hyccupi's comments

On: AI makes tech debt more expensive

[hyccupi]

Good joke, but the reality is they falter even more on truly greenfield projects.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42134602

[MrMcCall → hyccupi]

That is because, by definition, their models are based upon the past. And woe unto thee if that training data was not pristine. Error propagation is a feature; it's a part of the design, unless one is suuuuper careful. As some have said, "Fools rush in."

[Terr_ → MrMcCall]

Or, in comic form: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/rise-of-the-machines

[anthonyskipper → hyccupi]

I agree with this. But the reason is that AI does better the more constrained it is, and existing codebases come with constraints.

That said, if you are using Gen AI without a advanced rag system feeding it lots of constraints and patterns/templates I wish you luck.

On: AI makes tech debt more expensive

[hyccupi]

> It’s still nice :)

This is the thing about the kind of free advertising so many on this site provide for these llm corpos.

I’ve seen so many comparisons between “ai” and “stack overflow” that mirror this sentiment of “it’s still nice :)”.

Who’s laying off and replacing thousands of working staff for “still nice :)” or because of “stack overflow”?

Who’s hiring former alphabet agency heads to their board for “still nice :)”?

Who’s forcing these services into everything for “still nice :)”?

Who’s raising billions for “still nice :)”?

So while developers argue tooth and nail for these tools that they seemingly think everyone only sees through their personal lens of a “still nice :)” developer tool, the companies are leveraging that effort to oversell their product beyond the scope of “still nice :)”.