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What We Lost the Last Time Code Got Cheap (www.poppastring.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] -5 points 5 months ago (11 children)

German engineer with 20 years of experience. Its a big jump. Believe me. I'm not suggesting most people use this tool the right way nor that the industry is not without flaws but its like eating meat. I have no issue with it as long as it is ethically sourced.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago* (7 children)

    All the studies I've found so far seem to disagree, so why should we believe you?

    https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills (2026 study)

    We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.

    Using AI sped up the task slightly, but this didn’t reach the threshold of statistical significance.

    https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-findings-ai-coding-overhyped (2025 study)

    But those claims appear to be massively overblown, as The Register reports, with researchers finding that productivity gains are modest at best — and at worst, that AI can actually slow down human developers.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    That's what I'm saying. Ai does not help with speed. Takes potentially even longer. It helps with concept and design quality and completeness. For coding its just fancy auto complete. Think how LLMs can be used to improve the process instead of replacing yourself. Apply your skill with a lever instead.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    AIs are (apparently) stupid and fail at non-trivial tasks. They also enjoy deleting production databases. They seem atrocious with any sort of quality.

    What would AI possibly be useful for, if you care about quality work?

    (I suppose they can sometimes help with vulnerability scanning and writing mindless e-mails if you're some sort of overworked customr agent, but those are pretty narrow uses. And I'm not going to upload my stuff to big tech data sloppers myself just for some slightly better vulnerability scanning.)

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    Again I do not suggest giving AI control. Don't let it edit your code. Just give it what it needs to know to discuss and help construct code to review and insert by hand. You have full control and enjoy the benefits LLMs bring. Everything else is just asking for trouble.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    That's the thing, I don't think LLMs bring many benefits. Too many lies, and so on.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    I think most people are too trusting and have a political agenda to hate AI for all the obvious reasons. But it solves a few very central problems for me reasonably well and people don't get to decide what I spend my money on. AI is neither the miracle dream future not the word ending scam people make it out to be. Using a tool still takes skill and angrily screaming people down (not you) won't change that AI is here to stay. I don't like calling it AI, for all the reasons. But deep learning and LLMs are a useful technology in many regards. No doubt about it.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Explain how this amount of electricity use could ever be "ethically sourced". That's not even much of a thing for meat, which at least provides nutrients. AI slop is everywhere and most of it is not helping anyone with anything.

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