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by adamtaylor_1310 hours ago |
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upvoteby MeetingsBrowser10 hours ago|
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As a software engineer who also hires other software engineers, I’m curious about the disconnect in our experiences.

I do systems programming. Before AI feature development roughly went like, design, implement, test, review with some back edges and a lot of time spent in test and review.

AI has made the implementation part much faster, at the cost of even more time spent testing and reviewing, though still an improvement overall.

We do not see the weeks to days improvement though. The bottleneck before was testing and reviewing, and they are even bigger bottlenecks now.

What kind of work do you do, and what kind of workflow were you using before and after AI to benefit so much?

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upvoteby satvikpendem5 hours ago|
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> I do systems programming.

I'll stop you right there. AI is not good at systems programming, it's good at CRUD web development, which is where most people are seeing the gains.

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upvoteby oytis53 minutes ago|
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I think antirez mentioned somewhere he considered it particularly good at systems programming.
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upvoteby Traubenfuchs2 hours ago|
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>95% of software development is crud.
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upvoteby id1 hours ago|
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It's really not, though. As soon as systems have to scale, regulatory requirements come in, etc. it becomes more complex.

AI has solved simple CRUD, yes, but CRUD, was easy before.

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upvoteby 7 hours ago|
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upvoteby logicchains1 hours ago|
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>AI has made the implementation part much faster, at the cost of even more time spent testing and reviewing,

Maybe they're using AI for testing and reviewing more than you are, not just for coding?

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upvoteby logicchains1 hours ago|
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>AI has made the implementation part much faster, at the cost of even more time spent testing and reviewing,

Maybe they're using AI for testing and reviewing more than you are?

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upvoteby skeptic_ai7 hours ago|
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I never touched kubernetes and in 1 week I have a few nodes running and i understand a lot of it. Not perfect but not bad.
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upvoteby oytis6 hours ago|
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I have recently learned Kubernetes without AI and one week is more than enough to understand most of it.
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upvoteby newphone7335 hours ago|
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This is definitely not true. But I doubt GP understand "most" of kubernetes too. They probably have a good working knowledge of the important commonly used features.
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upvoteby 3 hours ago|
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upvoteby thrawa83873366 hours ago|
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That was the usual experience pre AI
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upvoteby stavros9 hours ago|
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Not the OP, but it might be that AI isn't as good at systems programming as it is at other domains, or it might be that you're using it differently than I am. I don't know which one it is (maybe AI just isn't good at writing the language you work with).

For things like web frontents/backends, though, it works beautifully. I ship things in days that would take me weeks to write by hand, and I'm very fast at writing things by hand. The AI also ships many fewer bugs than our average senior programmer, though maybe not fewer bugs than our staff programmers.

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upvoteby rustystump8 hours ago|
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In my experience ai has had far far more bugs than most of what i call senior engineers but far fewer than juniors.

The boost is for what are glorified crud apps which it 1000x the tedious work. However, the choices it makes along the way quickly blows up without cleaning. Seniors know how to keep their workstation clean or they should.

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upvoteby stavros2 hours ago|
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It sounds like we have opposite experiences.
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upvoteby pron9 hours ago|
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The only way you could possibly know that is if you're reviewing the code, which means you're not "managing fleets of agents". If you're not reviewing the code (and you wouldn't be if you're managing fleets of agents), then you have no way to tell what you're shipping.
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upvoteby strogonoff5 hours ago|
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It’s under-appreciated that a proper review takes at least as long as the actual work: it’s all the same time spent understanding the challenge and coming up with the best solution, minus the time spent typing in your solution (almost never a significant amount), plus the time spent understanding their solution and explaining how to get from theirs to yours.
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upvoteby maccard1 hours ago|
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Can you link to a changelog that shows the 5-10x feature increases? I keep hearing this, but I don’t see anything I use ever actually shipping like this, or people backing this up with any sort of proof.
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upvoteby globular-toast6 hours ago|
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Does what you ship involve hundreds of lines of HTML/CSS by any chance? Do you care about accessibility?
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upvoteby aprilthird20214 hours ago|
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Give an example.

I have an example in my line of work. Full service rewrite in a new language. Would have taken forever without AI. AI makes it easier, faster. The service has better throughput, uses less machines. Having a complete full test harness that allows us to ensure we are meeting all the functionality of the previous service is key. AND we are keeping the old service on standby because we know we don't know what might be wrong with the new one.

What's your example?

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upvoteby willio588 hours ago|
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What you are shipping is not the same as what Coinbase is shipping. These are vastly different things. Making a shiny app with AI is great, I'm doing it as I type this. But I am under no delusion that what I make can sustain a multi-million dollar or even billion dollar business in the case of Coinbase. That's plain silly.
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upvoteby mdavid6264 hours ago|
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Shipping garbage.
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