I don’t know if it even helps with productivity that much. A lot of bosses think developers’ entire job is just churning out code when it’s actually like 50% coding and 50% listening to stakeholders, planning, collaborating with designers, etc. I mean, it’s fine for a quick Python script or whatever but that might save an experienced developer 20 minutes max.
And if you “write” me an email using Chat GPT and I just read a summary, what is the fucking point? All the nuance is lost. Specialized A.I. is great! I’m all for it combing through giant astronomy data sets or protein folding and stuff like that. But I don’t know that I’ve seen generative A.I. without a specific focus increase productivity very much.
As a senior developer, my most productive days are genuinely when I remove a lot of code. This might seem like negative productivity to a naive beancounter, but in fact this is my peak contribution to the software and the organization. Simplifying, optimizing, identifying what code is no longer needed, removing technical debt, improving maintainability, this is what requires most of my experience and skill and contextual knowledge to do safely and correctly. AI has no ability to do this in any meaningful way, and code bases filled with mostly AI generated code are bound to become an unmaintainable nightmare (which I will eventually be paid handsomely to fix, I suspect)
That’s what I suspect. ChatGPT is never wrong, and even if it doesn’t know, it knows and still answers something. I guess its no different for source code: always add, never delete.
Yesterday it tried to tell me Duration.TotalYears() and Number.IsNaN() were M functions in the first few interactions. I immediately called it out and for the first time ever, it doubled-down.
I think I’m at a level where, for most cases, what I ask of LLMs for coding is too advanced, else I just do it myself. This results in a very high counts of bullshit. But even for the most basic stuff, I have to take the time to read all of it and fix or optimise mistakes.
A lot of bosses think developers’ entire job is just churning out code when it’s actually like 50% coding and 50% listening to stakeholders, planning, collaborating with designers, etc.
A lot of leadership is incompetent. In a reasonable, just, world they would not be in these decision making positions.
I just watched an interview of Karen Hao and she mentioned something along the lines of executives being oversold AI as something to replace everyone instead of something that should exist alongside people to help them, and they believe it.
So some places started forcing developers to use AI with a quota and monitor the usage. Of course the devs don’t go checking each AI generated line for correctness. That’s bad for the quota. It’s guaranteed to add more slop to the codebase.
I was a frontend developer and UI/UX designer that specialized in JavaScript and Typescript with emphasis on React. I’m learning Python for Flask. I’m skipping meals so I can afford Udemy courses then AWS certifications. I don’t enjoy any of this and I’m falling apart.
Hey there. Of course, I am in no position to say “do this, and it will be all right”, but I will say that if there is any other way to live that won’t put this kind of load on you - do it. You being happier is way way more needed in this world than you getting those certificates
I don’t know if it even helps with productivity that much. A lot of bosses think developers’ entire job is just churning out code when it’s actually like 50% coding and 50% listening to stakeholders, planning, collaborating with designers, etc. I mean, it’s fine for a quick Python script or whatever but that might save an experienced developer 20 minutes max.
And if you “write” me an email using Chat GPT and I just read a summary, what is the fucking point? All the nuance is lost. Specialized A.I. is great! I’m all for it combing through giant astronomy data sets or protein folding and stuff like that. But I don’t know that I’ve seen generative A.I. without a specific focus increase productivity very much.
As a senior developer, my most productive days are genuinely when I remove a lot of code. This might seem like negative productivity to a naive beancounter, but in fact this is my peak contribution to the software and the organization. Simplifying, optimizing, identifying what code is no longer needed, removing technical debt, improving maintainability, this is what requires most of my experience and skill and contextual knowledge to do safely and correctly. AI has no ability to do this in any meaningful way, and code bases filled with mostly AI generated code are bound to become an unmaintainable nightmare (which I will eventually be paid handsomely to fix, I suspect)
That’s what I suspect. ChatGPT is never wrong, and even if it doesn’t know, it knows and still answers something. I guess its no different for source code: always add, never delete.
Yesterday it tried to tell me Duration.TotalYears() and Number.IsNaN() were M functions in the first few interactions. I immediately called it out and for the first time ever, it doubled-down.
I think I’m at a level where, for most cases, what I ask of LLMs for coding is too advanced, else I just do it myself. This results in a very high counts of bullshit. But even for the most basic stuff, I have to take the time to read all of it and fix or optimise mistakes.
Getting to deprecate legacy support… Yes please, let me get my eraser.
I find most tech debt resolution adds code though.
A lot of leadership is incompetent. In a reasonable, just, world they would not be in these decision making positions.
Verbose blogger Ed Zitron wrote about this. He called them “Business Idiots”: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/
I just watched an interview of Karen Hao and she mentioned something along the lines of executives being oversold AI as something to replace everyone instead of something that should exist alongside people to help them, and they believe it.
Fuuuck, this infuriates me. I wrote that shit for a reason. People already don’t read shit before replying to it and this is making it so much worse.
So some places started forcing developers to use AI with a quota and monitor the usage. Of course the devs don’t go checking each AI generated line for correctness. That’s bad for the quota. It’s guaranteed to add more slop to the codebase.
I was a frontend developer and UI/UX designer that specialized in JavaScript and Typescript with emphasis on React. I’m learning Python for Flask. I’m skipping meals so I can afford Udemy courses then AWS certifications. I don’t enjoy any of this and I’m falling apart.
Hey there. Of course, I am in no position to say “do this, and it will be all right”, but I will say that if there is any other way to live that won’t put this kind of load on you - do it. You being happier is way way more needed in this world than you getting those certificates
I can’t think of any other options that don’t end in the best case scenario of myself being elderly and destitute.