I partly disagree, complex algorithms are indeed a no, but for learning a new language it is awesome.
Currently learning Rust and although it cannot solve everything, it does guide you with suggestions and usable code fragments.
Highly recommended.
Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants
Submitted 1 year ago by psychothumbs@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-anything-from-ai-coding-assistants.html
Comments
Cpo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
LordCrom@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I get more benefit from a good IDE that helps me track libraries, cars, functions, grammar checks my code, offers a pop-up with params and options…
I don’t needcode I would grade as a D- from an AI. Most of what I write comes from my code closet anyway. I have skeleton code for so much, and I trust my old code more than AIs new code
ulkesh@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No shit. Senior devs have been saying this the whole time. AI, in its current form, for developers, is like handing a spatula to a gourmet chef. Yes it is useful to an extremely small degree, but that’s it…for now.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
It’s when you only have a pot and your fingers that a spatula is awesome. I could never bother finish learning C and its awkward syntax. Even though I know how to code in some other language, I just couldn’t write much C at all and it was painful and slow. And too much time passed between attempts that I forgot most of it in between. Now I can easily make simple C apps, I just explain the underlying logic, with example of how I would do it in my preferred language and piece by piece it quickly comes together and I don’t have to remember if the for loop needs brackets of parenthesis or brackets nor if the line terminator is colon or semi colon.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A convoluted spatula that sometimes accidentally cuts what your cooking im half instead of flipping it and consumes as much power as the entirety of Japan.
rsuri@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I use it occasionally. Recently I used it to convert a written specification in a document to a java object. And it was like 95% correct - but having to manually double check everything and fix the errors eliminated much of the time savings.
However that’s a very ideal use case. Most often I forget it exists.
rolaulten@startrek.website 1 year ago
I use it a fair bit. Mind, it’s something like formating a giant json stdout into something I want to read…
I do find it’s useful for sketching out an outline In pseudo code.
sirico@feddit.uk 1 year ago
It’s just fancier spell check and boilerplate generator
BigBenis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s great as essentially a StackOverflow that I can talk to in real time. But as with SO, I’ve still got to figure out what pieces go where.
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
AI search results made stack overflow answers harder to find now lol
turmacar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s definitely exploded but content farms were a problem even before 2022. There’s a reason google results starting with “reddit” / “stack overflow” were trending so hard.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
It has some uses.
But I’m waiting for a good self hosted model and to have a more powerful gpu to properly run it.
Zoots@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Judging this article by it’s title (refuse to click). Calling BS. ChatGPT has been a game changer for me personally
filister@lemmy.world 1 year ago
To be honest ChatGPT pretty much killed the fun of programming.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
What?
filister@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Programming was like a challenge, you have a problem and you need to solve it. You look into the internet, stack overflow, test different chunks of codes, reading documentation, etc. nowadays is simply splitting one problem into pieces, and then copy pasting.
asmodee59@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Who are those guys they keep asking this question over and over ? And how are they not able to use such a simple tool to increase their productivity ?
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I’m fine with searching stack exchange. It’s much more useful. More info, more options, more understanding.
alienanimals@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The writer has a clear bias and a lack of a technical background (writing for Techies.com doesn’t count) .
You don’t have to look hard to find devs saving time and learning something with AI coding assistants. There are plenty of them in this thread. This is just an opinion piece by someone who read a single study.
jas0n@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This opinion is a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of tech journalism screaming “AI software engineer” after each new model release.
kureta@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
if you are already competent and you are aware that it doesn’t necessarily give you correct information, the it is really helpful. I know enough to sense when it is making shit up. Also it is, for some scenarios, faster and easier then looking at a documentation. I like it personally. But it will not replace competent developers anytime soon.
ggppjj@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It introduced me to the basics of C# in a way that traditional googling at my previous level of knowledge would’ve made difficult.
I knew what I wanted to do and I didn’t know what was possible or how to ask without my question being closed as a duplicate with a link to an unhelpful post.
In that regard, it’s very helpful. If I had already known the language well enough, I can see it being less helpful.
