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madamelicyesterday at 8:17 PM3 repliesview on HN

I disagree. Microsoft had been doing just fine at making completely awful and broken products before AI coding was a thing.


Replies

miyojiyesterday at 8:28 PM

Yes, exactly. AI isn't some magic dust that you can sprinkle into your workforce and get more productivity and better results. It is at best a force amplifier for what you already have. If you're making awful and broken products, you will make even more awful and even more broken products at a higher rate than before.

It's not a coincidence that every impressive result done using AI has come from someone with a track record of impressive results before AI. AI isn't magic. It doesn't make you good at stuff you're bad at.

bombcaryesterday at 10:51 PM

Microsoft had a very specific niche of making completely awful software that wasn't actually broken - in fact, that was often the infuriating thing.

If it just shat the bed completely, you'd have an easy argument to replace it with something else; instead, it would be technically competent (Hi, Raymond!) but covered in stuff that made it infuriating to use (Hi, Redmond!), especially if you didn't live in it day in and day out.

bmitctoday at 12:17 AM

The .NET team is a counter example, aside from the GUI situation.