Code analysis firm sees no major benefits from AI dev tool when measuring key programming metrics, though others report incremental gains from coding copilots with emphasis on code review.
  • Choco1ateCh1p@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    2 months ago

    Every now and then, GitHub Copilot saves me a few seconds suggesting some very basic solution that I am usually in the midst of creating. Is it worth the investment? No, at least not yet. It hasn’t once “beaten” me or offered an improved solution. It (more frequently than not) requires the developer to understand and modify what it proposes for its suggestions to be useful. Is is a useful tool? Sure, just not worth the price yet, and obviously not perfect. But, where I’m working is testing it out, so I’ll keep utilizing it.

  • ShunkW@lemmy.worldEnglish
    181·
    2 months ago

    And yet, higher ups continue to lay off more devs because AI “is the future”.

    • breckenedge@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      In my experience, most of the tech layoffs have been non-devs. PMs and Designers have been the hardest hit and often their roles are being eliminated.

      • ShunkW@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I mean, I’m a dev who got laid off almost a year ago and still can’t find anything. I know tons of others who are in similar positions. So…

  • rsuri@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I use it occasionally. Recently I used it to convert a written specification in a document to a java object. And it was like 95% correct - but having to manually double check everything and fix the errors eliminated much of the time savings.

    However that’s a very ideal use case. Most often I forget it exists.

    • rolaulten@startrek.websiteEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I use it a fair bit. Mind, it’s something like formating a giant json stdout into something I want to read…

      I also do find it’s useful for sketching out an outline In pseudo code.

      • filister@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Programming was like a challenge, you have a problem and you need to solve it. You look into the internet, stack overflow, test different chunks of codes, reading documentation, etc. nowadays is simply splitting one problem into pieces, and then copy pasting.

  • alienanimals@lemmy.worldEnglish
    194·
    2 months ago

    The writer has a clear bias and a lack of a technical background (writing for Techies.com doesn’t count) .

    You don’t have to look hard to find devs saving time and learning something with AI coding assistants. There are plenty of them in this thread. This is just an opinion piece by someone who read a single study.

    • jas0n@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      This opinion is a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of tech journalism screaming “AI software engineer” after each new model release.

    • kureta@lemmy.mlEnglish
      8·
      2 months ago

      if you are already competent and you are aware that it doesn’t necessarily give you correct information, the it is really helpful. I know enough to sense when it is making shit up. Also it is, for some scenarios, faster and easier then looking at a documentation. I like it personally. But it will not replace competent developers anytime soon.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      371·
      2 months ago

      Its basically a template generator, which is really helpful when you’re generating boilerplate. It doesn’t save me much if any time to refactor/fill in that template, but it does save some mental fatigue that I can then spend on much more interesting problems.

      It’s a niche tool, but occasionally quite handy. Without leaps forward technically though, it’s never going to become more than that.

    • dgmib@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      Just beware, sometimes the AI suggestions are scary good, some times they’re batshit crazy.

      Just because AI suggests it, doesn’t mean it’s something you should use or learn from.

  • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
    233·
    2 months ago

    My main use is skipping the blank page problem when writing a new suite of tests—which after about 10 mins of refactoring are often a good starting point

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1919·
    2 months ago

    I truly don’t understand the tendency of people to hate these kinds of tools. Honestly seems like an ego thing to me.

    • tee9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      Its really weird.

      I want to believe people arent this dumb but i also dont want to be crazy for suggesting such nonsensical sentiment is manufactured. Such is life in the disinformation age.

      Like what are we going to do, tell all Countries and fraudsters to stop using ai because it turns out its too much of a hassle?

        • tee9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          You are speaking for everyone so right away i dont see this as an actual conversion, but a decree of fact by someone i know nothing about.

          What are you saying is an important reminder? This article?

          By constant activism, do you mean anything that occurs outside of lemmy comments?

          Why would we not take LLMs seriously?

            • tee9000@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Theres no particular fuck up mentioned by this article.