Asetru@feddit.org 1 year ago
What about just reading the documentation?
turmacar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Even with amazing documentation, it can be hard to find the thing you’re looking for if you don’t know the right phrasing or terminology yet. It’s easily the most usable thing I’ve seen come out of “AI”, which makes sense. A Language Model being able to parse language a very literal application.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
I learned bash thanks to AI!
For years, all I did was copy and paste bash commands. And I didn’t understand arguments, how to chain things, or how it connects.
HighlyRegardedArtist@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You do realize that a very thorough manual is but a
man bashaway? Perhaps it’s not the most accessible source available, but it makes up for that in completeness.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Great for Coding 101 in a language I’m rusty with or otherwise unfamiliar.
Absolutely useless when it comes time to optimize a complex series of functions or upgrade to a new version of the .NET library. All the “AI” you need is typically baked into Intellisense or some equivalent anyway. We’ve had code-assist/advice features for over a decade and its always been mid.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is what I’ve used it for and it’s helped me learn, especially because it makes mistakes and I have to get them to work. In my case it was with Terraform and Ansible.
ggppjj@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Haha, yeah. It really loves to refactor my code to “fix” bracket list initialization (e.g.
List<string> stringList = []) because it keeps not remembering that the syntax has been valid for a while.It’s newest favorite hangup is to incessantly suggest null checks without asking if it’s a nullable property that it’s checking first. I think I’m almost at the point where it’s becoming less useful to me.
Choco1ateCh1p@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Every now and then, GitHub Copilot saves me a few seconds suggesting some very basic solution that I am usually in the midst of creating. Is it worth the investment? No, at least not yet. It hasn’t once “beaten” me or offered an improved solution. It (more frequently than not) requires the developer to understand and modify what it proposes for its suggestions to be useful. Is is a useful tool? Sure, just not worth the price yet, and obviously not perfect. But, where I’m working is testing it out, so I’ll keep utilizing it.
histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Garbage in garbage out is how they all work if you give it a well defined prompt you can get exactly what you want out of it most of the time but if you just say fix this problem it’ll just fix the problem ignoring everything else
zbyte64@awful.systems 1 year ago
You’re holding it wrong
alienanimals@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Wait till this guy learns how a theremin work.
IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Claude is my coding mentor. Wouldn’t want to work without it.
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I run code snippets by three or four LLMs and the consensus is never there. Claude has been the worst for me.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Everyone keeps talking about autocomplete but I’ve used it successfully for comments and documentation.
You can use vs code extensions to generate and update readme and changelog files.
Then if you follow documentation as code you can update your Confluence/whatever by copy pasting.
Dremor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I also use it a lot for unit tests. It helps a lot when you have to write multiple edge cases, and even find new one at times. Like putting a random int in an enum field (enumField = (myEnum)1000), I didn’t knew you could do that…
dipdowel@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Yeah, I also find it super helpful with unit tests, saves a lot of time.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah. I’ve found new logic by asking GPT for improvements on my code or suggestions.
I cut the size of a function in half once using a suggested recursive loop and it blew my mind.
Feels like having a peer to do a code review on hand at all times.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m a penetration tester and it increases my productivity a lot
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Penetration tester, huh? Sounds like a fun and reproductive job.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But it can be very HARD sometimes
Gonzako@lemmy.world 1 year ago
so it’s a vector of attack?
yikerman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mainly use AI for learning new things. It’s amazing at trivial tasks.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 year ago
as a dental assistant I can also confirm that AI has increased my productivity, checks notes, by a lot.
VonReposti@feddit.dk 1 year ago
While I am not fond of AI, we do have access to it at work and I must admit that it saves some time in some cases. I’m not a developer with decades of experience in a single language, so something I am using AI to is asking “Is it possible to do a one-liner in language X where it does Y?” It works very well and the code is rarely unusable, but it is still up to my judgement whether the AI came up with a clever use of functions that I didn’t know about or whether it crammed stuff into a single unreadable line.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
lol their “”“full report”“” saying 41% more bugs has 2 pages and reads like a promotional material
you can download it with a 10 minute email if you really want to see for yourself.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yep, by definition generative AI gets worse the more specific you get. If you need common templates though, it’s almost as good as today’s google.
mint_tamas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
… which is not a high bar.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I truly don’t understand the tendency of people to hate these kinds of tools. Honestly seems like an ego thing to me.
