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Aug 28 17:18 UTC

My software development workflow is AI now & it feels exhausting and soulless (old.reddit.com)

31 points|by bundie||17 comments|Read full story on old.reddit.com

Comments (17)

17 shown
  1. 1. 8by3||context
    Any site that requires an account just to read users freely created public content should be boycotted.
  2. 2. noir_lord||context
    Way ahead of you, reddit links are on my "nah, mostly can't be bothered" list since they made that change.

    Maintained for years that as soon as they disable old.reddit.com (or make it effectively disabled) I'd abandon the site and well it appears they finally crossed that rubicon.

    It's a shame, reddit was pretty great at one point and it's been a slow descent ever since - another useful part of the internet (to me) dies and in part thanks to AI - seems to be a pattern that one.

  3. 3. bravetraveler||context
    Be brave, drop the LLMs. Make them put you on a PIP for doing your work without the chatbot.

    I assume this is astroturfing.

  4. 4. camgunz||context
    They have an extensive comment history; I doubt it.
  5. 5. bravetraveler||context
    Don't mind my tinfoil hat... but that sounds ideal :)
  6. 6. camgunz||context
    I mean people sell posts sure. Are you selling yours?
  7. 7. bravetraveler||context
    Not yet, open to opportunities. Poppa needs a new hat, after all.
  8. 8. camgunz||context
    Hey, respect, how do you think I got all this karma?
  9. 9. RGS1811||context
    This is low confidence prediction, but IMO this person’s org is setting itself up for disaster. Who is accountable for all the slop they’re shipping if nobody even knows what it does anymore?

    Related: https://elliotmilco.substack.com/p/who-is-accountable-when-n...

  10. 10. noir_lord||context
    > Who is accountable for all the slop they’re shipping if nobody even knows what it does anymore?

    Whoever management in the future decides is accountable and weirdly... it's seldom them.

  11. 11. bluefirebrand||context
    In my experience at many companies, management could literally have a giant poster of a photo of them with the caption "If this stuff goes wrong, this is the person who is accountable". That poster could be displayed at the front door where every single person has to see it at least a couple of times a day

    Then the day the shit hits the fan that poster would be mysteriously missing and they would deny all memory of any such poster during the meeting where they are busy blaming me

  12. 12. noir_lord||context
    I had a manager in a previous job tell me it was my fault for not warning them that it would go wrong (which I had, in writing, I had the emails (plural) and meeting notes and recordings of the meetings) and then it shifted to "well you should have gotten the message through to me, it's not my fault you didn't".

    There is a certain point where you just have to let it go, it's a "Scorpion and Frog" situation with some bosses.

  13. 13. cedws||context
    Any archive link? Can’t view it on mobile without logging in.
  14. 14. bundie||context
  15. 15. twalla||context
  16. 16. stefanos82||context
    Just use your browser's devtools to edit the link by replacing `old` to `www` and it should now work.
  17. 17. rgoulter||context
    This whole post reads like a frustration with a lack of thought.

    I think it's worth distinguishing 'LLM assistance' based on how much thought/effort went into the prompt.

    e.g. It's popular to hate on "my colleague just copy-pasted my question into the LLM and copy-pasted the response". Because the colleague added nothing by copy-pasting. But if I'm unfamiliar with some system, I ask a question, and someone gives an LLM response prompted with the right key words, that's more useful than I could have gotten myself.

    e.g. OP claims to hate using LLMs, but also said that he thought that by using LLMs he was able to get a tighter comment to post. -- I don't really see the problem with that? If you don't want to use the LLM, post the raw rant. If you care about the quality & think an LLM improved the result, then... well, I guess if he just copy-pasted the result without reading it, that'd be silly.

    "Expectations of productivity went up" seems a reasonable response to the excitement of seeing how impressive LLM coding agents are at some tasks. But it'd be nice to pare it back after seeing evidence that the productivity hasn't really improved.

    EDIT: my experience has been that LLM coding agents, although better than you'd think, aren't as good as you'd hope. "You don't have to put thought into it any more" doesn't match my experience. But, if you've achieved the ability to productively craft great software without thinking & without being involved in the process, I'd be curious to learn how.