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AI Software Development – What Does The Data Say?
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I'd guess that what all this stuff adds up to is, sustainable use of LLMs as a coding tool for nontrivial projects calls for an entirely reworked set of software development practices to conform to its limitations effectively, but the people in charge really really want and believe it to be a drop-in efficiency boost, and a big mess results. This reminds me a lot of the articles and arguments I've read over the years about low level vs high level programming languages and frameworks. Probably will play out a similar way.
A lot of tokens tends to help move the needle, building in guardrails, sophisticated review of both in process work & final outputs, and consensus helps raise the bar considerably.
That and sane, universally consistent, well structured, low tech debt, organizationally elegant, systematically evolved codebases. Something the grand majority of teams don't have to begin with.
Nevermind being well documented, with excellent opinionated linting and static type enforcement configurations, with robust CI checks. More things many projects don't seem to have.
Turns out that giving AI poorly engineered and maintained codebases just amplifies the poor engineering and low rigor already present. Something that's endemic to our industry.