Copilot’s braindead and flat out wrong comments on PRs are downright dangerous. Drives me nuts. Tired of explaining why it’s wrong.

Search is useless. All the useful blogs, sites and forums are dead or gone.

Watching people panic over losing their jobs for teams I support is depressing. We know what these KPIs and etc are for… and why they suddenly care about them.

Try to distract myself with other projects too.

I didn't say "trust me bro" and showing Claude submissions is sufficient for analyzing code in the context I believe it is good: one file at a time and one task at a time. This is also the same realm that a human is good. You are welcome to look at the project as a whole to determine the "project quality" as well: it's open source. But I'm not here to argue: I believe this tech that is barely in its infancy is already quite good and going to get better, and I'm already considering what it will do to my life. If you don't, that's fine.

I'll add here that I find it very frustrating to talk about these "AI agents" and their code output, because it's something we're all close to and spent a lot of time learning. The concept of "a machine" getting "better than us" so quickly, with the background context of an industry that is chomping at the bit to replace humans makes these discussions inherently difficult and really emotional. I feel genuine sadness when I think about it. If the world were different we'd probably all be stoked. I don't want the AI to be better than me, and I currently don't believe it is, but I think:

1. My belief doesn't stop the market. People do believe that it is better than me or at least good enough. This has a real effect on my life and the lives of people I know.
2. I don't see any fundamental reason it won't get better at development. Part of the reason it struggles with large projects is context: that doesn't sound like a fundamental engineering constraint to me, it sounds like a memory constraint. Specialization will also make it better and better I assume.
3. Even if it is never better than me, it will certainly be more efficient and eventually the market will consider my time better spent correcting its output or guiding it, removing the fun part of the work in my mind.

I don't think my job is currently on the chopping block today: I don't do development I do security work. But I do think it will either be on the chopping block or fundamentally change sooner than I'm comfortable with.

I appreciate the answer but that's not at all what i asked.

I have anecdotes and personal experience i could cite but that's not particularly helpful in a general sense.

Pointing to claude submissions in projects is actively less than helpful in this case because it only proves that single files in isolation look like they are well written, it gives no indication of overall project quality.

People that I know to be good developers have also shared their experiences with it and say yes, it has written good code for them. I’ve personally used ChatGPT to generate very mundane tasks and the code it output was more than adequate.

So in a very limited context the code generated for you personally was acceptable, that's great, i've found much the same, but that's a far cry from "AI writes great code; I think we just want it to suck."

It's somewhat my bad though, when i say "citation" i don't need a full research paper (though that would be nice) i'd like something a bit more substantial than a "trust me bro".

It introduces security bugs and subtle bugs at probably the same rate as a human (I have no “citation” there, just what I’ve seen)

That's a load-bearing probably, my experience has been the polar opposite of that, I’ve been involved in two major AI initiatives and both choked hard on security and domain bugs. That could very well be a project management or company specific issue, hence the search for successful projects to compare.

My quest continues.

Microslop continues to be a pox on IT. I believe they are mostly at fault for the current state of things.

My goal is to pay off my house and then accept a lower salary as a trade off for more fulfilling work.

Tech certainly is in a wierd spot. It certainly had lost its sheen much before that but luckily I actually like solving problems and helping people. What was frustrating when I was still working was it kinda felt like any time you were good at something you were pulled out. I literally had to refer people to my boss if they pinged me for them to authorize time with me or someone else from the team. When we had something working they often wanted us working on something else and leave the first thing to other folks. Thing is that means it lacks a lot of polish. Its like a really good poc. And again don't get me wrong I love doing poc's and quickly getting things going and would love to push off and go on to another thing before it gets tedius but usually its not being pushed to a team to finish it off instead its just. well. good enough and we don't want to spend more on this solution. anyway I have been unemployed for over a year so I would appreciated just being able to sink my teeth into something complex.

Claude commits to GitHub with the same name no matter who uses it. You can see every single line of open source code it has written (for GitHub only of course): https://github.com/search?q=author%3Aclaude&type=commits&s=author-date&o=desc. Look around as you please, most of it is just fine.

People that I know to be good developers have also shared their experiences with it and say yes, it has written good code for them. I've personally used ChatGPT to generate very mundane tasks and the code it output was more than adequate.

It introduces security bugs and subtle bugs at probably the same rate as a human (I have no "citation" there, just what I've seen). It needs to be "driven" by a human, yes, but it's not clear for how long it will need to be, and even if it always does, personally I don't want my job to be to "drive an AI".

It really doesn’t suck at them. AI writes great code; I think we just want it to suck.

Citation? I’m really asking because I’ve yet to hear about anything above a toy project that has had any verifiable success with AI code generation as a major component of their workflow.

As in a like for like improvement in code quality, security, bug occurrences and severity, developer efficiency, all that jazz, not just the standard "we've funnelled so much money in to this we are almost fiscally required to claim success"

its not a dig, i really want to see one so i can found out how it was done.

Where do you think the steam deck breaks fine from 🤣!

"Small tasks" are the key there. It can write a small script or spin up application boilerplate very well, but it really struggles with long-term maintenance and new features on a complex application.

I spend about as much time telling the AI "no, not like that" as it supposedly saves me from not having to type the code manually.

It does have some value, but I'd put it around a 10% boost -- not the 500% boost that senior leadership insists it can do.

Your possible future sounds wonderful, I wish you every success with it.

If I could leave work and keep the same salary, I would...

As for what I would do, I enjoy photography ( https://metapixl.com/stoy ), I would probably buy a reliable car and start driving around europe taking photos of interesting places.

