This article says that the stairs have been turned into an escalator. But I think it’s an escalator to slop.

Therefore, it doesn’t affect my work at all. The only thing that affects my prospects is the hype about AI.

Be a purple cow, the guy says. Seems to me that not using AI makes me a purple cow.

> Therefore, it doesn’t affect my work at all.

But that isn't what the author is talking about. The issues is, your good code can be equal to slop that works. What the author says needs to happen is, you need to find a better way to stand out. I suspect for many businesses where software superiority is not a core requirement, slop that works will be treated the same as non-slop code.

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satisfice 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

You are focusing on code. That is the wrong focus. Creating code was never the job. The job was being trustworthy about what I deliver and how.

AI is not worthy of trust, and the sort of reasonable people I want to deal with won’t trust it and don’t. They deal with me because I am not a simulation of someone who cares— I am the real thing. I am a purple cow in terms of personal credibility and responsibility.

To the degree that the application of AI is useful to me without putting my credibility at risk, I will use it. It does have its uses.

(BTW, although I write code as part of my work, I stopped being a full-time coder in my teens. I am tester, testing consultant, expert witness, and trainer, now.)

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bobnamob 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> slop that works

Until that slop that works leads to therac-26 or PostOfficeScandal2 electric boogaloo. Neither of those applications required software superior to their competitors, just working software

The average quality of software can only trend down so far before real world problems start manifesting, even outside of businesses with a hard requirement on "software superiority"

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satisfice 6 days ago | parent [-]

Anyone can say that something works. Lots of things look like they work even though they harbor severe and elusive bugs.

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oceanplexian 6 days ago | parent [-]

It's so bizarre to me seeing these comments as a professional software engineer. Like, you do realize that at least 80% of the code written in large companies like Microsoft, Amazon, etc was slop long before AI was ever invented right?

The stuff you get to see in open source, papers, academia- that's a very small curated 1% of the actual glue code written by an overworked engineer at 1am that holds literally everything together.

	▲	satisfice 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Why is it bizarre? I’m a tester with 38 years in the business. I’ve seen pretty much every kind of project and technology. I was testing at Microsoft on the week that Windows 2000 shipped, showing them that Photoshop can completely freeze Windows (which is bad, and something they needed to know about). The creed of a tester begins with faith in existence of trouble. This does not mean we believe anything is perfectible— it means we think it is necessary to be vigilant. AI commits errors in a way and to a degree that should alarm any reasonable engineer. But more to the point: it tends to alienate engineers from their work so that they are less able to behave responsibly. I think testing is more important than ever, because AI is a Gatling gun of risk.