We cut middle managers across the organization because AI allows us to have more direct reports per manager while still measuring and mentoring our teams effectively. – Matthew Prince, How I Choose…
Are you asking me to reject my professional daily reality?!
Can you point me to a single field study that shows programmers become faster and not just feel faster, and that doesn’t come with some caveat like they haven’t tested AI coders vs non-AI coders, or coders without significant AI exposure before (since otherwise it won’t rule out simply becoming dependent)?
Even if you could find one, and I was unable to so far, it doesn’t change that:
you are probably faster by verbatim plagiarizing somebody’s other project at a large scale, and
by encouraging the environmental destruction brought on in particular by the training of new models.
Two caveats:
Keep in mind more lines of code is not a useful metric for faster project completion and faster maintenance task completion, especially for code bases that are already large.
I’m merely speaking about using LLM code in your project, so for example LLM auto completion or copy&pasting code from a chatbot. I’m mot talking about LLM code reviews that point out issues in natural language.
No, I don’t study or review research on this subject at the moment. My personal experience is far more reliable.
Look, I’m 50 years old. Been doing this shit forever. It’s an amazing productivity enhancer for ME. I can’t say any more really. I linked unique repos that were built by me in minutes as examples.
I understand your position and your doubt since it’s pretty common opinion in the echo chambers around here. Are you a software engineer?
Can you point me to a single field study that shows programmers become faster and not just feel faster, and that doesn’t come with some caveat like they haven’t tested AI coders vs non-AI coders, or coders without significant AI exposure before (since otherwise it won’t rule out simply becoming dependent)?
Even if you could find one, and I was unable to so far, it doesn’t change that:
you are probably faster by verbatim plagiarizing somebody’s other project at a large scale, and
by making yourself addicted and reliant on the AI where your own skill is eroding: https://www.404media.co/software-developers-say-ai-is-rotting-their-brains/ (if you get a paywall: https://archive.is/tHq80 ) and
by having a higher rate of bugs in your code no matter how carefully you review it https://www.coderabbit.ai/blog/state-of-ai-vs-human-code-generation-report which especially for security sensitive projects may have dire long term consequences, and
by encouraging the environmental destruction brought on in particular by the training of new models.
Two caveats:
Keep in mind more lines of code is not a useful metric for faster project completion and faster maintenance task completion, especially for code bases that are already large.
I’m merely speaking about using LLM code in your project, so for example LLM auto completion or copy&pasting code from a chatbot. I’m mot talking about LLM code reviews that point out issues in natural language.
No, I don’t study or review research on this subject at the moment. My personal experience is far more reliable.
Look, I’m 50 years old. Been doing this shit forever. It’s an amazing productivity enhancer for ME. I can’t say any more really. I linked unique repos that were built by me in minutes as examples.
I understand your position and your doubt since it’s pretty common opinion in the echo chambers around here. Are you a software engineer?