alt Hacker News> Handing over software quality to the stochastic code extruder is causing a sharp drop in the quality of software put out into the world.
Well, first of all you and the author point to the same derisive comment of these models being, in your words "stochastic code extruder" or the one I have heard a lot "next-token predictors", and the connotation I read from these being that this makes them inherently dumb or unintelligent and I don't understand that. The fact that these "stochastic code extruders" can solve Erdos problems is sort of the proof in the pudding. Next token prediction is profound in that it is _a very simple objective_ yet it is _enough_ to take you to extraordinary heights.
Also I wonder how many folks honestly look in the mirror and think: how does the median programmer differ from an LLM. Do you really think humans are universally better and produce universally higher quality code? Not even universally, I would say _typically_. I would trust an LLM to not write a buffer overflow far more than a junior or a mediocre senior engineer. LLMs have built things in my domain that are non-trivial and impressive and correct.
Not to mention, these systems are following a predictable trend in performance improvement so these worries about quality just won't age well, and it seems to be a head-in-the-sand attitude that pretends like quality and reliability are not getting very very good _already_.
> Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people.
Could not agree more. So why do you think humans are inherently better at this?
> This “inevitable” slide into generative AI harms every single person it comes into contact with.
I just don't quite understand this, is it that: (1) agentic code is inherently inferior to human code and thus (2) shipping agentic code is actively harmful?
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> The fact that these "stochastic code extruders" can solve Erdos problems is sort of the proof in the pudding.
This claim is very misleading and not really true. It reflects the kind of exaggeration and spin made by corporate marketing. I would not call this a fact at all. Like many claims made by for-profit marketing, if one looks into the details and think critically about what is being claimed, one can see that consumers are jumping to false conclusions.
That said, it is very cool how an LLM helped human mathematicians in the recent specific Erdos problem solution announced by OpenAI. Just don't jump to the conclusion that anybody can input any Erdos problem into an LLM and a solution will come out the other end.
> Also I wonder how many folks honestly look in the mirror and think: how does the median programmer differ from an LLM.
Once you step out of pure-software orgs, it becomes clear that most would benefit from having AI write code. There's a huge moat between most people and the point where they can afford/find the effort of someone that can write software.
These people, that only care about practical results rather than somewhat tangential things like "elegance" and "maintainability", are going to benefit tremendously.
>> Shipping poor quality and user hostile software actually hurts people.
> Could not agree more. So why do you think humans are inherently better at this?
Because humans are capable of empathy
> to the same derisive comment of these models being, in your words "stochastic code extruder"
So many excited and insulted LLM adopters on this thread. There is nothing derisive in that comment, it is simply the purest possible definition of how they work. Stochastics is a branch of maths you know.
> can solve Erdos problems is sort of the proof in the pudding
For the non-engineer, non-mathematician it may sound authoritative, but you'd probably be surprised to learn that most of Erdos problems are not at all complex - they are just not very interesting or relevant. So it is a proof in the pudding, provided the pudding is made of shit - the kind of stuff LLMs produce most of the time.
> I just don't quite understand this, is it that: (1) agentic code is inherently inferior to human code and thus (2) shipping agentic code is actively harmful?
Yes and yes - have you not heard of that AWS incident with Kiro when the "agentic" shit deleted an entire infrastructure environment, complete with data, config, etc.?
> Also I wonder how many folks honestly look in the mirror and think: how does the median programmer differ from an LLM
Apart from the obvious absurdity of this statement - I know a lot of you non-engineer types feel "empowered" by the LLMs, in the sense of how they immediately seem a genius when you ask them on a topic you are not expert in, but you may want to read a book on programming first - maybe you'll get a clue then.
It's like people complaining about "poor quality plastic trinkets" that replaced well-made household items. Of course high-quality things can be (and are) made of plastic. The problem is that you can still make a very cheap passable thing out of plastic, that would be uneconomical to make out of metal or wood.
Same with code: by using AI, one can produce passable software trinkets very cheaply, that would be uneconimical to produce by paying poor-quality human developers.
The floor has moved downwards, allowing to produce a flood of new, trash-quality, disposable code very cheaply. It does not mean that we'll have to use only that code. But unfortunately we'll have to live with it, too.