Full title: Microsoft’s distinguished engineer says “typing code is absolutely over,” and Windows 11 is already being built that way. Nadella previously said 20-30% code at MSFT is AI-coded, and Windows security updates now include AI-assisted fixes to fight AI-enabled threats.
It’s funny you think it’s going to be undone. We are not going back to a time where humans type code for any serious commercial product. As they said in the article:
But there will be a point where very little code is written line by line by humans. Though I suppose most of it was already copy pasted anyway.
I write code myself all day, as I have always done. And more and more software engineers are finally starting to see the consequences of relying on LLMs for software development.
Writing code has never been the bottleneck.
That’s great. If you enjoy it, do what you love
And they are adapting how they use said LLMs, not ending its use. People are developing and refining it constantly. They will keep refining until they get consistently good results.
The problem is always ultimately with management. But if management is able to give an impossible deadline, and AI is able to meet that deadline, wouldn’t that make a human writing, testing, refining the code the bottleneck? Management could make bad decisions, see the results of those decisions very quickly after AI writes it, and have the AI revise it (wash rinse repeat) much faster than humans could write and revise the same code. To management’s dismay, humans are also more likely to give their opinions about how their idea is unrealistic. Management doesn’t care what you think, they want you to do what they say. And AI does just that. Management’s poor decisions would have even fewer consequences since it could be revised so quickly.
Reading AI code all day absolutely sucks and is the least interesting part of the job. Reading human code is so much better.
Also in all the places I worked 99% of the code was not copy-pasted. Beginners copy paste in their uni assignments, but once you are a bit comfortable with code it’s much slower than just writing out exactly what you want!
I don’t think that fully, 100% AI-written code is going to be the future and humans are only going to read it. I believe that (expert) humans still do a much better job in structuring code for long-term maintainability and thus there’s still going to be a niche for software developers there.
But I also have to agree with you that unfortunately most of the code will still be AI generated slop.
I don’t even like reviewing ai code generated at my direction, reviewing other peoples is awful
Yea, it was attempted humor. The classic “copy paste” joke, though I admit it didn’t read well.
It might be slop now, but we can’t assume it will always be that. If AI gets to a point where large pieces of code can be written almost instantly with zero bugs, then we will definitely have code written almost exclusively by AI. I agree that some of the very complex stuff would actually be cheaper to pay someone than pay the for the computational power for an AI to do it, but that is probably about it.
Whatever people feel about that is totally fair. I am not saying I think it’s better, I just see that is the ultimate outcome. And an outcome I think most of us will live to see in the not so distant future.
Fair point 😊 Thanks for the clarification!
When did I even say that? How did you even extrapolate that from what I said?
You jumped to a conclusion so wildly I have no idea how you even got there.
You said it would take years to undo, saying it will be undone. What were you talking about being undone in a thread about code being written by AI, if it wasn’t about undoing code writing AI? If the psychosis is induced by AI, wouldn’t the usage of said AI have to cease?
^ This is what AI does to your brain.
Hey, buddy, if you stop using AI now, you’ll probably gain like twice as many folds.
I said the psychosis would take years to undo.
Holy crap, reading comprehension is fundamental dude.
How would you undo the psychosis while still using the thing inducing psychosis??
Wtf kind of code are they taking about? Like first year “pomodoro tracker” projects? These days the only thing I really copy paste are Linux commands, and even then
Adding on to the other persons reply,
The actual code has always been the least interesting part to me at least. That doest mean I’m going to replace it all by AI.
That’s a huge jump there too.