Comment by jackb4040
8 hours ago
I think you're entitled to your opinion, but want to point out that there's 2 different axes on the graph here. You are unhappy about LLMs' affect on your working conditions, but also concede it's inevitable and the labs are at least somewhat sincere in their predictions of it displacing a significant amount of the value in the software engineering market.
It's not necessarily a given that the person you're replying to agrees on the latter, and therefore they might not be stoked on you starting off by agreeing with them but going on to make an argument that supports the companies responsible for the very thing they're complaining about.
I think there's a contradiction in you stating that management thinks LLM-generated output is "maintainable". They went to business school, they don't know what that means. It's your job to explain to them the consequences of shipping code faster than the people whose job it is to understand it can do so.
I don't know if it's just me, but I find that with a disciplined approach (or even an undisciplined one for some personal projects), LLM generated code is quite "maintainable" nowadays for the sorts of things that matter: adding new functionality, fixing the odd bug (usually a missed edge case, or behavior I didn't think-through well enough). They're also secure enough for me not to be overly concerned.
Granted, I stick to frontier models and avoid cheaper ones, but if it quacks like a duck...
If you're working on a CRUD/web app, absolutely. There's so much data for web apps out there that LLMs now produce better web app code than most of my coworkers from 2022 or so, since it follows consistent style rules. Web app code all looks the same, anyway.
> It's your job to explain to them the consequences of shipping code faster than the people whose job it is to understand it can do so.
The problem we’re collectively running into is that nobody knows if this actually poses a problem anymore. We’ll find out in 5-10 years, but businesses and clients can’t wait that long.
As a side note, I don’t think it’s fair to blame the “management” for setting expectations around AI use. They’re driven by market forces. If competitors are producing slop and customers are gobbling it up, then from a business perspective it _is_ a mistake to abstain from AI use.
What I’m finding quite fascinating is that we’re in a weird spot right now where we’re both expected to produce slop AND understand it / be responsible for it. Seems unreasonable.