AI is making us write more code.
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@mlevison I use LLMs to help me with basic code writing tasks, generating the structural frameworks, saving me a lot of typing time. However, I never rely on that code out of the box, I always review it thoroughly and often just snip and prune. I would never attempt to give an LLM a complicated set of instructions, it's going to fail every time.
Couldn't human made deterministic tools (or changes to programming languages) help with boilerplate work instead of indeterministic intransparent generative AI?
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Couldn't human made deterministic tools (or changes to programming languages) help with boilerplate work instead of indeterministic intransparent generative AI?
IIRC for some languages there also have been deterministic refactoring tools too that take over the tedious parts of refactorings (like "rename method" which exactly identified callers to adapt them).
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The bottleneck was never writing code. It's understanding what to build.
If you're using AI coding tools, focus on:
• Smaller features (if it's 1000 lines, it's too big to review)
• Clear acceptance criteria before you prompt
• Tests first, AI-generated code second
• Security audits (AI can't do this)More code isn't the goal. Solving real problems is.
@mlevison I had a discussion with some developers about this last week. If we expect developers to take responsibility for the code they generate, the amount of work is capped by their ability to review code. And if we expect more (which is absolutely necessary, if we want the promised productivity gains), we can't blame them, if it goes wrong.
If we celebrate huge productivity gains, we give up the right to complain, if AI fails. And it will fail.
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AI is making us write more code. That's the problem.
I analyzed research papers on AI-generated code quality. The findings:
→ 1.7x more issues than human-written code
→ 30-41% increase in technical debt
→ 39% increase in cognitive complexity
→ Initial speed gains disappear within a few monthsWe're building the wrong thing faster and calling it productivity.
@mlevison Overhyped and underdelivering, just like the 4GL hype of the late eighties which promised to make programmers redundant within 10 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language
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