No I think the argument is more like… on average the code AI produces is better than what the majority of developers were producing before AI. Don’t forget HN crowd is the exception. The people that post here are like 1% of total programmers that like this as more than just a job. The industry at large, 99%, is just people doing their job writing average to poor code and going home. AI does that better now.
replyI doubt we're really the exception, and I think a good developer from the before times can still guide AI to produce a reasonably maintainable codebase over time. Most likely, a bad developer from the before times will still be able to guide AI to produce a mess. But yeah. It seems to me that the latest models produce above average code, based on the messes I've seen (and helped produce) over the last 25 years or so. It's not as good as what I'd build by hand these days, but it's good enough, when in the right hands.
replyThere was a time we all on HN agreed that contracting out the code was a bad idea. That ownership of the code was important, and if you sent your code out to a one off contractor it would come back as unmaintainable liability.
replyThe shift in thinking leads me to believe that the real reason HN hated contracting out the code was the fact that you had to pay the contractors for their work.
There is also the possibility that a lot of HN hated outsourcing to contractors for the same reason a lot of HN hates AI: they were taking our jobs ;-)
replyAnd I think the outcome will be the same in both cases: we figure out how to outsource effectively. In fact, many of the same strategies we developed then are applicable now.
where is the code that was universally accepted to be good?
reply