I’m so sick of hearing about AI. I’ve been struggling with the concept that “authenticity” seems to be completely irrelevant to a lot of people lately. I’m a developer and have been for 10+ years at this point, and am struggling to understand why I would stay in this field.
When I get down, I start to question if there’s any point in learning anything. I started up a side project with somebody I respected in a niche hobby space and have been using that to learn a new framework, but I’m rapidly feeling like it’s pointless to bother learning when you can badly cobble something together with a chatbot and the managers of the world will ejaculate themselves dry about how good robots are, even when the bloody thing barely functions.
It seems that a lot of people don’t give a shit if something is actually made by humans. Those same people don’t seem to value the hard work it takes to make something. I feel like I’m having a hard time fitting in at the moment.
I struggle with similar feelings, although in other disciplines. I’m going to ask you the same questions I ask myself because they help center me when I’m in a similar mental space.
Who do you create for? Do you create for those people that don’t value your work? Do you create for yourself, for your own satisfaction? Do you create for external recognition?
I think we’ll turn this corner as a society, especially as everything becomes further enshittified. Inherent value and authenticity, the process and the work are all things that I do believe we all care about, but we’ve been spoiled with the convenience of everything.
I’m rapidly feeling like it’s pointless to bother learning when you can badly cobble something together with a chatbot and the managers of the world will ejaculate themselves dry about how good robots are, even when the bloody thing barely functions.
Rhetorical question: How much of your decade of development has been in a professional capacity
That has ALWAYS been true. A barely functioning Proof Of Concept has always been sexy. Someone has an idea, they make a barely functioning example of it working (often depending on stack overflow and asking others for help), show it to Management, and get money. With Management often thinking how they can either rapidly patent something in there or sell it off to a larger company.
Nothing there is new aside from “AI” replacing “ask Stack Overflow”.
And, just to be clear, that was also true in the hobbyist space. Think about how often you saw an article like “someone recreated PT in Unreal Engine!!!” (not to mention PT itself being the kind of project you give a new hire to learn the toolchain but…). Same with all those emulators that “added VR” and so forth. They are cool concepts that tend to not go anywhere or…
Once a POC becomes a Product? That is where knowledge matters. You no longer want the answer someone shat out while waiting for a belle claire video to download. You need to actually define your corner cases, improve performance, and build out a roadmap.
And… that ALSO isn’t about learning new tools and tech. A lot of that comes out of it, but that is where the difference between “computer programmer” and "software engineer’ comes into play. Because it becomes an engineering problem where you define and implement testing frameworks and build out the gitlab issues and so forth.
Like, a LOT of dumbfucks try to speedrun their way to management because it is more money. But the reality is that a good Engineer SHOULD become a manager as they “grow up”. Because you need people with technical ability to have a say in building out that roadmap and in allocating resources to different issues. Optimally you still get to code a lot (I am a huge fan of middle management in that regard) but… yeah.
I see what you’re saying, but I’m not talking about proof of concepts. I’m talking about “fully fledged” Frankenstein apps that get cobbled together by cowboys. Documentation written by ChatGPT that is full of hallucinations. Managers love that stuff because the thing they’ve asked for works but nothing outside of that one thing works, which doesn’t matter because they’re not testing it.
I’m not talking about small proof of concepts. I was referring to myself in a professional capacity as a developer; I’ve been a web developer full time since 2015.
Managers love that stuff because the thing they’ve asked for works but nothing outside of that one thing works, which doesn’t matter because they’re not testing it.
Yeah. That is a POC. It is what you use to get funding, have lawyers write up a patent, or shop around the company
That is not what I’m saying - the situation I’m describing is the situation I’m currently in: I work for a small web agency, we have the agency owner, the project manager, and the development lead as our “management”.
A client asks for something, the agency owner says yes, and then the development lead cobbles something together over the course of a few hours with results from ChatGPT or Claude.
The thing works, but only for that specific request and cannot handle edge cases, and he doesn’t know how it works nor how to extend it, so he cobbles on more ChatGPT or Claude results.
The management team love it, but it’s just mountains of technical debt piling up.
A client asks for something, the agency owner says yes, and then the development lead cobbles something together over the course of a few hours with results from ChatGPT or Claude.
Again… that is a POC.
The thing works, but only for that specific request and cannot handle edge cases, and he doesn’t know how it works nor how to extend it, so he cobbles on more ChatGPT or Claude results.
So… what you are saying is they make something specifically meeting the requirements given to them by the client with no intention of long term support? And that, in the event that you provide long term support, the skillset required drastically changes? Possibly to a more Software Engineering based one?
It’s not a proof of concept, or an MVP - I’m saying it’s what is given to the client as a full, finished solution.
What I’m saying is that the “this was built by AI!” effect is so strong that copy/pasting ChatGPT results together with no forethought or understanding is miserable and brings only technical debt - but that that’s irrelevant to management, because they’re impressed by the robot and don’t want to “fall behind” other agencies.
Jennifer’s body, American horror story, true blood, shooter, the Martian, demolition man, blade, first blood, commando, oldboyz, war games, Terminator 2, xeon: girl of the 21st century, the devil wears Prada, the witch, new dracula movie, gone in 60 seconds, underworld, ghost dog, lone wolf and cub, wensday, the sandman, maybe some others, if I have time later to think of them.
