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- Hacker News
- Reads like AI generated rage bait.
Why I dislike AI code? Not because any of this reasons. I dislike bad written code. The overall quality of AI code is shit. Not becuase the AI couldn't do it better, but because the people that are using it are mostly inexperienced morons or people that don't care for any quality at all. And in the end the software they create ends up on my desk. Not only because it already infested the big players, additionally because now really EVERY simpleton can generate a shitty software and I need to filter out the garbage out of twenty applications that promise to solve the same problem.
I hated Delphi 5 at it's time for the same reason. But now the count of morons that can generate software is bigger.
Edit: The complete process of writing code with AI tools guides you to ignore quality even then when you are not a moron. Leave the last 30% of the solution like it is, although its not the best solution you would have picked, or discuss this with the AI for a time double as long as you needed for the first 70%.
by krater23 - I think this post's arguments are mostly flawed, but without getting into that, my problem with "AI" is that it's just fundamentally antisocial - it's built on using the work of billions of people in a way that they would not like it being used.* The defense is always "if you put it on the Internet, then you should be okay with people using it however they want", but that's just such a douchey defense, and the result is a world where fewer people want to share things on the Internet.
But that ship seems to have sailed. Anyway, it's cute that the author writes as if AI companies are only automating the "typing code" part and not the "delivering valuable software" part. They will automate everything that they can. Whatever special understanding or ability you think you have that the machine lacks, if it leads you to any amount of success, will be hoovered up into the machine for easy replication by anyone. That's why there's so much money in this - people aren't investing trillions so that you can type less/no code.
* There are valid defenses for using work against the author's wishes - e.g., a racist shouldn't be able to stop people of other races from viewing their work. I just think these particular defenses are shit.
by creata - I think the employment thief point is always misstated.
We invented compilers, word processors, templated document generation, code generators, DSLs and things like that which were all labour reduction technologies for describing systems and information. These were net positives for society but wiped out full administrative and technical professions.
The issue is the impact that technology has on society. It should used to free up more time for enriching humanity with art, music, sciences, mathematics etc. But what really happens is they are used entirely for concentrating wealth by taking revenue and reducing employment, leaving functional people unemployed, destitute and in debt to the people who have the wealth concentration.
At this point it's morally objectionable on all grounds.
A second point, which should be considered an addition to the article is that AI coding shapes thinking based on its capabilities, not the user's intent. I see this a lot. If the objective is to do thing X because it aligns with a well-researched strategic analysis, it may not align with that. People are happy to be pushed to do thing Y which is a totally different thing because they are being slowly gaslit into accepting the mediocrity that the model promotes. This leads to poor business outcomes. And all this is hidden and written off because everyone needs to be seen as AI thought leaders at a high level because that's what keeps the stock going up and engineers are being rated on delivery, not on ROI.
Everthing is fucking broken.
by sdcfgy - I am not sure if I am more tired of people building with AI or people complaining about people building with AI. If you really that bothered, there is nothing stoping anybody from keep doing things the good old way... What's the big deal?
- My say about this
1. I think most of us know the same thing is occurred when first compile came into the market (Most of them hated it saying 'High Quality ASM code would be only generated by humans' . Moving forward asm hasn't dead but we are only using it only at critically. I think we will do same with LLMs we use what useful and Move forward.
2. Life's isn't just always staying in front of a box and writing some code. If AI does the job of creating useful code with quality i would be more than happy since i could get start to work on more abstract things like Arts and Humanity. which for our growth is essential as you can see the current society is currently disdain.
Finally to conclude don't try to interrupt the flow just accept it and move forward.
Life is SHORT
by Regex777 - I like coding. You can take away my AWK and C, Bash and Go and Javascript (yes I even enjoy coding Javascript unironically, sue me. I like making self-contained HTML5 one-file-and-offline tools for fun) only from my cold, dead hands. But don't we get one of these articles like once a week at least? It's getting kind of tiresome.
Like, I get the idea, I really do, but is there a need to announce it to the winds so often? Is this a pride thing?
by falsaberN1 - > Code as Art
Code is code.
Code can be art, code can also be simply a tool to reach a goal.
If you want to create art, do it with your own two hands and your brain.
If you want to just Do The Thing, codegen it. No one cares. In before "Except your users having to use your vibeslop" FYI your Hand-Crafted Artisanal Code will still have bugs, so it's a moot point.
Heck, the very first thing the author does is links to another one of his own blog post where the above points are explicitly stated and explained, then restates at the end of the paragraph that there are no valid arguments for this one. So why keep beating this dead horse? Especially as the opener of the article.
This kind of mindset baffles me.
by dev0p - I don't like AI coding, but I can't say it's not useful. Most of the arguments in this article can be disarmed by taking the abstraction "one step up". LLM generated modules and software, microservices, whatever your level of abstraction... now need to be composited together. You go and deal with higher order problems, factories, generation, etc.
Is it a way to develop critical bits of code, depths of your business logic? Absolutely not. Can it solve a lot of boilerplate and support logic? Absolutely yes.
Seeing "AI Companies as Bad Actors"... can't fully disagree there. There's far too many far too dodgy things about these businesses, and I trust them as far as I can audit them (not very far). And the missing argument's the cognitive decline of using these things to think for us. I try to keep myself sharp by still manually doing a fair amount of things in my life. I refuse to automate _everything_ - especially the stuff I do for fun. Having an LLM manage hobby-adjacent stuff is a quick trip to burnout land, especially once fixing the thing becomes "the hobby"... and it does.
by tinthedev