocity.
- bucket2015 6d ago
  That's a fair point. I guess step 0 is that you have to care about code/product quality and prioritize it.
- rgoulter 6d ago
  Without LLMs, you can still have bad development processes which lead to increasing technical debt with no plan for paying it off. LLMs let you move faster. But it's not as if introducing them is the only reason your codebase isn't high quality.
  - hajile 6d ago
    When you’re required to approve thousands of lines a day (code you can’t possible understand), it certainly IS causing issues that didn’t exist before. Every study I’ve seen correlates the use of AI with large increases in the number of bugs. Look at Amazon dialing back AI after massive outages. Microsoft patch Tuesday releases are bricking computers (they even managed to break notepad somehow). The rash of Facebook bugs also coincided with their move to AI. Leaks from Google have engineers saying AI either doesn’t save any time because it takes so to remote stuff or it causes breakages if they speed up. These companies can afford to get the best devs. They have access to essentially unlimited token budgets. They have STILL fallen off a cliff in quality. What more proof could there be that this isn’t sustainable?
    - bitwize 5d ago
      A correlation-causation link between AI use and these bugs has not been established. Until it has proven to come from the region of AI-pagne, it's just sparkling enshittification.
      - hajile 5d ago
        This isn’t the human body or some other thing with billions of unknown parameters. It’s a single (relatively simple) math equation that you are ascribing tons of non-existent complexity to. Left to its own devices, that system will result in AI autophagy (model collapse) and iterative degradation. The only area with serious uncertainty is how humans interact, but we now have research showing humans suffer cognitive issues very quickly using AI (some studies indicate effects happen in as little as 10 minutes) with cognitive surrender being a particularly big issue. In a lot of systems, the only new data seems to be a few brainstorming sentences (you can read slop as entropy decaying things). The AI slops that into requirements. That slop feeds into an agent which generates a bunch of “reasoning” slop, maybe compacts everything (more slop), and spins up agents that get handed slop. They then open files with who knows how many generations of slop (maybe never even touched by a human) and write out a bunch more slop (it’s ironic that humans get better the more they edit a file, but AI gets worse). That slop gets “tested” by another agent reading all the other slop and maybe all this recurses a few generations. At the end of this AI equivalent to “the human centipede”, you get a developer who’s handed 10x or maybe even 100x more code than their brain would possible process. They are suffering complete cognitive surrender (not to mention often reaching mental and maybe physical collapse from the workload and stress). They don’t understand the system and rubber stamp it so they can move on to the next 50 PRs of the day. From start to finish, it’s 100% entropy outside a handful of lines worth of human input. Many people predicted bugs and even discussed entropy issues before AI coding was popular. The buggy mess timing aligns not only with AI adoption, but happens to each company ramping up as they ramp up AI usage. This is like seeing Einstein’s predictions happen, but arguing he can’t prove correlation/causation. What evidence would you actually accept that is feasible to study?
  - Sharlin 6d ago
    So you're saying that LLMs let you accrue technical debt faster? I suppose that's like the fact that living on payday loans let you accrue monetary debt faster.
    - rgoulter 6d ago
      Yes. I think if you're on a team that cares about quality, LLMs can help you write quality code faster. If you're on a team that's mindful about technical debt, you can have make practical trade-offs for velocity now at the expense of paying off technical debt later. And if you're on a team that's unable to care about code quality ("I gotta merge this code now!"), then you can write mountains more code than you can understand.
- axegon_ 6d ago
  Exactly. Most restaurants you go to don't care about the food they serve you nor do they care about the products they use, as long as it doesn't harm their business. Same with groceries - manufacturers don't care, as long as what they sell you is acceptable and passes regulations. But once you go to a restaurant with standards, you can immediately tell the difference. I do not come from a wealthy family and even as such, I certainly prefer paying the higher price now that I can afford it.