              The company that conducted the study which this article speculates on said these tools are getting rapidly better and that they arent suggesting to ban ai development assistants.

              Also as quoted in the article, the use of these coding assistance is a process in and of itself. If you arent using ai carefully and iteratively then you wont get good results with current models. How we interact with models is as important as the model’s capability. The article quotes that if models are used well, a coder can be faster by 2x or 3x. Not sure about that personally… seems optimistic depending on whats being developed.

              It seems like a good discussion with no obvious conclusion given the infancy of the tech. Yet the article headline and accompanying image suggest its wreaking havoc.

              Reduction of complexity in this topic serves nobody. We should have the patience and impartiality to watch it develop and form opinions independently from commeter and headline sentiment. Groupthink has been paricularly dumb on this topic from what ive seen.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
      134·
      2 months ago

      I sent a PR back to a Dev five times before I gave the work to someone else.

      they used AI to generate everything.

      surprise, there were so many problems it broke the whole stack.

      this is a routine thing this one dev does too. every PR has to be tossed back at least once. not expecting perfection, but I do expect it to not break the whole app.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        116·
        2 months ago

        Like I told another person ITT, hiring terrible devs isn’t something you can blame on software.

        • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
          84·
          2 months ago

          that depends on your definition of what a “terrible dev” is.

          of the three devs that I know have used AI, all we’re moderately acceptable devs before they relied on AI. this formed my opinion that AI code and the devs that use it are terrible.

          two of those three I no longer work with because they were let go for quality and productivity issues.

          so you can clearly see why my opinion of AI code is so low.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            45·
            2 months ago

            I would argue that it’s obvious if someone doesn’t know how to use a tool to do their job, they aren’t great at their job to begin with.

            Your argument is to blame the tool and excuse the person who is awful with the tool.

            • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
              53·
              2 months ago

              my argument is that lazy devs use the tool because that’s what it was designed for.

              just calling a hammer a hammer.

              • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
                43·
                2 months ago

                Some tools deserve blame. In the case of this, you’re supposed to use it to automate away certain things but that automation isn’t really reliable. If it has to be babysat to the extent that I certainly would argue that it does, then it deserves some blame for being a crappy tool.

                If, for instance, getter and setter generating or refactor tools in IDEs routinely screwed up in the same ways, people would say that the tools were broken and that people shouldn’t use them. I don’t get how this is different just because of “AI”.

                • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  25·
                  2 months ago

                  Okay, so if the tool seems counterproductive for you, it’s very assuming to generalize that and assume it’s the same for everyone else too. I definitely do not have that experience.

              • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                33·
                2 months ago

                Using a tool to speed up your work is not lazy. Using a tool stupidly is stupid. Anyone who thinks these tools are meant to replace humans using logic is misunderstanding them entirely.

                You remind me of some of my coworkers who would rather do the same mind numbing task for hours every day rather than write a script that handles it. I judge them for thinking working smarter is “lazy” and I think it’s a fair judgement. I see them as the lazy ones. They’d rather not think more deeply about the scripting aspect because it’s hard. They rather zone out and mindlessly click, copy/paste, etc. I’d rather analyze and break down the problem so I can solve it once and then move onto something more interesting to solve.

                • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  21·
                  2 months ago

                  They rather zone out and mindlessly click, copy/paste, etc. I’d rather analyze and break down the problem so I can solve it once and then move onto something more interesting to solve.

                  From what I’ve seen of AI code in my time using it, it often is an advanced form of copying and pasting. It frequently takes problems that could be better solved more efficiently with fewer lines of code or by generalizing the problem and does the (IMO evil) work of making the solution that used to require the most drudgery easy.

                • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  32·
                  2 months ago

                  sometimes working smarter is actually putting the work in so you don’t have to waste time and stress about if it’s going to work or not.

                  I get Dreamweaver vibes from AI generated code. Sure, the website works. looks exactly the way it should. works exactly how it should. that HTML source though… fucking aweful.

