[dwedge]

> Is there a correlation between the quality of the manually written code and AI generated code driven by the same dev?

If the dev doesn't vet the code, it doesn't matter how good quality a dev they would be if they wrote the code - they didn't. Sure, the dev would probably drive the initial architecture discussion better and some people are using AI in small batches with tests and vetting everything, but some previously great devs are throwing in PRs that touch hundreds of files at once with one commit.

A lot of people I previously considered great developers have become people I would not recommend for a job in the past 2-3 years.

> If you have a black box that spits out code, and you are unable to distinguish the quality between a top tier dev and an AI inside the black box, then the distinction is unnecessary.

Sure, but this is just begging the question. If nobody could tell, the term 'slop' wouldn't have become so popular.

[colordrops]

You must be replying to a different comment. Seems completely unrelated to what I wrote. I never claimed that there wasn't AI slop. My point is that there are different levels of code coming out of AI, both due to the quality of the model and harness, and the quality of the engineer that is driving it. Thus you can't just bucket all AI developed code the same.

100% there is slop created by humans and really solid code bases generated by AI driven by a meticulous developer. You are making the exact error I was addressing, which is bucketing all AI code as the same.

[dwedge]

I quote-replied to your comment, so I doubt it was unrelated.

> I never claimed that there wasn't AI slop

No, but you implied that a top tier dev doesn't produce slop when using AI.

> If you have a black box that spits out code, and you are unable to distinguish the quality between a top tier dev and an AI inside the black box

My point was that "if" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and you're coming very close to begging the question.

> bucketing all AI code as the same.

Most people are not "top tier devs" and over time this will probably become more true. Even if I accepted your premise that "top tier devs" only generate solid code bases with AI, the ease of entry and the ease of spitting out thousands of lines of code means the ratio of bad AI to good AI will not go in a good direction unless it becomes too expensive for non "top tier devs" to use. Given this, I think it's fair to assume AI code is low quality until proven otherwise.

[colordrops]

Yes most people are not top tier devs and most code is slop whether written by AI or not. I've probably dug through tens of thousands of code bases in my over 30 year career as a software engineer and most are slop.

I also did not claim that all "top tier devs" would always produce better code with AI, but the qualification for a "top tier dev" in this case would be someone who verifies code multiple ways to make sure it is correct. I've seen amazing code come from bad interns that was reviewed mercilessly by season devs, and there's absolutely no reason it would not be the same with AI generated code.

You do realize that you can review the entire architecture and code line for line even if it's AI generated right? My black box comment did not mean you couldn't see the code, it meant you don't know whether a machine wrote it or not.

[jgon]

You've dug through tens of thousands of code bases? 30 years would give you ~10,950 days, so you'd have to be digging into 2 code bases per day, every single day without any breaks for 30 years straight, to get to "tens of thousands".

When I read things like this it makes it very hard to give any credence to the rest of your pro-AI arguments, because it just seems incredibly likely that you're a bullshitter.

[colordrops]

Yes, roughly. I try out open source projects as a hobby and a vocation. I've looked at dozens in a day sometimes. It doesn't take more than a few minutes to figure out if the code is slop.

BTW, I'm not alone in my opinion on AI:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1uxbrw4/linus_t...