At this point, when people say this I just assume they’ve not used the latest models or haven’t invested time in learning how to use these tools properly.
There’s slop out there, yes, but in the hands of an engineer who cares to use tools well, LLMs allow you to move much more quickly and increase the quality of your output dramatically.
Good software isn't about quantity but quality of the code.
AI cannot produce better quality code than someone who is actually qualified in the problem domain.
What I've seen AI be very good at is creating a lot of legacy code very quickly, which itself needs extensive use of AI just to maintain it.
A decent approach to move quickly for PoC or prototypes, or to enable product managers to build things without a team. But obviously not something you can build a real company on.
Have you been in the same industry as the rest of us? 90% of all developers out there in the wild create "legacy code very quickly" anyways, they too create "slop" before we coined the term "AI slop". This mythical "someone who is actually qualified in the problem domain" you mention is maybe 5% of the entire software development ecosystem. If you work with only those developers, you're extremely privileged and lucky, but also in a very isolated bubble.
If you work on meaningful tech projects, where tech is a real driver to the businesses and there are genuine challenges to overcome, then you can't afford slop.
I say that, but then it's true I have seen businesses be successful despite low quality of software. It turned out that for those businesses, the value wasn't that much driven by tech after all.
Depends on the size and complexity of the problem that the system is solving. For very complex problems, even the most succinct solution will be complex and not all parts of the code can be throwaway code. You have to start stacking the layers of abstractions and some code becomes critical. Like think of the Linux Kernel, you can't throw away the Linux Kernel. You can't throw away Chromium or the V8 engine... Millions of systems depend on those. If they had issues or vulnerabilities and nobody to maintain, it would be a major problem for the global economy.
companies have been abandoning products for decades, and shuffling ongoing support onto other entities. nothing has to be "thrown away" as you keep suggesting.
Even if a throw away and replace strategy is used, eventually a system's complexity will overrun any intelligence's ability to work effectively with it. Poor engineering will cause that development velocity drop off to happen earlier.
An aside - this monitor is proving surprisingly difficult to buy in the UK. Everywhere I look it seems to be unavailable or out of stock, and I’ve been checking regularly.
Relatedly, I also don’t understand why a half-trillion dollar company makes it so hard to give them my money. There’s no option to order ASUS directly on the UK site. I’m forced to check lots of smaller resellers or Amazon.
Presumably the "big names" are able to (or have already) implemented the requirements under the law and have an economic and reputational incentive to comply.
Unfortunately, I don't see any site being blocked that will make these shameless gremlins in power let go of their authoritarian control over the public's lives.
This is disappointing to hear. I was thinking of getting some HomePods to replace my Sonos system which has got progressively less reliable over the years to the point of being virtually useless now.
Are there any modern home audio setups that connect to streaming services and actually work reliably? At this point I’m thinking of just going back to an iPod and dock like it’s 2006.
It’s not a simple plug in and stream product, but ever since replacing Sonos with Control4 we’ve been incredibly happy. Josh on top of it for voice and it “just works”.
As I said, not a direct comparison, but starting to think consumer level stuff like Sonos and HonePods just doesn’t have the right incentive structure anymore to deliver the level of quality we all seem to be asking for.
I have Sonos and they work perfectly, I love them. If you think Sonos is bad (recent app update included) go look at the HomePod subreddit, it is basically non stop issues. Having said that, I use Airplay a bunch and it is fine for me. I have had problems with Airplay in the past that were 100% solved by checking and improving wifi signal strength.
I'm testing out Wiim in a couple rooms as a replacement for Sonos and the initial results have been positive, though I haven't been using them long. So far my biggest complaints are that every model in their lineup has a different protocol compatibility list and that the Spotify integration isn't as well-polished.
If your Sonos speakers are old enough, take a day out and downgrade them all to S1. Just like magic it will all start working like it did the day you got it.
Every new game feels like I need to spend hours learning how it works before I get to having fun, when as a working parent I might only have 30 minutes here or there where I’m able to play. When I get back to a game after a couple of weeks off, I can’t remember what I was doing, or what the controls are. It’s just not fun.
Furthermore, every time I turn my console on, everything needs an update in order to be played. So there’s a 15-20 minute wait to get to any sort of entertainment.
Contrast this to the OG Xbox/PS2 era - I’d turn the console on and be having fun within a minute or two in a game that was easy to understand. I don’t think this was due to a lack of depth in the games either. They generally just seemed to have an “easy to learn, hard to master” aspect to them that doesn’t feel present today.
Obviously this is a huge generalisation. But the cumulative effect is that it’s switched me off gaming completely. Unless something is considered a true masterpiece, I won’t even bother.
My Xbox is packed away for now. I expect the next time I’ll turn it on will be for GTA 6.
Call of Duty is the worst with this. After purchasing Modern Warfare, waiting for it to download 60GB, all you get is a fancy menu where the game you purchased is hidden away somewhere below the fold and it tries to upsell other CoDs instead. When you eventually figure out how to navigate the menu and find the game, you can't play it, because apparently, the 60GB download didn't include any of the game. That's another 50GB download. Oh and turns out, that also doesn't actually include the game mode you were interested in. That's another 25GB.
> as a working parent I might only have 30 minutes here or there where I’m able to play. When I get back to a game after a couple of weeks off, I can’t remember what I was doing, or what the controls are. It’s just not fun.
+1, I fall into this category. It's tough.
But is it a problem for the gaming industry? How many sales can they expect from the time poor?
I manage to still play, by choosing conceptually simple games (puzzle, platformer, sports, GTA, some FPS), and playing on the Steam Deck. Portability + instant resume works well for this.
One thing I appreciate about modern games is that a lot of them have quest systems that can remind you of your next objective at any point, and/or maps that tell you where you haven’t been.
This makes it easy for me to log on, do 30 minutes of gaming and then log off and make some incremental progress on the game.
(My experience here is mostly with Nintendo and indie games on the Switch, for reference)
Whilst I agree game updates have become larger and larger and there are reasons why for that as annoying as they are. I'm not sure if there is much of an accessibility issue as much as its my ability to make enough time to play games like I used to.
Game designers need to strike a balance between people like us with little time, and those that can commit much more time.
Sort of an aside from the article, but I never feel like these geographic averages translate well to densely populated countries like England.
The North, like all parts of the country, has pockets of extreme affluence near areas of relative poverty, with a lot of middle income households scattered about the place too.
Talking to some southerners you’d think the whole of the North was a dump, and I worry people write off a truly beautiful part of the UK because of this misconception.
There’s slop out there, yes, but in the hands of an engineer who cares to use tools well, LLMs allow you to move much more quickly and increase the quality of your output dramatically.
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