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Comment by jansport123 | Hacker News Reader

we'll recalibrate eventually based on understanding what level of abstraction we can operate on. If these code bases become unmanageable then the trend will correct itself.

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I can't imagine a broad movement of devs using AI more thoughtfully without a widespread incentivisation from employers. And I can't imagine the latter at all. We'll probably just have to cope with more brittle/fragile codebases.

> We'll probably just have to cope with more brittle/fragile codebases.

Is this not incentive enough to use AI more thoughtfully?

It's tricky when it comes to performance evaluation. Metrics like token usage or story point "velocity" are easy to conjure up even though they mean little. The kind of careful work that goes into building robust, maintainable code drags such metrics down, and it's very hard to quantifiably gauge their positive effects.

Not when many companies still think that they'll die if they don't ship enough new features.

>we'll recalibrate eventually based on understanding what level of abstraction we can operate on...

This would be at the level of helper functions < 10 lines of code.

I doubt this if the patterns of tech/software over the last <x> years remain. We'll just get buggier, worse-functioning, more expensive products/software built by fewer, more burned out developers. But your manager will love the sales presentation, so all will be well.

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