                  I can agree, AI is an augment to the tools you can use. however, it’s being marketed as a replacement and a large variety of devs are using it as such.

                  shitty devs are enabled by shitty tools.

    • gaael@lemmy.worldEnglish
      45·
      2 months ago

      Also, when a tool increases your productivity but your salary and paid time off don’t increase, it’s a tool that only benefits the overlords and as such deserves to be hated.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      122·
      2 months ago

      Having to deal with pull requests defecated by “developers” who blindly copy code from chatgpt is a particularly annoying and depressing waste of time.

      At least back when they blindly copied code from stack overflow they had to read through the answers and comments and try to figure out which one fit their use case better and why, and maybe learn something… now they just assume the LLM is right (despite the fact that they asked the wrong question and even if they had asked the right one it’d’ve given the wrong answer) and call it a day; no brain activity or learning whatsoever.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        134·
        2 months ago

        That is not a problem with the ai software, that’s a problem with hiring morons who have zero experience.

        • leftzero@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          147·
          2 months ago

          No. LLMs are very good at scamming people into believing they’re giving correct answers. It’s practically the only thing they’re any good at.

          Don’t blame the victims, blame the scammers selling LLMs as anything other than fancy but useless toys.

          • jungle@lemmy.worldEnglish
            43·
            2 months ago

            Did you get scammed by the LLM? If not, what’s the difference between you and the dev you mentioned?

            • leftzero@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
              41·
              2 months ago

              I was lucky enough to not have access to LLMs when I was learning to code.

              Plus, over the years I’ve developed a good thick protective shell (or callus) of cynicism, spite, distrust, and absolute seething hatred towards anything involving computers, which younger developers yet lack.

              • jungle@lemmy.worldEnglish
                21·
                2 months ago

                Sorry, you misunderstood my comment, which was very badly worded.

                I meant to imply that you, an experienced developer, didn’t get “scammed” by the LLM, and that the difference between you and the dev you mentioned is that you know how to program.

                I was trying to make the point that the issue is not the LLM but the developer using it.

                • leftzero@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
                  31·
                  2 months ago

                  And I’m saying that I could have been that developer if I were twenty years younger.

                  They’re not bad developers, they just haven’t yet been hurt enough to develop protective mechanisms against scams like these.

                  They are not the problem. The scammers selling the LLM’s as something they’re not are.

    • YungOnions@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      52·
      2 months ago

      Typical lack of nuance on the Internet, sadly. Everything has to be Bad or Good. Black or White. AI is either The best thing ever™ or The worst thing ever™. No room for anything in between. Considering negative news generates more clicks, you can see why the media tend to take the latter approach.

      I also think much of the hate is just people jumping on the AI = bad band-wagon. Does it have issues? Absolutely. Is it perfect? Far from it. But the constant negativity has gotten tired. There’s a lot of fascinating discussion to be had around AI, especially in the art world, but God forbid you suggest it’s anything but responsible for the total collapse of civilisation as we know it…

  • LordCrom@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    2 months ago

    I get more benefit from a good IDE that helps me track libraries, cars, functions, grammar checks my code, offers a pop-up with params and options…

    I don’t needcode I would grade as a D- from an AI. Most of what I write comes from my code closet anyway. I have skeleton code for so much, and I trust my old code more than AIs new code

  • Zoots@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    2 months ago

    Judging this article by it’s title (refuse to click). Calling BS. ChatGPT has been a game changer for me personally

  • asmodee59@lemmy.worldEnglish
    145·
    2 months ago

    Who are those guys they keep asking this question over and over ? And how are they not able to use such a simple tool to increase their productivity ?

  • BigBenis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    It’s great as essentially a StackOverflow that I can talk to in real time. But as with SO, I’ve still got to figure out what pieces are legit and where they go.

      • turmacar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        It’s definitely exploded but content farms were a problem even before 2022. There’s a reason google results starting with “reddit” / “stack overflow” were trending so hard.