Tell me your thoughts on the quality of LLM-generated code. I've never understood this attitude where people are absolutely disgusted by the slightest whiff of AI prose but will happily slurp up AI-generated code by the bucketful and proudly proclaim that it's OK because it's better than the average developer can produce.

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dvt an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The key difference is that code is not the end product, but writing is itself the product. (No one's doing "vibe-product-management" for example.) Tbh, I still think code can have a beauty and elegance to it (like a logical proof can, or like a mathematical theorem can), but there's a difference between the two and I'm way less forgiving of AI writing than I am of AI code, especially considering most code (by line count) is just boilerplate anyway.

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ryandrake an hour ago | parent [-]

> The key difference is that code is not the end product

I think this is open to debate. To me, the code has always been the goal, and the fact that writing it sometimes serves to produce a product is important to others (and what brings the paychecks in), but ultimately not something I've ever been excited about or interested in throughout my career. So I judge a developer based on the beauty and quality of the code he produces, just as I judge an LLM by the same sorts of things.

The fact that AI can one-shot a working CRUD app is not really that interesting to me. If it could make the code beautiful, concise, maintainable, extensible, minimal, performant, readable, and bug-free: a work of art and love that a craftsman would be proud of... that would impress me.

	▲	dvt 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Imo, this is like saying "I judge a carpenter based on how straight they can cut a piece of plywood." Or like saying "I judge an artist on how accurately they can draw a circle by hand." I mean that's certainly one way of looking at it, and both can be impressive technical feats. But most people judge carpenters and artists on their end products, their overall vision, their motifs, their philosophy, and so on. On the other hand, as a trained logician, I definitely see proofs (which, by the Curry–Howard isomorphism, are computer programs) have some degree of beauty-within-themselves, but that's quite hard to achieve. Not everyone is a Gödel, after all. I also think programming languages, despite being Turing complete (which is frankly not saying much), are far too limiting to truly construct magnificent things with.

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sublinear an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not sure if your question is serious, but I've been a developer for over a decade now.

I write code for a living mostly by hand. In the odd case where I need help I still use google like I always have. I spend more of my time in meetings or staring at the ceiling than writing code. This was also true a decade ago before LLMs. It was also true several decades ago when someone else's ass was in my seat.