alt Hacker NewsI am big on reproducibility (nix aficionado) and determinism (flagging test failures are a red-alert, all-hands-on-deck situation in my world) and correctness.
I am also big on testing (the correct things). And nine-nines (big on Elixir).
And... I'm also big on agent-assisted dev. Which requires pretty much every check in the book to stay productive in. And that's fine to me. I've seen bugs that I wouldn't have made myself. And I've also seen my own bugs fixed. They've all gotten fixed in short order. I don't see why this is a problem.
Raise your personal standards.
Thing is, the unreliable-software situation was already untenable before agents (in poor hands) made it worse.
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> Thing is, the unreliable-software situation was already untenable before agents (in poor hands) made it worse.
I have definitely seen more bafflingly-poor OSS software that just plain doesn't work frequently now than before.
But it's mostly software that wouldn't have existed before because it's trying to do super-niche things. So on the "hobby" side of things, whatever.
But from a "trying to develop software as a business that you want to be a going concern," quality from people who should know better is less tenable than it used to be.
This, 100% I've seen far far worse produced by humans.
Thing is, the unreliable-software situation was already untenable before agents (in poor hands) made it worse.
Yes but that's the big thing, now isn't it? These are nice tools, used wisely. But their unwise use, oh boy...
The problem is one needs to be in a situation where the incentive is towards quality rather than speed. But that situation rather rare now - thirty years ago, Microsoft won the office wars with crap that had features. And nothing has fundamentally changed in web development since the LPad crisis.
The problem is those companies whose incentive is to allow bugs where it's the involuntary users who suffer will bite you no matter what quality you make your own software.
I don’t think the author (or many people) doubt that one can (and some will) find a way that does not “suck”
But it’s pretty clear that most people are not. For whatever reasons (mgmt pressure, trying to get ahead, skill issues, etc) they half ass it, accept the 10% (silent) fail rate and blame the bad outcomes on the AI as if that absolves them. Or, adopt the attitude that 10% fail is fine, and people who say otherwise are being picky, or are anti-ai luddites or whatever. You should accept that things will suck.