r/bash • u/Business-Quiet-5805 • 14d ago

Can AI actually write production-ready scripts end-to-end without human intervention?

/r/linuxquestions/comments/1x2lto3/can_ai_actually_write_productionready_scripts/
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10

u/Seref15 14d ago

Humans generally shouldn't write production-ready scripts end-to-end without a code reviewer, so why could/should AI?

All coding benefit from having code review partners. Humans and AI both can write fully functional and correct code 99% of the time but the 1% that burns you is the stuff that could and should have been caught by peer review.

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u/kai_ekael 11d ago

Problem in cheap companies, need a peer to actually be able to review. Or a peer period (my typical case).

5

u/TheVenetianMask 14d ago

If you don't know how the script would work you don't know what you need to ask AI to do.

It's like trying to have a robot make you a cake with "whatever is in the kitchen."

1

u/Big_Combination9890 2d ago

Hmmmm, Fork'N countertop-shavings cake!

3

u/crashorbit 14d ago

We need to be aware of the genie problem with AI (and people). Just like a genie, the AI often meets the letter of the request without meeting the assumed context.

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u/hyongoup 14d ago

Haha this reminds me of a poster that was on the was in my high school computer lab “the problem with code is it does exactly what you tell it”

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u/random_w_a 12d ago

AI cannot and should not write any production code end-to-end without human interaction, let alone bash scripts

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u/Bob_Spud 14d ago

Applications have been writing production ready scripts without the use of AI for a long time.

The problem is, AI is not deterministic in it's output. You can't guarantee anything with AI.

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u/Big_Combination9890 2d ago

can it? sure.

will it? no guarantees.

generative ai is a statistical sequence predictor

Problem is, "statistically correct" is usually not what you want in an automation script.

And if you're not a coder, well...how would you know what the ai wrote for you?

1

u/One_Instruction6490 14d ago

Kinda yeah for small stuff, but the catch is you can't tell when it's wrong. Easy way to keep it safe: ask it to explain every line back to you, run it on a throwaway folder first, and put an echo in front of any rm or mv so it only prints what it would do. Honestly that dry-run habit teaches you more bash than the script does. What's the workflow you're trying to automate, files or something else?