Comment by bobnamob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobnamob | Hacker News Reader

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I think this article is indicative of the "vibe" I've been getting when reading any discussion around genAI programming.

The range of (areas of) competence is just so damn vast in our industry that any discussion about the quality of generated code (or code reviews in this case) is doomed. There just isn't a stable, shared baseline for what quality looks like.

I mean really - how on earth can Jonny Startup, who spends his days slinging JS/TS to get his business launched in < a month[1], and Terrence PhD the database engineer, who writes simulation tested C++ for FoundationDB, possibly have a grounded discussion about code quality? Rarely do I see people declaring their priors.

Furthermore, the article is so bereft of detail and gushes so profusely about the success and virtues of their newly minted "senior level" AI that I can't help but wonder if they're selling something...

/rant

[1] Please don't read this as slight against Jonny Startup, his priorities are different

> Furthermore, the article is so bereft of detail and gushes so profusely about the success and virtues of their newly minted "senior level" AI that I can't help but wonder if they're selling something...

With all the money in the AI space these days, my prior probability for an article extolling the virtues of AI actually trying to sell something is rather high.

I just want a few good unbiased academic studies on the effects of various AI systems on things like delivery time (like are AI systems preventing IT projects from going overtime on a fat-tailed distribution? is it possible with AI to put end to the chapter of software engineering projects going disastrously overtime/overbudget?)

Is there a difference in quality? Johnny Startup is presumably trading quality in order to release sooner, but the lower quality accepted in that trade is recognizable.

If Jonny startup has been building release prioritised systems all his life/career, there's a decent chance he doesn't even know what more goes into systems with higher release & maintenance standards.

Conversely, if Terrence has only ever worked in high rigour environments, he's unlikely to understand Jonny's perspective when Jonny says that code generation tools are doing amazing "reliable" things.

Again, this isn't meant to be a value judgement against either Jonny or Terrence, more that they don't have shared context & understanding on what and how the other is building, and therefore are going to struggle to have a productive conversation about a magic blackbox that one thinks will take their job in 6 months.

Your leap that lack of exposure, maybe even lack of capability, to writing high quality software precludes being aware of varying degrees of software quality is curious, and frankly unrealistic. In reality, Johnny Startup knows full well what tradeoffs he is making. Top quality software is not a priority concern of his, but he understands that it can be for other people. He is under no illusions that safety-critical software, for example, is written like a line-of-business MVP. And vice verse. Especially given the context of people participating in communities like HN where software quality is a regular topic. We are not talking about people living under rocks, as they say. It is effectively impossible for one to not have that awareness.

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