AI generation when writing software is a false economy. You are replacing writing code with code review. Code review is harder and requires you to already have an understanding of the domain which often means that you would’ve even able to write it yourself to begin with. If you code gen something because you don’t know how to write it yourself, you by definition cannot review it without going though an effort equivalent to writing it yourself in the first place.

Unless of course you don’t care about code review and so doom yourself into treating software like magical incantations that break randomly for no perceivable reason; but no good mage would do that, surely.

@mary

@mary It seems to me like the entirety of generative AI is about replacing creative work with managerial work.

This, perhaps, is why it is so polarizing: This appeals to a certain kind of personality, and deeply repels another.

@datarama @mary keeps me wondering why we aren't replacing managerial work which also seems uniquely suited to be automated away by hallucinating llms

@xkummerer @mary Because it's managers who have the power to make that sort of decision, obviously.

But in code, you *could* invert the relationship: Rather than having the AI write code and the human review it (before sending it off to another human for review), you could have the AI review the human's code (also before sending it off to another human for review). This lessens the reviewing-human's (managerial/supervisory) workload, and is less likely to have a destructive effect on quality.

@xkummerer @mary (As a footnote, managers are kinda like systems administrators in that when they do their job well, you're barely aware of the work they do, but when they do their job poorly, you're *very* aware of it, because you have to try to route around the fallout to get your own work done.

I'm very happy my manager isn't an LLM.)

@mary Have you tried that? Its actually pretty useful, because people read faster then they type, for example