The last twelve months have seen an explosion in AI coding assistants. The hype about these tools has focused on developer replacement - "developers will lose their jobs to AI".
How's that going? If you're following the news and metrics, a very different reality is becoming apparent.
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Here are two specific ways in which AI software assistants are falling short of the hype.
1. (reddit) AI is driving developers "insane"
(reddit) My new hobby: watching AI slowly drive Microsoft employees insane
Microsoft developers are playing whack-a-mole with AI coding assistants while they run around in circles, fixing one bug while introducing another and paying no attention to the design of the project.
"No real understanding of what it's doing, it's just guessing"
2. (CircleCI) Real data about the impact of AI code on code velocity
(CircleCI) Hype cycle: The real impact of AI code in software delivery outcomes
- 41% rise in bug rates
- 40% lower success rate of CI jobs
- 50% increase in mean time to recovery (MTTR)
"developers using AI assistants ... more likely to introduce vulnerabilities while overestimating their code's security"
"while AI speeds up coding tasks, it also leads to more frequent failures"
Summary
My take - while AI coding assistants can be very useful, they are frequently being used in completely the wrong way, and by the wrong people.
First, don't expect AI coders to take the place of developers; even junior developers. Read the whole Reddit thread above if you want to see exactly why AI is not even capable of providing quality bug fixes for well-defined issues.
Second, don't use AI to generate code commits. Use it to:
1) Generate code design ideas
2) Help with troubleshooting
3) Get code review suggestions
In all of these cases, it's incumbent on the developer to curate and ultimately approve or reject the AI coding output.
I see no indicate that this fundamental partnership between AI and software developers is going to change any time soon.
Embrace this partnership in your work - value both the AI and the person, and let's stop with hype about AI as a human-replacing technology in software development.
🐛 Does code review come too late to be useful? Get AI-assisted code review suggestions automatically in real-time: bugs, security flaws, and performance problems.
💡 Check out my open source VSCode extension - OpenTips
Top comments (1)
Nice.