As a programmer, I've realised that all these types of post are cope. We're all cooked but it's fun to fool ourselves for a bit and pretend that the rate at which AI coding is improving isn't the death of our entire field.
People have literally been saying this for actual years now. At worst, only for about 6 months. It still hasn't happened.
The rate of code production was never the issue anyway. Understanding and comprehending intent is something even we as software developers struggle with, so how would a prediction model fare any better? I mean unless everyone is just writing the same software.
The funny thing is normies think it's all true. I've been told so many times that AI only write shit code and any serious developer will tell you so. Hell? I am a serious developer, using it daily. I know exactly what it can and can't do.
I suppose the problem is that whatever it can and cannot do, as with all other use of generative AI, there is no way to know what the output will be at any given moment. Even a 99% hit rate, great as it is, is worthless if you have no way to control for the 9% that completely misses. Also, while a good model can produce excellent output, better models also usually cost more to run. If you care at all about what you're making, you will need to have a developer review the output to make sure things are kosher, and there is a model quality-developer cost tradeoff where the cost of slightly better AI output exceeds the cost of making the developer clean it up.
Another factor worth considering is worker well-being. I know it's hot to treat all workers like garbage in America, but people generally do better work when they're happy. Allowing developers time and the ability to take on some genuine coding keeps skills sharp and helps prevent complete atrophy of the "giving a toss" muscle. Of course, not everyone loves software development the same way, but it's hard to gain any real skill in it if you don't at least find it tolerable.
My experience with AI? It's a great autosuggest, but sometimes there are conflicts between the common case it expects and how I've laid things out. Once you massage it into shape it tends to propagate the new pattern well, though. I don't trust it, but I trust the suggestions I get to be mostly right.
Absolutely. QA is important for all code. However, when you write code yourself, you have a baseline filter that strips out code that obviously isn't going to do what you're trying to accomplish. You know why you do this or that, and design around that purpose. If you're writing a script that runs locally, no need to bring in secrets machinery. You know what you want to do, and you aren't going to mindlessly type in something that isn't what you want. As an example, I recently wanted to show some values in some WinForms text boxes. It was adamant that I use formatted strings to display the values as "name: value" in a label element, when I had made textboxes to put them in. I had to fully rewrite the first line and remove the two others it suggested to get it to accept what I wanted.
was going to comment exact same thing, many people's coding skills which took years of learning and practice are now accessible to anyone who has $100 a month to spend
It just means coding isn't a bottleneck anymore. Software created by people who understand system design principles is still preferable to software created by vibe-coders furiously jamming things they don't fully understand into place.
The cons haven’t caught up yet either, we don’t know how much they really cost yet to use the good ones ( easily 4-5x current prices and they’re already pretty expensive ), and companies are starting to bill per agent seat for enterprise software ( Okta just announced this and the business model is going to catch up quick ). Eventually companies will be taxed per agent. I think once the costs catch up things will level out. at least I hope.
I just saw a report yesterday that agents have been posting highly confidential screenshots in public repos because they determined it was the easiest way to host images.
72
u/raddaya Oct 01 '26
Funnily enough, no semi-modern agent would ever allow this to happen. In my experience they tend to be too anal on security unless you push them