this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 150 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

AI as it exists today is only effective if used sparingly and cautiously by someone with domain knowledge who can identify the tasks (usually menial ones) that don't need a human touch.

[–] derpgon@programming.dev 50 points 6 days ago (2 children)

This 1000x. I am a PHP developer, I found out about two months ago that the AI assistant is included in my Jetbrains subscription (All pack, it was a separate thing before). And recently found about Junie, their AI agent that has deep thinking (or whatever the hell it is called). I tried it the same day to refactor part of my test that had to migrated to stop using a deprecated function call.

To my surprise, it required only very minor changes, but what would've taken me about 3 hours was done in half an hour. What I also liked was that it actually asked if it can run a terminal command to verify thr test results and it went back and fixed a broken test or two.

Finally I have faith in AI being useful to programmers.

For a test, I took our dev exam (for potential candidates) and just sent it to see what it does just based on the document, and besides a few mistakes it even used modern tools and not some 5 year old stuff (like PSR standards) and implemented core systems by itself using well known interfaces (from said PSRs). I asked it to change Dependency Injection to use Symfony DI instead of the self-made thing, and it worked flawlessly.

Of course, the code has to be reviewed or heavily specified to make sure it does what it is told to, but all in all it doesn't look like just a gimmick anymore.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 32 points 6 days ago

Absolutely, this matches my experience. I think this is also the experience of most coders who willingly use AI. I feel bad for the people who are forced to use it by their companies. And those who are laid off because of C-levels who think AI is capable of replacing an experienced coder.

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it doesn't look like just a gimmick anymore.

It still does 😞

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[–] Awkwardparticle@programming.dev 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The biggest point is that you must be an expert in the field you are using it in. I rarely get fooled by hallucinations and stupid bugs because they are glaringly obvious to me. The best use case is having the llm write code for using a library that has poor documentation, that am going to use once, and I am too lazy to learn. These tools are scary when used by juniors, they are creating more work for everyone by using llms to code. I just imagine myself using this when I was a fresh grad, it is terrifying. It would have only been one step up from vibe coding.

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[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

AI now offers to post my ads for me on Kijiji. I provide pictures and it has been accurate on price, condition, category and description. I have a lot of shit to sell and was dreading it, but this use removes the biggest barrier for me getting it done.

Even helped me figure out some things I was struggling to find online for reference. Saved me at least an hour of tedium yesterday.

Excellent use case.

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[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 103 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (11 children)

As someone who has been a consultant/freelance dev for over 20 years now this is true. Lately I've been getting offers and contacts from places to essentially clean up the mess from LLMs/AI.

A lot of is pretty bad. It's a mess. But like I said I've been at it for awhile and I've seen this before when companies were offshoring anything and everything to India and surprise, surprise, they didn't learn anything. It's literally the exact same thing. Instead of an Indian guy that claims they know everything and will work for peanuts, it's AI pretty much stating the same shit.

I've been getting so many requests for gigs I've been hitting up random out of work devs on linkedin in my city and referring the jobs to them. I've burned through all my contacts that now I'm just reaching out to absolute strangers to get them work.

yes it's that bad (well bad for companies, it's fantastic for developers.)

EDIT: Since my comment has gained a lot of traction I've marked down peoples user names and portfolios/emails to my dev list. If something more comes up (and trust me, it will) I'll shoot you an email or msg on here. Currently I've already shoved off a bunch of stuff to others and have nothing as of now but I imagine that will change by next week so if more stuff comes up I'll shoot you an email or DM.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 35 points 6 days ago (2 children)

We've hired a bunch of Indian guys who are using AI to do their work... the results are marginally better than either approach independently.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 15 points 6 days ago (4 children)

a negative times a negative is a positive?

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Retired dev here, I'm curious about the nature of "the mess". Is it buggy AI-generated code that got into production? I know an active dev who uses ChatGTP every day, says it saves him a hell of a lot of work. What he does sounds like "vibe coding". If you're using AI for grunt work and keep a human is in the workflow to verify the code, I don't see how it would differ from junior devs working under a senior. Have some companies been using poorly managed all-AI tools or what? Sorry for the long question.

[–] GojuRyu@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

An example from work a few weeks ago. I fixed some vibe coded UI code that had made it to prod. The layout of the UI was basically just meant to be an easy overview of information relevant to an item. The LLM had done everything right except it assumed a weird mix of tailwind and bootstrap, mixing and matching css classes from both. After I implemented the classes myself it went from a single column view to grids and nested grids grouping the data intuitively. I talked with the dev who implemented it, and basically it was just something quickly cobbled together with AI until it was passable. The AI had added a lot of extra that served no function and that didn’t conform to a single css framework, but looked like it could. For months noone questioned it despite talk about that part of the UI needing a facelift.

