mehagar

Even if you do use AI tools to help you write the code, at some level you have to specify what the program's output should be for every possible input.

By loosely specifying things in a prompt, there's simply not enough context for the AI tool to know the "right" output to produce for all possible inputs. What's "right" is often subjective anyway ("Should this button be red or blue?").

What are you switching to?

On iOS this popover breaks scrolling, which is required to show the Chrome URL bar, meaning I have to literally close the Chrome app and reopen it to even navigate to another page. I've taken this as a sign to stop using Reddit entirely.

Same. Messy code makes it harder for us to understand and thus maintain the code (which is why people often refer to code as a liability), but is that the case for AI tools as well? If not, it seems like clean code may not matter as much anymore.

I just hope my employer comes to the same conclusion before I get laid off.

Yeah, this is the one. Android in a desktop form-factor.

I've been using AI tools to brainstorm approaches and sometimes generate code, but actually doing the typing myself. That way I'm less likely to forget the mechanics and programming language over time.

Did you read the article? The author means software in general, not just user-facing apps.

The way I see it is - AI still makes mistakes, and I have to know how things work at some point anyway. So I'd rather spend my time actually understanding fundamentals (in my case, CSS at the moment), than trying to keep up with the frequently changing AI tools and models.

Once the tools and models stabilize more (as well as the pricing model), there's less risk in me learning something that is no longer relevant.

Except when I choose to wait on learning how to use AI tools effectively, I get told I am going to be "left behind".

You make it seem like AI coding has already "totally changed" our jobs. This is exactly the FOMO the article talks about ("until its too late"). It hasn't. I'm still using the same workflows without AI tools, and so are most of my teammates.

The Nintendo Wii was like this too.

I agree. This is one area I'm hoping that AI tools can help with. Given a complex codebase that no one understands, the ability to have an agent review the code change is at least better than nothing at all.

I would normally agree, but I think the "code is a liability" quote assumes that humans are reading and modifying the code. If AI tools are also reading and modifying their own code, is that still true?

There was nothing stopping everyone from using continuous delivery today, yet many companies still rely on long cycles, manual testing and handovers. The problem isn't the tooling, it's the people.

I don't understand this part either. At some point we're writing software for people to use, and there has to be someone who comes up with the requirements based on what people want. AI doesn't change this fact.

Is there an equivalent for the JS ecosystem? If not, having Dependabot update dependencies automatically after a cooldown still seems like a better alernative, since you are likely to never update dependencies at all if it's not automatic.

I use Gemini for personal stuff such as travel planning and research on how to fix something, which product to buy, etc. My company has as Pro subscription so I use that instead of ChatGPT.

It's refreshing to hear people say "We're not really sure" in public, especially from experts.

I agree that AI tools are likely to amplify the importance of quick cycles and continuous delivery.

If tech companies want to show they have a high percentage of LoC being generated by AI, it's likely they are going to encourage developers to use AI to further increase these numbers, at which point is does become a measure of productivity.

So the question is, are these AI tools primarily creating inherent complexity, or is it a significant amount of accidental complexity?

And if AI tools are writing all of the code, does it even matter anymore?

The book Software Engineering at Google makes a distinction between software engineering and programming. The main difference is that software engineering occurs over a longer time span than programming. In this sense, AI tools can make programming faster, but not necessarily software engineering.

So they can potentially work offline and deliver push notifications.

For Apple, sure. But Google has been leading efforts to make the PWA experience good. In origin trial right now is the ability for websites to install PWAs: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/....

This would make it much easier to find and install web apps than the current method.

How is it overly verbose?

I find it very intuitive, with the exception of useEffect.

The way I approach these situations is by reminding myself that the speaker is implicitly making a request - a request for empathy or understanding. While it's tempting to try to solve their problems, what they really want is for their feelings to be heard.

"Oh, that must have been frustrating."

If a tool makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot, then it's not a good tool. See C++.

We tested this against WebRTC data channels (which also uses UDP) and found that the congestion control algorithm used for WebTransport limits its use for videoconferencing. We'll probably look into it again if browsers start allowing this to be configured.

For Zoom Team Chat you can set up notifications to only notify for replies to your messages, direct messages, and explicit mentions. I agree that it would be useful to additionally batch notifications for specific channels though.

We're using conventional commits on my team, and it's extremely annoying. I've never had a reason to go deeper into the history of a repo outside of the PR merge commit history. I think it makes more sense to have conventions on PR descriptions.

This article explicitly mentions your first point.