Disagree on the slop point. By now the code of frontier models works well, and the need to read it is gone. The Claude word salad problem was pretty much solved with the 5.5 opus release.
The other 3 points made in article make sense though.
If you don't need to read the code at all, what are the engineers doing to make the other issues matter? Deskilling and alienation are still about the relationship between engineers and the code.
You still have to orchestrate these things and the wholistic system architectures, pull the slot machine handle many times to get the right thing, and review/verify the working output constantly.
That said, I think we need to be prepared for how a simple prompt like "make it faster" will work in a relatively short timeframe - and where the AI is able to adequately refactor/re-platform/be done in a way where even the architecture becomes obscure to us.
I often use simple prompts like “make it faster” and get back functionally correct commits. When I review them, I often discover that they didn’t do what I really wanted - sometimes Claude made it faster by incurring expensive costs, or doing a migration that would be risky in prod, or making a tradeoff that’s not worth it.
Perhaps I could set up a workflow to handle this without reading the code. I’ve seen people who make Claude fill out arcane templates, and then spend their time reviewing reports and tinkering with loops or whatever. But why would I want to read a TPS report about the code rather than just reading the code?
> By now the code of frontier models works well, and the need to read it is gone.
Like anything else, it depends on what you're working on. For small personal projects I agree, but in maintaining large scale business applications with millions of lines of code, I am still having to guide the models to reuse existing code and to be more flexible with their data structures to accommodate changing business requirements in the future.
They only see a snapshot of the world the application exists in due to their ephemeral nature, and until that is overcome, they will only be able to learn general principles and not the particular nuances of your codebase that only arise from observing how the users use it on a daily basis.
Yes, there’s always flies in the soup, and sometimes they just serve you a whole plate of insects, but you can’t beat the price. Just ask the waiter to get you a soup with less flies, and keep doing that until the number of flies is acceptable to you.
How about, no thanks, I’ll go to a real restaurant.
They will do these prompt just fine but the result will be a near identical copy of an open source version. And it won't tell you it cloned some existing engine, because it does not know, it just pulled it out from its model. Now you have an AI slopped 3d engine or DBMS no-one cares about that will just rot.
JV00 · · focus · HN ↗
The other 3 points made in article make sense though.
thethirdone · · focus · HN ↗
ramoz · · focus · HN ↗
That said, I think we need to be prepared for how a simple prompt like "make it faster" will work in a relatively short timeframe - and where the AI is able to adequately refactor/re-platform/be done in a way where even the architecture becomes obscure to us.
SpicyLemonZest · · focus · HN ↗
Perhaps I could set up a workflow to handle this without reading the code. I’ve seen people who make Claude fill out arcane templates, and then spend their time reviewing reports and tinkering with loops or whatever. But why would I want to read a TPS report about the code rather than just reading the code?
v64 · · focus · HN ↗
Like anything else, it depends on what you're working on. For small personal projects I agree, but in maintaining large scale business applications with millions of lines of code, I am still having to guide the models to reuse existing code and to be more flexible with their data structures to accommodate changing business requirements in the future.
They only see a snapshot of the world the application exists in due to their ephemeral nature, and until that is overcome, they will only be able to learn general principles and not the particular nuances of your codebase that only arise from observing how the users use it on a daily basis.
formerly_proven · · focus · HN ↗
JV00 · · focus · HN ↗
fwlr · · focus · HN ↗
JV00 · · focus · HN ↗
fwlr · · focus · HN ↗
How about, no thanks, I’ll go to a real restaurant.
tschellenbach · · focus · HN ↗
AI build me a cost overview of xyz: works perfectly without ever looking at the code
AI build me unreal engine 5 level graphics, or a database, or infra at high scale: this will need some active steering for now :)
JV00 · · focus · HN ↗
smashed · · focus · HN ↗
wonnage · · focus · HN ↗
JV00 · · focus · HN ↗