My answer to you is that I fully expect the ability to do stuff yourself to be seen as extremely valuable in about 2 or 3 years. This whole AI thing is pretty definitely a bubble, and on top of that it also looks to me like the blockchain and metaverse tech-fads, and I strongly believe that when the bubble bursts people that can say “I spent all that time learning to do things myself rather than rely on ai to do my thinking for me” are going to be the only people with careers.
I don’t understand why there is such a drama around using AI while developing. Everyone I know does that. Of course it doesn’t mean that I copy-paste the code from ChatGPT. But at the same time it is often useful and faster than Googling on Stack-Overflow… Someone even said there that developers using AI will have legal problems in future… I really don’t think so, because it is the AI provider responsibility to train it on data provided freely for this purpose. I’m against stealing data and brainslessly using AI, but at the same time the AI is here and you can’t ignore it.
The drama here isn’t solely over the use of AI. In fact, your last comment any brainlessly using AI is closer to the cause of this drama. The project lead is pushing untested code straight to main, and the fact it was AI generated was an addendum/insult to injury.
Other point the maintainers raised is the possibility that GenAI code violates the GPL license.
It’s a good concern to have, and one I feel people don’t talk about enough.
A little lesson about technical projects: You will quickly reach 95% completion and have something amazing to show off. Then, 95% of the work is completing that last 5% in order to make the prototype usable.
AI is good at making itself look ready. It is nowhere near ready.
I meant using AI for example for refactoring purposes or giving it some small tasks or questions. Not building whole projects with AI, because it is unmaintainable.
I would like to think some of it is class consciousness. “AI” inherently means fewer jobs. But considering the world we live in, I sincerely doubt the vast majority of people speaking out against it give a shit because “I am just demonstrating my value so the leopards won’t eat my face” and so forth.
Most of it is performative bullshit. Influencers who DID get fucked over (or decided this is why they didn’t get the job they wanted) have talked loud and proud about how evil it is and that is kind of where the conversation ends. “AI” is evil and nobody cares to think what “AI” actually means. I’ll never get tired of giving a depressed smirk when I see the same people who were championing the use of “magic” Adobe tools complaining about “AI” taking graphics design jobs and so forth. Same with the folk who have dozens of blog posts about using tools to generate their docstrings suddenly getting angry that “AI” does that too.
Personally? I very much DO care about the labor side. Not because I don’t think “AI” can do the job of an intern or even most early career staff (spend some time mentoring early career staff… I wish I just had to worry about six toes on a foot or code that would delete our prod tables if I don’t review it well enough). But because the only way for those dumbass kids to learn is by doing the tasks we would be getting rid of and that is already leading to a VERY rapid brain drain as it is increasingly hard to find staff who can actually do the job of a Senior role.
Which is the other issue… “AI” can do some stuff VERY well. Other stuff it is horrible at. And even more stuff that it “does well” is dictated by managers and “Prompt Engineers” and not actually the domain experts who can say “Yeah… this is good. THAT is complete dog shit”.
And then there is the IP theft part of things. People… are once again stupid and don’t realize that the folk posting answers on Stack Overflow were just as likely to have read that blog post where you talked about your cool algorithm. Or how much art is literally traced from others with no attribution and becomes part of major marketing campaigns. And while I think a MUCH bigger reckoning needs to happen regarding IP law and attribution… “AI” is just a symptom of the real problem.
Looking a bit further into it, a bug report on the GZDoom GitHub page titled “Project management” was opened that gave a little more detail noting issues with the lead of GZDoom pushing untested code, using an LLM to write code and hiding “not insignificant changes in commits, which has people worried that you’ll randomly rip out features that they rely on”. In reply, the project lead simply said “Feel free to fork the project under a” (yes, that really all they said).
A later comment before the bug report was locked points out the specific change in GZDoom that was made with ChatGPT.
Lately it feels like GenAI is gonna push FOSS projects and its maintainers to the breaking point. So much for this great future every AI vendor promised us 🙄
At a quick glance the community cares more about him hiding commits and doing other nasty things instead of the actual AI stuff. I think that’s important to know before discussing the AI angle here.
Was EA even doing anything with any of the actually good IPs they had? I haven’t heard of anything particularly interesting coming from them in a while now (ie. decades).
I mean, they published Split Fiction and Tales of Kenzera this year and their Star Wars games were more than decent (let's hear it for the atrociously underrated X-Wing revival they made with Squadrons). They also published the C&C Remaster that same year, which I feel doesn't get enough credit despite getting a lot of credit. Probably one of the best examples of one of those in recent memory.
Let's not be disingenuous, none of that is their bread and butter, but it's not like they were entirely dormant.
It's been EA since a different millenium. I think it's time to get over it.
FWIW, the remake itself was made by an external studio including members of the original team and they apparently collaborated closely with some sort of consulting group of modders and preservation-focused community people.
Well, yeah, but those principles don't typically relate to videogame companies nor to purchase habits regarding 30 year old videogames.
Voting with your wallet is ultracapitalist, self-serving non-activism people deploy performatively to make themselves feel better about stuff they don't care that much about, not "principles". No offense.
China isn’t Saudi Arabia, and Trump collective media control efforts hasn’t reached gaming yet. Tiktok was China ownership reduction from 40-20 percent, while China still retains algorithm control. This one is a buy.
It’s an opposite movement of ownership between countries, yes, but every different overall and in the details.
hmmm, should i support the studio capitulating to a fascist regime? Or should I support the studio being bought by murderous religious fundamentalists?
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