Comment by phailhaus
4 hours ago
Using FizzBuzz as your proxy for "unreviewed code" is extremely misleading. It has practically no complexity, it's completely self-contained and easy to verify. In any codebase of even modest complexity, the challenge shifts from "does this produce the correct outputs" to "is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future" and thornier questions like "does this have the performance characteristics that I need".
> is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future
This doesn’t matter in the age of AI - when you get a new requirement just tell the AI to fulfill it and the old requirements (perhaps backed by a decent test suite?) and let it figure out the details, up to and including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements.
For performance, give the AI a benchmark and let it figure it out as well. You can create teams of agents each coming up with an implementation and killing the ones that don’t make the cut.
Or so goes the gospel in the age of AI. I’m being totally sarcastic, I don’t believe in AI coding
> Or so goes the gospel in the age of AI. I’m being totally sarcastic, I don’t believe in AI coding
You may think you are being sarcastic, but I guarantee that a significant percentage of developers think that both the following are true:
a) They will never need to write code again, and
b) They are some special snowflake that will still remain employed.
I don't agree with your first point. We are surely writing less code, and it will keep getting less and less. At some point it will reduce to a single run function that will make the universe and everything work and it will be called via a button, and that will be the modern definition of writing code: Click the button. Not a lot of keys with weird alphabet thingies on them.
You are however right on your second point because I'm damn good at clicking buttons.
> including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements
Let me guess, you've never worked in a real production environment?
When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of.
Really good post about why AI is a poor fit in software environments where nobody even knows the full requirements: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/production-telemetry-spec-sur...
> Let me guess, you've never worked in a real production environment?
The comment to which you're responding includes a note at the end that the commenter is being sarcastic. Perhaps that wasn't in the comment when you responded to it.
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I work on a product that meets your criteria. We can't fix a class of defects because once we ship, customers will depend upon that behavior and changing is very expensive and takes years to deprecate and age out. So we are stuck with what we ship and need to be very careful about what we release.
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> When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of.
Well, now it'll take them 5 minutes to rewrite their code to work around your change.
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it isn't gospel, it's perspective. if you care about the code, it's obviously bonkers. if you care about the product... code doesn't matter - it's just a means to an end. there's an intersection of both views in places where code actually is the product - the foundational building blocks of today's computing software infrastructure like kernels, low level libraries, cryptography, etc. - but your typical 'uber for cat pictures' saas business cares about none of this.
If you care about the product, you double-so-much care about code correctness and the alignment with the expectations of the stakeholders.
So you're an auto maker, you say you can care about your product but not care how is built?
If you're building for the cheapest segment of the market, just maybe. Anything else is a hard no imho
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> AI capability problem is mostly solved; the distribution and trust problem isn't.
SaaS opportunity? Maybe, some sort of marketplace of AI-written applications and services with discovery features?