I might also start buying used cameras and set up a local studio called something like "snåljåpens fotobibliotek", or "The cheapskate's photo library" where for a monthly fee you can rent older but good cameras and equipment.

I'm the only "active tech" at my tiny local shop/"MSP". I have two bosses who are each "owners" of the company and neither of them can fix their own workstations.

Neither can handle domain DNS changes. Neither of them can migrate mail. Neither of them have taken "support" calls for the last 5 years- instead they've transferred everything technical beyond "restart your PC" to me. I've seen a few people younger than me around who actually have basic understanding of internet DNS, TCP/IP, but for the most part I'm starting to think that after my generation, the internet will corrode, collapse, and die. I hope I'm wrong, UNLESS the internet continues being handled largely by 5 gigantic, evil corporations- in THAT case I hope it dies.

I have to track my time in 3 different system

Which circle of hell is this?

The magnificent steiner would have already ended both sides.

I've been working in tech for about 10 years now as well, and I'm also just feeling tired. I'm a bit sad, because I like my job. I didn't study computer science or anything in college; I just got work in security because I enjoyed it. It's sad pretty much knowing it won't be the same. I don't really want to offload a lot of the work to an AI in the future.

I've been getting more into learning to weld and work with wood. In the next few years I'll probably consider starting a small custom furniture company.

I feel like this part of the conversation is drowned by the AI hype train and the AI hate train. The part where real people are seeing the real effects of a technology that is actually good, and is likely going to get better, and will have the potential for significant social damage to a large part of the middle class.

It really doesn't suck at them. AI writes great code; I think we just want it to suck. It can't magically generate a new Linux kernel, but the small tasks I've seen it do have all been mostly above average. (I have also seen some complete garbage, yes, mostly above average)

When I became a sysadmin 24 years ago, I figured the general public was still adapting to the rapid overnight advancements and integration into the tech industry. I assumed that as people figured out how to use software and computer technology in their daily lives, help desk support would practically disappear and we'd be able to move our efforts toward fully maintaining systems instead of customers.

I had no idea how resistant the general public would be to actually learning and understanding technology. We went from recommending customers avoid certain bad programs and hardware, to being forced to incorporate them into our infrastructure because the general public didn't want to give them up.

My professional opinion was overruled many times because someone higher up the food chain wanted to use a device or app that hurt our client base or mission parameters, but was familiar to them, so they wanted it included in our suite of tools.

I'm grateful to see a lot of public resistance to AI, even if corporations are doubling down on their investment into the technology. But I don't have any hope for the future of technology or the general public who use it daily. AI is just the latest excuse for people to not learn how to use technology efficiently.

I expected younger generations to be raised on this tech and be absolute wizards in its use, understanding it even better than I do! Instead, they were raised on slop and ad-riddled ADHD-promoting garbage apps that rotted their brains and prevented them from learning basic tools and functions. As a millennial, I've spent the better half of a decade teaching boomers how to use this tech, and then the next decade trying to reeducate zoomers on how to properly use tech and break their life-long bad habits.

I retired from the IT industry after only 20 years. Now I enjoy tinkering with technology in my free time. I always enjoyed teaching people how to use their personal computers and smartphones, but I can't spend another minute on a help desk, fielding calls from people who still don't know how to read error messages that pop up in their face. AI will be the death of the industry if integrated into everything and left unchecked. Maybe it'd be for the best.

I hope you're telling your boss that you're super busy though!

I like the way you think.

Well, I have no intention of hitting CTO/CISO, so no goat farming for me

The irony is that the subfield with active hiring is the one that will ultimately make the very work they are doing redundant.

The magic is gone and the intellectual challenge is fading fast. I saw the writing on the wall and am jumping ship to something decidedly non-tech 🙂

An AI that takes the fun and creative parts

AI also sucks at them. It's just a very convenient excuse for the owner class to act out their firing of workers after the overhirings of 2020, and if it can turn their workers into the mythical 10x engineers people in the industry talked about, that's a bonus.

I can relate. I have been in tech for about 30 years now and have never been less interested in it. I used to love learning and implementing new things, and now I’d rather not. I think part of it is the changing landscape for tech but a lot of it is just me. I’m not really playing video games anymore, don’t read the tech-based posts on Lemmy or videos on any of the creator platforms. I don’t care about upgrading my devices, it just seems like a waste of money to drop $1000 on an incremental upgrade and AI that I don’t want.

Part of it is that I’ve just reached an age where I’m starting to think about what I have done, what I haven’t done and what I’m going to leave behind and what I’m leaving behind is game consoles and a collection of cables that I’ll never use. So, I’ve decided to move on. I’m volunteering at a local living history museum where we are restoring the waterway of a late 1700s grist and woolen mill, rebuilding and preserving something that the community can enjoy long after I’m gone. I’m also learning how to make things. I’m learning woodworking to start making shaker-style furniture and how to process wool and crochet. I’m crocheting a nice wool blanket for my wife so she has something tangible to remember me by if I’m lucky enough to go first. What woodworking tools I don’t have, I’m making. I’ve made a mallet, marking gauge, shooting board, and am just finishing a turning saw that I can use now and will still be usable to someone else long after I’m gone.

Anyways, to close out this ramble, take a step back from tech and think about legacy. Tech is just a tool and it’s rare that it will allow you leave behind anything lasting. It’s frustrating and lonely and it’s only getting worse. Get out and do something for your community or make something for your loved ones. Find the ability to take personal satisfaction in doing instead of consuming. You’ll be happier.

From Radio Shack pre-digital open build kits to this snugly bound control system with enemy spies built inside. SMH!