This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Using AI to produce software faster only helps capitalists companies extract more value out of their workers in a shorter time. This actually reduces worker worth, as their salary isn’t increased to match their increased output, the company takes more from them.
Outside of a work context there is zero incentive to use AI, as you can take all the time to learn and craft quality code.
If you use LLMs like they should be, i.e. as autocomplete, they're helpful. Classic autocomplete can't see me type "import" and correctly guess that I want to import a file that I just created, but Copilot can. You shouldn't expect it to understand code, but it can type more quickly than you and plug the right things in more often than not.
To me it's funny that a case even needs to be made. I've reviewd enough output of AI agents to confidently dismiss it as largely trash. Given enough time, this hype will blow over and LLMs will be another useful but not revolutionary tool for programmers. It won't even come close to replacing humans and it will require skilled developers to be used efficiently. Software craftsmanship is as valuable as it's ever been.
The trick to using an AI agent effectively is already knowing exactly what you want, typing the request out in excruciating detail, and being a good developer who properly reviews code so you catch all the errors and repetition the AI agent will absolutely include.
So... Yeah. 100% agree. AI agents are useful, but impossible to use if you aren't already skilled with code.
Copilot does a good job of typing out things like imports that should really be loops but can't be. Sure, I could easily write a Python or Bash script to do it, but that would take 5-10 minutes and just pressing Tab 20 times takes a lot less. I just have to read each line to make sure it didn't hallucinate any files that I don't actually have.
Agree completely! The people saying "LLMs don't produce good code" are using prompts like "build a feature that does X, Y and Z"
Good prompting with current-quality LLMs needs to look like "create a function that take in params A and B and produces an output of C"
It's still faster than hand writing the code since the agent will refactor as it goes and break things down into manageable, small functions, but you have to tell it to do that.
Given enough time, this hype will blow over
I tend to agree; however, during that time plenty of folks will be let go by middle management buying into the hype.
Most definitely! And in a couple of years we will hear about the lack of developers again. It's not my first rodeo.
That is my main beef with this particular hype train. People will be negatively effected by it, who had no choice in it. With the NFT hype a few years ago nobody was impacted unless they chose to dive into that area.
Or were using a product with management that wanted in. A handful of video games were negatively impacted, so their players were at least inconvenienced.
