21 comments

  • nnf8 小时前
    One thing that worries me about AI-generated code is that if there's an obscure bug that pops up later, there's no engineer to think "ok hang on, I remember something strange happening when I first wrote that code... let me have a look." Instead, there are only engineers who reviewed the code, which is of course a lot different from writing it.
    • shepherdjerred7 小时前
      Engineers in tech move between jobs/teams often enough that this benefit doesn’t exist anyway
    • csdreamer77 小时前
      > One thing that worries me about AI-generated code is that if there's an obscure bug that pops up later, there's no engineer to think "ok hang on, I remember something strange happening when I first wrote that code... let me have a look." Instead, there are only engineers who reviewed the code, which is of course a lot different from writing it.

      I feel this is a very weak argument against AI. Professional software development rarely values crafting good code. You get it in to meet a deadline to make management that is technologically clueless happy. Even orgs that value good code have people leave because of the take a new job merry-go-round to get a good pay raise of years past. One of the reasons open source surpasses most closed source software despite a lack of funding is you a variety of individuals with different goals that are focused on making a maintainable and usable solution.

      • sshine5 小时前
        > Professional software development rarely values crafting good code. You get it in to meet a deadline to make management that is technologically clueless happy.

        While this is very common, you also have professional software developers with a deep sense of ownership about a system: they animated it, so when it’s being quirky in particular ways, you have an almost supernatural sense of what branches it’s following. You don’t really get to internalise the logic of a program by reading it. It’s a byproduct of having to come up with it. When a part of that thinking is outsourced, some logic internalisation is lost.

    • jerlam7 小时前
      How common is this situation? While it's nice to look at the history of some line of code and contact the person who wrote it, in a company with a lot of turnover or promotion, that person isn't going to be available or want to help you.
      • nunez3 小时前
        It's pretty handy if they _are_ there, and/or if they've trained others on the codebase.
  • 000ooo0007 小时前
    CEO of company with AI product says, in earnings call, that nontrivial amount of code is generated by AI..

    Do people think an earnings call is some kind of secret meeting where the marketing stops?

    • xk_id5 小时前
      Nearly a quarter of HN submissions lately are just spammy ads for the AI sector. I seldom open them anymore, but I’ve noticed most of them get hundreds of comments. I wish people spent their time on something useful.
      • sshine5 小时前
        At least people are not openly hostile to the hype train like with blockchain.
  • burnt-resistor4 小时前
    It sounds like a boastful lie for stock reasons, but if not, the AI overlords may decide to write algorithms creating effectively a social credit service and not tell any humans.
  • Animats8 小时前
    Any good examples of such generated code? Anything to look at on Github, Gitlab, etc?
    • 000ooo0007 小时前
      80 lines of licence comment

      30 lines of class boilerplate

      One explanatory comment for every statement

      The revolution is here!

  • jasomill2 小时前
    This would be more interesting if it were supported by representative examples from Google open source projects.
  • gnabgib7 小时前
  • 7 小时前
    undefined
  • mysterydip8 小时前
    Because saying "more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by free crowdsourcing from internet scraping" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily ;)
    • johnasmith7 小时前
      Google has two billion lines of proprietary code, conformant to their style guides and proprietary requirements. I can't imagine they'd poison their model with non-conformant third party source.
  • null_deref8 小时前
    More than a quarter of the new code is generated by AI while I need to clarify each time with my PM what does the ticket they opened mean
  • uberman7 小时前
    With so many projects abandoned, is code speed really an issue for google?

    Has there been any novel or interesting code written or is this code block completion that saved people keystrokes?

    • burnt-resistor4 小时前
      Like most inherently greedy corporations these days, they're figure out yet another way to demoralize, fire, and drive away talented engineers.

      It could also be they're using AI to propose and do large-scale refactor code mods, but that would be a smart use-case for it.

  • babyent7 小时前
    What kind of code? That’s pretty important to know right?
  • AStonesThrow2 小时前
    When function names autocomplete in my IDE, is AI writing my code?

    When vim shows me where a matching paren/bracket goes, is that AI that put them there?

    When we use code validators like lint or Purify, is that AI code review from the 1980s?

  • sys_647385 小时前
    Mission critical code? Unit tests? Context matters.
  • add-sub-mul-div7 小时前
    AI code is the new offshore code. Have fun maintaining it.
  • jesse__8 小时前
    RIP Google
    • unsnap_biceps8 小时前
      Eh, I would imagine that more than a quarter of new code at any FAANG is boilerplate which is ideal for current AI systems. I'm pretty anti-current-AI, but I can't say that I'm not impressed at how well it handles boilerplate code.
  • ivewonyoung6 小时前
    Are they using models that are public, or are these customized private models.
  • drewcoo6 小时前
    Google is a big company which buys other companies to grow.

    Does this AI actually improve their M&A somehow? Does it allow them to AI-write new software instead of buying it?

    I don't get it.

    • jsnell3 小时前
      Your entire premise is pretty obviously wrong. Acquisitions are not the main driver for any kind of growth, whether revenue or the code base
  • asdfasdf15 小时前
    and it shows
  • 7 小时前
    undefined
  • twp7 小时前
    [flagged]
    • 7 小时前
      undefined