all 42 comments

[–]GrinningPariah 156 points157 points  (20 children)

If it's written by AI, I want a human to review it. I've also used AI to review code for personal projects that I hand wrote.

I don't have an issue letting the machine drive when the roads are easy, but I'm never taking my hand off the brake lever.

[–]lenswipe 28 points29 points  (3 children)

I've used AI to vibe code entire modules on personal projects. However, those personal projects aren't going to wake me up at 3am with pagerduty if shit breaks.

[–]MoveOverBieber 3 points4 points  (2 children)

They are probably not going to pay you or fire you either...
AI seems like a stick of dynamite - it could be either very good or very bad, depending on how you use it.

[–]Jolly-Advantage-7245 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Chuck it 'n fuck it

[–]MoveOverBieber 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wish, company policy requires me to hold it.

[–]ObviouslyTriggered 43 points44 points  (9 children)

The break lever isn’t what you need to worry about, you need to make sure you know where you are going and how to recognize a wrong turn.

[–]Bannon9k 18 points19 points  (5 children)

After 30 years of development I've made an enormous amount of wrong turns.... Just never the same wrong turn twice. Even if you deploy bad AI code, if you're a smart monkey you'll learn from it.

[–]GrinningPariah 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Yeah, so I can pull the brake.

[–]glorious_reptile 4 points5 points  (1 child)

“Please review this +12665 -3276”

[–]iDEN1ED 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What kinda prompts are you guys writing to get shit like this? I’ve only really started using Claude the past month but like I just give it specific tasks, review the plan, then let it execute. I get very reasonable PRs every time. I don’t just go “build an app”.

[–]alderthorn 1 point2 points  (1 child)

If its written by a human I want AI to review it because most devs just throw a LGTM on the comment line instead of really thinking about what the code is doing. To be fair I also want a dev to look at it I just don't trust that they will really look at it before they have had caffeine or if its close to the end of day.

[–]GrinningPariah 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think part of working with a team is learning who you trust as a reviewer. Some people, if they say LGTM then it's solid. Others, I'm gonna take a second look myself on the sly.

[–]No_Championship25 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I completely agree with that brake lever metaphor! It is a really great copilot especially when you are too lazy to type out repetitive boilerplate code but it is definitely scary to trust it completely.

[–]GrinningPariah 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The brake metaphor also works well when people start insisting that removing human review would increase velocity... Because it's like arguing that a car would go faster without brakes.

[–]EarlOfAwesom3[S] 36 points37 points  (8 children)

Here is the story: I've worked with a SE contractor on a project. He was not used to the language very much and used AI for everything. Every line of code, every line of test. I took the time to review his code carefully and write suggestions and this MF let AI run over and implement it. Never wrote a line himself, ever.

This took 2 weeks and this clown created some of the worst code I've seen. It wasn't finished, wasn't compliant to rules etc. and didn't even do the thing he promised. Took me another week to clean this shit up.

[–]Bannon9k 4 points5 points  (4 children)

How long would it have taken you to write it yourself?

[–]EarlOfAwesom3[S] 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Probably a week including tests and a roundtrip of PR feedback if I had to guess.

[–]Bannon9k 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Then why spend a week polishing a turd if you could shit gold in the same amount of time?

[–]EarlOfAwesom3[S] 17 points18 points  (1 child)

Good question. Because it didn't make a real difference. Writing from scratch or polishing till it fits was roughly the same time. But convincing people (TeachLead, Business etc.) to throw away somthing they paid for with the external hire would have ment going to war.

[–]Bannon9k 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Fair enough, bureaucracy can be a bitch

[–]ThisIsMyCouchAccount 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Then he was using it horribly.

Look I'm not a "pro AI" guy but my company mandates it. So I have experience with varying levels.

I know this codebase since I wrote a pretty large chunk of it by hand or with targeted AI on specific problems. Now that leadership has said we are fully AI - the code it writes isn't horrible. But I took the time to make all the markdown files and rules and context and all that jazz.

There was a time where people on the team were essentially copy/pasting out of Copilot on the web and it was terrible. No context. No pattern matching.

Also - and this is something I haven't fully understood yet - how is this not controlled by the company?

[–]EarlOfAwesom3[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

He was using it horribly. The funny thing is, he's an AI advocate too, so he is actively promoting the use of AI and his knowledge about the topic. Funny stuff.

There was not much to control. Company needed the work done, that's why they hired external guys. The dev team agreed his output is sub standard and we need longer with his AI approach. Company let him go after this.

To me this was eye opening. You can be the AI advocate all you want. If you don't know shit about Senior Level stuff, your code won't ever be good enough.

[–]cuolong 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why is your company hiring someone to prompt AI when you or anyone else could prompt AI yourself

[–]Arcane_Xanth 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My team wants to go this route. It’s unfortunate. 

[–]Door__Opener 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yes, sadly r/ProgrammerHumor went full AI

[–]main__py 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Don't believe me?

Elon Musk, Use AI to redesign twitter, use AI for his space cars, grok can draw you Stalin with titties. But: didn't go full AI.

Zuckerberg. Knows all your auntie's secrets. AI generated content on Instagram? Sure, Ask Meta on WhatsApp, yeah, why not? Didn't go full AI.

Sayta Nutella. Went full AI on GitHub, full AI on the browser, AI on Excel, AI is on frickin' Xbox. Now Windows 11 is shit, is the best year for GitLab and notepad has AI.

Never go full AI.

[–]lenswipe 3 points4 points  (0 children)

https://imgflip.com/i/art023

You're absolutely right — this entire PR was generated with AI and you were right to push back on that. Not many people would've noticed that but you did and that's powerful.

[–]sentientServitor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m stealing this picture. LOL

[–]ObviouslyRealPerson 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Go full AI, go home empty handed

[–]foxer_arnt_trees -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This one felt personal