Comment by aspenmartin
37 minutes ago
> Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world.
Well, first of all you and the author point to the same derisive comment of these models being, in your words "stochastic code extruder" or the one I have heard a lot "next-token predictors", and the connotation I read from these being that this makes them inherently dumb or unintelligent and I don't understand that. The fact that these "stochastic code extruders" can solve Erdos problems is sort of the proof in the pudding. Next token prediction is profound in that it is _a very simple objective_ yet it is _enough_ to take you to extraordinary heights.
Also I wonder how many folks honestly look in the mirror and think: how does the median programmer differ from an LLM. Do you really think humans are universally better and produce universally higher quality code? Not even universally, I would say _typically_. I would trust an LLM to not write a buffer overflow far more than a junior or a mediocre senior engineer. LLMs have built things in my domain that are non-trivial and impressive and correct.
Not to mention, these systems are following a predictable trend in performance improvement so these worries about quality just won't age well, and it seems to be a head-in-the-sand attitude that pretends like quality and reliability are not getting very very good _already_.
> Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people.
Could not agree more. So why do you think humans are inherently better at this?
> This “inevitable” slide into generative AI harms every single person it comes into contact with.
I just don't quite understand this, is it that: (1) agentic code is inherently inferior to human code and thus (2) shipping agentic code is actively harmful?
It's like people complaining about "poor quality plastic trinkets" that replaced well-made household items. Of course high-quality things can be (and are) made of plastic. The problem is that you can still make a very cheap passable thing out of plastic, that would be uneconomical to make out of metal or wood.
Same with code: by using AI, one can produce passable software trinkets very cheaply, that would be uneconimical to produce by paying poor-quality human developers.
The floor has moved downwards, allowing to produce a flood of new, trash-quality, disposable code very cheaply. It does not mean that we'll have to use only that code. But unfortunately we'll have to live with it, too.
>> Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people.
> Could not agree more. So why do you think humans are inherently better at this?
Because humans are capable of empathy
Given the UIs I've experienced over the years, I'd dispute that assumption...