YungOnions@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Typical lack of nuance on the Internet, sadly. Everything has to be Bad or Good. Black or White. AI is either The best thing ever™ or The worst thing ever™. No room for anything in between. Considering negative news generates more clicks, you can see why the media tend to take the latter approach.
I also think much of the hate is just people jumping on the AI = bad band-wagon. Does it have issues? Absolutely. Is it perfect? Far from it. But the constant negativity has gotten tired. There’s a lot of fascinating discussion to be had around AI, especially in the art world, but God forbid you suggest it’s anything but responsible for the total collapse of civilisation as we know it…
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
If it didn’t significantly contribute to the cooking of all lifeforms on planet Earth, most of us would not mind. We would still deride it because of its untrustworthiness. However, it’s not just useless: it’s also harmful. That’s the core of the beef I (and a lot of other folks) have against the tech.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think you nailed it with everything you just said.
tee9000@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Its really weird.
I want to believe people arent this dumb but i also dont want to be crazy for suggesting such nonsensical sentiment is manufactured. Such is life in the disinformation age.
Like what are we going to do, tell all Countries and fraudsters to stop using ai because it turns out its too much of a hassle?
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
We can’t do that, nobody’s saying we can. But this is an important reminder that the tech savior bros aren’t very different from the oil execs.
And constant activism might hopefully achieve the goal of pushing the tech out of the mainstream, with its friend crypto, along other things not to be taken seriously anymore like flying cars and the Hyperloop.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I sent a PR back to a Dev five times before I gave the work to someone else.
they used AI to generate everything.
surprise, there were so many problems it broke the whole stack.
this is a routine thing this one dev does too. every PR has to be tossed back at least once. not expecting perfection, but I do expect it to not break the whole app.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Like I told another person ITT, hiring terrible devs isn’t something you can blame on software.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
Having to deal with pull requests defecated by “developers” who blindly copy code from chatgpt is a particularly annoying and depressing waste of time.
At least back when they blindly copied code from stack overflow they had to read through the answers and comments and try to figure out which one fit their use case better and why, and maybe learn something… now they just assume the LLM is right (despite the fact that they asked the wrong question and even if they had asked the right one it’d’ve given the wrong answer) and call it a day; no brain activity or learning whatsoever.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That is not a problem with the ai software, that’s a problem with hiring morons who have zero experience.
gaael@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Also, when a tool increases your productivity but your salary and paid time off don’t increase, it’s a tool that only benefits the overlords and as such deserves to be hated.
stephen01king@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Oh, so do you use a 13 year old PC because a newer one increases your productivity without increasing your salary and paid time off?
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Carbon footprint. Techbro arrogance. Not sure what’s hard to understand about it.
Greg@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Generative AI is great for loads of programming tasks like helping create regular expressions or syntax conversions between languages. The main issue I’ve seen in codebases that rely heavily on generative AI is that the “solutions” often fix today’s bug while making future debugging more difficult. Generative AI makes it easy to go fast in the wrong direction. Used right it’s a useful tool.
tdawg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I honestly stopped using it after a week
9point6@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My main use is skipping the blank page problem when writing a new suite of tests—which after about 10 mins of refactoring are often a good starting point
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I like to use suggestions to feel superior when trash talking the generated code
EleventhHour@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Debs that are punching above their class, however, probably get great benefit from it. I would think it’s also an OK teaching tool, except for how inaccurate it can be sometimes.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Good devs gain little.
I gain a lot.
dgmib@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just beware, sometimes the AI suggestions are scary good, some times they’re batshit crazy.
Just because AI suggests it, doesn’t mean it’s something you should use or learn from.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Its basically a template generator, which is really helpful when you’re generating boilerplate. It doesn’t save me much if any time to refactor/fill in that template, but it does save some mental fatigue that I can then spend on much more interesting problems.
It’s a niche tool, but occasionally quite handy. Without leaps forward technically though, it’s never going to become more than that.
rocci@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
Feel the same way!
Reptorian@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
I use it as second last resort, and in those times, it did worked out. I had to test, verify, and make changes. Even so, I avoid using them.