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Comment by motorest

6 days ago

> This is exactly the direction I expect AI-assisted coding to go in. Not software engineers being kicked out and some business person pressing a few buttons to have a fully functional app (as is playing out in a lot of fantasies on LinkedIn & X), but rather experienced engineers using AI to generate bits of code and then meticulously reviewing and testing them.

There is a middle ground: software engineers being kicked out because now some business person can hand over the task of building the entire OAuth infrastructure to a single inexperienced developer with a Claude account.

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motorest

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petersellers  6 days ago

I'm not so sure that would work well in practice. How would the inexperienced developer know that the code created by the AI was correct? What if subtle bugs are introduced that the inexperienced developer didn't catch until it went out into production? What if the developer didn't even know how to debug those problems correctly? Would they know that the code they are writing is maintainable and extensible, or are they just going to generate a new layer of code on top of the old one any time they need a new feature?

  • motorest  6 days ago

    > I'm not so sure that would work well in practice. How would the inexperienced developer know that the code created by the AI was correct?

    Not a problem. The industry has evolved to tolerate buggy code that barely works. In fact, in some circles that's what's already expected from the baseline. LLMs change nothing in this regard. In fact, they arguably improve upon this problem as it becomes trivial to implement extensive automated test suites.

    > What if subtle bugs are introduced that the inexperienced developer didn't catch until it went out into production?

    That's what is happening in the real world without LLMs entering the picture.

    • petersellers  6 days ago

      I disagree strongly with this conclusion.

      I've seen firsthand what happens to large software projects that collapse under their own weight of tech debt. The software literally could not function as intended - customers were lost, the product went under. Low quality being "expected" (which isn't true in my experience, either) is irrelevant when the software doesn't work at all.

      The chances of all of that happening are a lot higher with a lone inexperienced engineer at the wheel. You still need experienced engineers to maintain your software, period.

      > That's what is happening in the real world without LLMs entering the picture.

      The difference is that most firms have experienced software engineers to fix those defects.

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