AI producing excessive amounts of code is a self-reinforcing phenomenon wherein you have to write huge diffs to get anything done due to the way the existing code is implemented
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@datarama @jcoglan path to a utopian society straightforward from here:
- all software is given markdown documentation and MCP backends, so that it can work with AI
- AI disappears due to collapse of economic logic and/or changes in IP law
- someone invents a programming language that can connect to MCP
This post is a joke, I think
@mcc I know this sounds like a fake answer but when people talk about it eliminating boilerplate my response it "I just don't write boilerplate and I don't understand why this is a problem" like genuinely this is not a pressing issue that I have when writing programs
@mcc like, the information density of code you write is directly under your own control. literally "you control the buttons you press"
@jcoglan @mcc I think that is generally true for a surprisingly small subset of programmers who are likely to be over-represented on Fedi. If you're writing business logic, which a whoooole lot of programmers are, usually you're stuck in languages and templating systems beyond your control, and there is a ton of boilerplate.
@vathpela @jcoglan so "AI" is a broken corporate system that refuses to fix itself giving itself permission to fix itself but ONLY if it does it through the jingly-keys "AI" technology. seems silly. what if instead we introduced macro systems and learning to program, and called it "supertechnology" or "hyperprogramming" and said it was worth $2 trillion dollars. would the corporation mandating the boilerplatey template system be willing to embrace a less-boilerplatey template system then
@mcc @vathpela @jcoglan the only flaw in this plan is that this technology would involve a well-compensated labor force whose psychological well-being was respected and cultivated, and the real purpose of “AI” is to destroy that. if they could destroy the power of labor without all the “boilerplate” stuff they’d be doing that instead
@jcoglan boilerplate is a failure of abstraction. some languages give you enough abstraction to prevent boilerplate; some make this hard. if you find you don't encounter boilerplate, this suggests to me you're good at abstraction and your tools are allowing you to be good at it.
if people keep encountering boilerplate, my rec would be to adopt tooling that allows them to do abstraction. but i guess some people think adopting and learning tooling is too hard and letting an RNG write code is easy
also the anti-DRY-ness it tends to produce makes it incredibly difficult to know if you've covered everything that needs changing b/c the same concept has dozens of representations. this directly leads to more bugs