And then there are actual good developers who could or would tell you that LLMs can be useful for coding, in the right context and if used intelligently. No harm, for example, in having LLMs build out some of your more mundane code like unit/integration tests, have it help you update your deployment pipeline, generate boilerplate code that’s not already covered by your framework, etc. That it’s not able to completely write 100% of your codebase perfectly from the get-go does not mean it’s entirely useless.
Comment on I Went All-In on AI. The MIT Study Is Right.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So there’s actual developers who could tell you from the start that LLMs are useless for coding, and then there’s this moron & similar people who first have to fuck up an ecosystem before believing the obvious. Thanks fuckhead for driving RAM prices through the ceiling… And for wasting energy and water.
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Soggy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Other than that it’s work that junior coders could be doing, to develop the next generation of actual good developers.
SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Yes, and that’s exactly what everyone forgets about automating cognitive work. Knowledge needs to be intergenerational or we lose it.
If you have no junior developers, who will turn into senior developers later on?
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
If you have no junior developers, who will turn into senior developers later on?
At least it isn’t my problem. As long as I have CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, Windows11, AWS us-east-1 and log4j… I can just keep enjoying today’s version of the Internet, unchanged.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If it’s boilerplate, copy/paste; find/replace works just as well without needing data centers in the desert to develop.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And then there are actual good developers who could or would tell you that LLMs can be useful for coding
The only people who believe that are managers and bad developers.
keegomatic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You’re wrong, whether you figure that out now or later. Using an LLM where you gatekeep every write is something that good developers have started doing. The most senior engineers I work with are the ones who have adopted the most AI into their workflow, and with the most care. There’s a difference between vibe coding and responsible use.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s a difference between vibe coding and responsible use.
There’s also a difference between the occasional evening getting drunk and alcoholism. That doesn’t make an occasional event healthy, nor does it mean you are qualified to drive a car in that state.
People who use LLMs in production code are - by definition - not “good developers”. Because:
- a good developer has a clear grasp on every single instruction in the code - and critically reviewing code generated by someone else is more effort than writing it yourself
- pushing code to production without critical review is grossly negligent and compromises data & security
This already means the net gain with use of LLMs is negative. Can you use it to quickly push out some production code & impress your manager? Possibly. Will it be efficient? It might be. Will it be bug-free and secure? You’ll never know until shit hits the fan.
Also: using LLMs to generate code, a dev will likely be violating copyrights of open source left and right, effectively copy-pasting licensed code from other people without attributing authorship, i.e. they exhibit parasitic behavior & outright violate laws. Furthermore the stuff that applies to all users of LLMs applies:
- they contribute to the hype, fucking up our planet, causing brain rot and skill loss on average, and pumping hardware prices to insane heights.
khepri@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They are useful for doing the kind of boilerplate boring stuff that any good dev should have largely optimized and automated already. If it’s 1) dead simple and 2) extremely common, then yeah an LLM can code for you, but ask yourself why you don’t have a time-saving solution for those common tasks already in place? As with anything LLM, it’s decent at replicating how humans in general have responded to a given problem, if the problem is not too complex and not too rare, and not much else.
lambdabeta@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Thats exactly what I so often find myself saying when people show off some neat thing that a code bot “wrote” for them in x minutes after only y minutes of “prompt engineering”. I’ll say, yeah I could also do that in y minutes of (bash scripting/vim macroing/system architecting/whatever), but the difference is that afterwards I have a reusable solution that: I understand, is automated, is robust, and didn’t consume a ton of resources. And as a bonus I got marginally better as a developer.
Its funny that if you stick them in an RPG and give them an ability to “kill any level 1-x enemy instantly, but don’t gain any xp for it” they’d all see it as the trap it is, but can’t see how that’s what AI so often is.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As you said, “boilerplate” code can be script generated - and there are IDEs that already do this, but in a deterministic way, so that you don’t have to proof-read every single line to avoid catastrophic security or crash flaws.
ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I really have not found AI to be useless for coding. I have found it extremely useful and it has saved me hundreds of hours. It is not without its faults or frustrations, but the it really is a tool I would not want to be without.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s because you are not a proper developer, as proven by your comment. And you create tech legacy that will have a net cost in terms of maintenance or downtime.
ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I am for sure not a coder as it has never been my strong suite, but I am without a doubt an awesome developer or I would not have a top rated multiplayer VR app that is pushing the boundaries of what mobile VR can do.
The only person who will have to look at my code is me so any and all issues be it my code or AI code will be my burden and AI has really made that burden much less. In fact, I recently installed Coplay in my Unity Engine Editor and OMG it is amazing at assisting not just with code, but even finding little issues with scene setup, shaders, animations and more. I am really blown away with it. It has allowed me to spend even less time on the code and more time imagineering amazing experiences which is what fans of the app care about the most. They couldn’t care less if I wrote the code or AI did as long as it works and does not break immersion. Is that not what it is all about at the end of the day?
As long as AI helps you achieve your goals and your goals are grounded, including maintainability, I see no issues. Yeah, misdirected use of AI can lead to hard to maintain code down the line, but that is why you need a human developer in the loop to ensure the overall architecture and design make sense. Any code base can become hard to maintain if not thought through be is human or AI written.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Look, bless your heart if you have a successful app, but success / sales is not exclusive to products of quality. Just look around at all the slop that people buy nowadays.
As long as AI helps you achieve your goals and your goals are grounded, including maintainability, I see no issues.
Two issues with that
- what you are using has nothing whatsoever to do with AI, it’s a glorified pattern repeater - an actual parrot has more intelligence
- if the destruction of entire ecosystems for slop is not an issue that you see, you should not be allowed anywhere near technology (as by now probably billions of people)
Randelung@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe they’ll listen to one of their own?
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The kind of useful article I would expect then is one exlaining why word prediction != AI
jali67@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Don’t worry. The people on LinkedIn and tech executives tell us it will transform anything soon!
psycotica0@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I can least kinda appreciate this guy’s approach. If we assume that AI is a magic bullet, then it’s not crazy to assume we, the existing programmers, would resist it just to save our own jobs. Or we’d complain because it doesn’t do things our way, but we’re the old way and this is the new way. So maybe we’re just being whiny and can be ignored.
So he tested it to see for himself, and what he found was that he agreed with us, that it’s not worth it.
Ignoring experts is annoying, but doing some of your own science and getting first-hand experience isn’t always a bad idea.
5too@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And not only did he see for himself, he wrote up and published his results.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yup. This was almost science. It’s just lacking measurements and repeatablity.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
100% this. The guy was literally a consultant and a developer. It’d just be bad business for him to outright dismiss AI without having actual hands on experience with said product. Clients want that type of experience and knowledge when paying a business to give them advice and develop a product for them.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Except that outright dismissing snake oil would not at all be bad business. Calling a turd a diamond neither makes it sparkle, nor does it get rid of the stink.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I can’t just call everything snake oil without some actual measurements and tests.
Naive cynicism is just as naive as blind optimism
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Problem is that statistical word prediction has fuck-all to do with AI. It’s not and will never be. By “giving it a try” you contribute to the spread of this snake oil. And even if someone came up with actual AI, if it used enough resources to impact our ecosystem, instead of being a net positive, and if it was in the greedy hands of billionaires, then using it is equivalent to selling your executioner an axe.
jve@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Terrible take. Thanks for playing.