NGL, was totally expecting a different last paragraph. 😂

@zenkat @technology Totally agree.

But.

It’s a surefire way to get yourself in that mess in rapid time, when you otherwise wouldn’t.

Good thing by then we’ll have oracle LLM. You may only use it for writing software. But we’ll definitely charge you for answering questions about life the universe and everything.

That’ll be all your profit this year minus the C-level bonuses please.

Average CTO: what a steal!

A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO of a large high tech corporation. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. “Open these if you run up against a problem you don’t think you can solve,” he said.

Well, things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn and he was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wit’s end, he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, “Blame your predecessor.”

The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press – and Wall Street - responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.

About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, “Reorganize.” This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.

After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope.

The message said, “Prepare three envelopes.”

_{Stolen from reddit}

@TootSweet @ajsadauskas They’ll just completely rewrite it from scratch using a newer LLM and that will be considered normal. In those 5yrs the percentage of developers who remember the idea of code having longevity will be tiny.

Outsourcing is such a mixed bag. I have 2 projects outsourced to a company in India: one is magnificent and well documented and the other looks like a crack fiend wrote it. Both work, but only one is sustainable

The use of LLMs though is more similar to outsourcing than it is to a new technology. No one is talking a out changing how we program, we’re talking about changing who does the programming.

While outsourcing has had its ups and downs, I think most companies have found that skilled technical people can’t really be outsourced easily/cost money everywhere. I suspect we’ll see a similar thing here with LLMs because the core compentcy that makes programmers/engineers expensive is knowing what to do, not how to do it.

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Yep. This is the old school way of thinking that leads to things being shitty and not improving. “Why change if it’s not broke?” Cue Uber, Google, Netflix any tech company that replaced the old guards.

Yes, they aren’t there… Yet.

@veronica @ajsadauskas @technology The hype around AI in software engineering seems to be that it is ‘proven’ that devs produce code quicker. it is going to be interesting to see if the corporate world values code quality over development velocity. There seems to be a pervasive belief that “move fast and break things” is how the big guys do software engineering. A few points to note:

1. this idiom only applies when you fail fast, realize it, and address the problem that has been introduced.
2. Break things does not mean enshittify ie create tech debt by virtue of poor code
3. It really only applies if you have enough development resources to do the rework. That is to say, can afford to get it wrong often.
   #AI #copilot

If quality trumped speed and convenience how does McDonald’s stay in business?