Sharlin 6d ago

Yes, but it doesn't matter if nobody actually does that. Either because 1. they don't care 2. the rest of the team doesn't care 3. the powers that be actively discourage it because velocity.

bucket2015 6d ago
That's a fair point. I guess step 0 is that you have to care about code/product quality and prioritize it.
rgoulter 6d ago
Without LLMs, you can still have bad development processes which lead to increasing technical debt with no plan for paying it off. LLMs let you move faster. But it's not as if introducing them is the only reason your codebase isn't high quality.
- hajile 6d ago
  When you’re required to approve thousands of lines a day (code you can’t possible understand), it certainly IS causing issues that didn’t exist before. Every study I’ve seen correlates the use of AI with large increases in the number of bugs. Look at Amazon dialing back AI after massive outages. Microsoft patch Tuesday releases are bricking computers (they even managed to break notepad somehow). The rash of Facebook bugs also coincided with their move to AI. Leaks from Google have engineers saying AI either doesn’t save any time because it takes so to remote stuff or it causes breakages if they speed up. These companies can afford to get the best devs. They have access to essentially unlimited token budgets. They have STILL fallen off a cliff in quality. What more proof could there be that this isn’t sustainable?
  - bitwize 5d ago
    A correlation-causation link between AI use and these bugs has not been established. Until it has proven to come from the region of AI-pagne, it's just sparkling enshittification.
    - hajile 5d ago
      This isn’t the human body or some other thing with billions of unknown parameters. It’s a single (relatively simple) math equation that you are ascribing tons of non-existent complexity to. Left to its own devices, that system will result in AI autophagy (model collapse) and iterative degradation. The only area with serious uncertainty is how humans interact, but we now have research showing humans suffer cognitive issues very quickly using AI (some studies indicate effects happen in as little as 10 minutes) with cognitive surrender being a particularly big issue. In a lot of systems, the only new data seems to be a few brainstorming sentences (you can read slop as entropy decaying things). The AI slops that into requirements. That slop feeds into an agent which generates a bunch of “reasoning” slop, maybe compacts everything (more slop), and spins up agents that get handed slop. They then open files with who knows how many generations of slop (maybe never even touched by a human) and write out a bunch more slop (it’s ironic that humans get better the more they edit a file, but AI gets worse). That slop gets “tested” by another agent reading all the other slop and maybe all this recurses a few generations. At the end of this AI equivalent to “the human centipede”, you get a developer who’s handed 10x or maybe even 100x more code than their brain would possible process. They are suffering complete cognitive surrender (not to mention often reaching mental and maybe physical collapse from the workload and stress). They don’t understand the system and rubber stamp it so they can move on to the next 50 PRs of the day. From start to finish, it’s 100% entropy outside a handful of lines worth of human input. Many people predicted bugs and even discussed entropy issues before AI coding was popular. The buggy mess timing aligns not only with AI adoption, but happens to each company ramping up as they ramp up AI usage. This is like seeing Einstein’s predictions happen, but arguing he can’t prove correlation/causation. What evidence would you actually accept that is feasible to study?
- Sharlin 6d ago
  So you're saying that LLMs let you accrue technical debt faster? I suppose that's like the fact that living on payday loans let you accrue monetary debt faster.
  - rgoulter 6d ago
    Yes. I think if you're on a team that cares about quality, LLMs can help you write quality code faster. If you're on a team that's mindful about technical debt, you can have make practical trade-offs for velocity now at the expense of paying off technical debt later. And if you're on a team that's unable to care about code quality ("I gotta merge this code now!"), then you can write mountains more code than you can understand.
axegon_ 6d ago
Exactly. Most restaurants you go to don't care about the food they serve you nor do they care about the products they use, as long as it doesn't harm their business. Same with groceries - manufacturers don't care, as long as what they sell you is acceptable and passes regulations. But once you go to a restaurant with standards, you can immediately tell the difference. I do not come from a wealthy family and even as such, I certainly prefer paying the higher price now that I can afford it.