I don’t know how representative it is, but about half the time I’m thoroughly confused about a piece of code and why it was written the way it was, the answer has turned out to be AI. And unlike when a developer wrote it, there rarely is any reason to have written it the weird way.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago

TBH that sounds like a lot of code I've seen from outsourcing companies in India. Their typical approach is to copy an existing program, module, web page or whatever and modify it as quickly as possible to turn it into what's needed. The result is often a mishmash of irrelevant code, giant data queries that happen to retrieve some field that's needed along with a ton of unnecessary crap, mixing frameworks, etc.

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[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago

They learned that by the time all of their shitty decisions ruin everything, they'll be able to bail with their golden parachute while everyone else has to deal with the fallout.

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[–] Jhuskindle@lemmy.world 37 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Same thing happened during the outsourcing craze of early 2000s. Everything and I mean everything moved to India or Philippines. There's even a movie about it because it was so common. I and everyone else lost our jobs. about a year later the contracts expired and we all got jobs back and outsourcing is used in balance. Eventually ai use will be balanced I hope. It cannot replace us. Not yet anyways.

[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

AI needs to be used as a tool for workers, not a replacement for workers. They will figure it out eventually.

[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 76 points 6 days ago
[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 56 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Ah so AI does create jobs, it’s the Zorg logic

[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 22 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Jean-Baptiste

Emmanuel

Zorg

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[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 37 points 6 days ago

thats because the main peddlers are the ceo/csuites of these tech companies, and the customers arnt people like you or me, its other corporate heads. in case of palintir it would be the government.

[–] reluctant_squidd@lemmy.ca 26 points 6 days ago

The even brighter side of it is that it should be easier to spot these companies when job hunting.

IMO: Demand higher wages and iron clad contracts from them because they already demonstrated how they feel about paying people.

They’ll surely cut anyone they can again as soon as they can.

[–] AnotherPenguin@programming.dev 33 points 6 days ago

Deserved and expected

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 37 points 6 days ago

Let them burn.

[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 13 points 5 days ago

Hope they lose billions!!

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 33 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Companies with stupid leaders deserve to fail.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 35 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Well what ends up happening is some company will have a CEO.

He'll make all the stupid decisions. But they're only stupid from everybody ELSES perspective.

From his perspective, he uses AI, tanks the companies future in the chase of large short term stock gains. Then he gives himself a huge bonus, leaves the company, gets hired somewhere else, and gets to say "See how that company is failing without me? That's because I bring value to the brand."

So he gets hired at the neeeext place, meanwhile that first company is failing because of the actions of a CEO no longer employed there, and whom bailed because he knew what was coming.

These actions aren't stupid. They're plotted corruption for the benefit of one.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

What's really stupid about this cycle is that some of these fail-upward executives genuinely believe the crap they're spewing. Weirdly, I think I respect the grifting executives more

Edit: by grifting executives, I mean the ones who participate in that cycle you describe, and are aware of the harms they cause in their wake, but don't care because they've gotten good at knowing when to skip out

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

No that never happens /S

I used to work with a supplier that hired a former Monsanto executive as their CEO. When his first agenda came out I told their sales team he was an idiot and to have fun looking for a new job a few months.

The CEO bailed after 2 years to start his own "consulting business."

1 year later the company lost 75% of their market share and was laying off people left and right. They are still afloat barely.

After a couple years "consulting", the CEO went to another company in 2023. He didn't bounce fast enough and got caught on this one. He was fired 2 weeks ago and the company shut their doors except for a handful of staff to facilitate the firesale of the companies assets.

[–] TuffNutzes@lemmy.world 21 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Very expected. It's fine. I'll come back at 10 times my previous rate. And you'll thank me for it. Fucking chads.

[–] KbSez@piefed.social 22 points 6 days ago

no surprise

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 22 points 6 days ago

AI: The new outsourcing?

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago

McNamara fallacy at its finest. They hear figures and potential savings and then jump into the hype without considering the context. It is the same when they heard of lean manufacturing or Toyota way. Companies thought it is cost saving rather than process improvement.

[–] Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

The BBC report cited mainly focused on the marketing industry, with the fixing mistake people being the copywriters. This gives a strong vibe of Madman, where you have the "old-fashioned" copywriters and the tension between market research.

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