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Replace the AI agent with any other new technology and this is an example of a company: 1. Working out in the open 2. Dogfooding their own product 3. Pushing

Replace the AI agent with any other new technology and this is an example of a company: 1. Working out in the open 2. Dogfooding their own product 3. Pushing the state of the art Given that the negative impact here falls mostly (completely?) on the Microsoft team which opted into this, is there any reason why we shouldn't be supporting progress here?

JB_Dev 1y ago
100% agree. i’m not sure why everyone is clowning on them here. This process is a win. Do people want this all being hidden instead in a forked private repo? It’s showing the actual capabilities in practice. That’s much better and way more illuminating than what normally happens with sales and marketing hype.
- rco8786 1y ago
  Satya says: "I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software". Zuckerberg says: "Our bet is sort of that in the next year probably … maybe half the development is going to be done by AI, as opposed to people, and then that will just kind of increase from there". It's hard to square those statements up with what we're seeing happen on these PRs.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    These are AI companies selling AI to executives, there's no need to square the circle, the people that they are talking to have no interest in what's happening in a repo, it's about convincing people to buy in early so they can start making money off their massive investments.
    - rco8786 1y ago
      Why shouldn’t we judge a company’s capabilities against what their CEOs claim them to be capable of?
      - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
        Oh, we absolutely should, but I'm saying that the reason the messaging is so discordant when compared with the capabilities is that the messaging isn't aimed at the people who are able to evaluate the capabilities.
        cadamsdotcom 1y ago
        You're right. The audience isn't the same. Unfortunately the parent commenters are also right - executives hyping AI are (currently) lying. It is about as unethical as it gets. But, our current iteration of capitalism is highly financialized and underinvested in the value of engineering. Stock prices come before truth.
  - daveguy 1y ago
    > Satya says: "I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software". Well, that makes sense to me. Microsoft's software has gotten noticably worse in the last few years. So much that I have abandoned it for my daily driver for the first time since the early 2000s.
  - polishdude20 1y ago
    The fact that Zuck is saying "sort of" and "probably" is a big giveaway it's not going to happen.
throwaway844498 1y ago
"Pushing the state of the art" and experimenting on a critical software development framework is probably not the best idea.
- Dlanv 1y ago
  Why not, when it goes through code review by experienced software engineers who are experts on the subject in a codebase that is covered by extensive unit tests?
  - Draiken 1y ago
    I don't know about you, but it's much more likely for me to let a bug slip when I'm reviewing someone else's code than when I'm writing it myself. This is what's happening right now: they are having to review every single line produced by this machine and trying to understand why it wrote what it wrote. Even with experienced developers reviewing and lots of tests, the likelihood of bugs in this code compared to a real engineer working on it is much higher. Why not do this on less mission critical software at the very least? Right now I'm very happy I don't write anything on .NET if this is what they'll use as a guinea pig for the snake oil.
    - the-lazy-guy 1y ago
      That is exactly what you want to evaluate the thechnology. Not make a buggy commit into softwared not used by nobody and reviewed by an intern. But actually review it by domain professionals, in real world very well-tested project. So they could make an informed decision on where it lacks in capabilities and what needs to be fixed before they try it again. I doubt that anyone expected to merge any of these PRs. Question is - can the machine solve minor (but non-trivial) issues listed on github in an efficient way with minimal guidance. Current answer is no. Also, _if_ anything was to be merged, dotnet is dogfooded extensively at Microsoft, so bugs in it are much more likely to be noticed and fixed before you get a stable release on your plate.
      - Draiken 1y ago
constantcrying 1y ago
Who is "we" and how and why would "we" "support" or not "support" anything. Personally I just think it is funny that MS is soft launching a product into total failure.
lawn 1y ago
Because they're using it on an extremely popular repository that many people depend on? And given the absolute garbage the AI is putting out the quality of the repo will drop. Either slop code will get committed or the bots will suck away time from people who could've done something productive instead.
mrguyorama 1y ago
>supporting progress This presupposes AI IS progress. Nevermind that what this actually shows is an executive or engineering team that so buys their own hype that they didn't even try to run this locally and internally before blasting to the world that their system can't even ensure tests are passing before submitting a PR. They are having a problem with firewall rules blocking the system from seeing CI outcomes and that's part of why it's doing so badly, so why wasn't that verified BEFORE doing this on stage? "Working out in the open" here is a bad thing. These are issues that SHOULD have been caught by an internal POC FIRST. You don't publicly do bullshit. "Dogfooding" doesn't require throwing this at important infrastructure code. Does VS code not have small bugs that need fixing? Infrastructure should expect high standards. "Pushing the state of the art" is comedy. This is the state of the art? This is pushing the state of the art? How much money has been thrown into the fire for this result? How much did each of those PRs cost anyway?

JB_Dev 1y ago

100% agree. i’m not sure why everyone is clowning on them here. This process is a win. Do people want this all being hidden instead in a forked private repo? It’s showing the actual capabilities in practice. That’s much better and way more illuminating than what normally happens with sales and marketing hype.

rco8786 1y ago
Satya says: "I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software". Zuckerberg says: "Our bet is sort of that in the next year probably … maybe half the development is going to be done by AI, as opposed to people, and then that will just kind of increase from there". It's hard to square those statements up with what we're seeing happen on these PRs.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  These are AI companies selling AI to executives, there's no need to square the circle, the people that they are talking to have no interest in what's happening in a repo, it's about convincing people to buy in early so they can start making money off their massive investments.
  - rco8786 1y ago
    Why shouldn’t we judge a company’s capabilities against what their CEOs claim them to be capable of?
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      Oh, we absolutely should, but I'm saying that the reason the messaging is so discordant when compared with the capabilities is that the messaging isn't aimed at the people who are able to evaluate the capabilities.
      - cadamsdotcom 1y ago
        You're right. The audience isn't the same. Unfortunately the parent commenters are also right - executives hyping AI are (currently) lying. It is about as unethical as it gets. But, our current iteration of capitalism is highly financialized and underinvested in the value of engineering. Stock prices come before truth.
- daveguy 1y ago
  > Satya says: "I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software". Well, that makes sense to me. Microsoft's software has gotten noticably worse in the last few years. So much that I have abandoned it for my daily driver for the first time since the early 2000s.
- polishdude20 1y ago
  The fact that Zuck is saying "sort of" and "probably" is a big giveaway it's not going to happen.

throwaway844498 1y ago

"Pushing the state of the art" and experimenting on a critical software development framework is probably not the best idea.

Dlanv 1y ago
Why not, when it goes through code review by experienced software engineers who are experts on the subject in a codebase that is covered by extensive unit tests?
- Draiken 1y ago
  I don't know about you, but it's much more likely for me to let a bug slip when I'm reviewing someone else's code than when I'm writing it myself. This is what's happening right now: they are having to review every single line produced by this machine and trying to understand why it wrote what it wrote. Even with experienced developers reviewing and lots of tests, the likelihood of bugs in this code compared to a real engineer working on it is much higher. Why not do this on less mission critical software at the very least? Right now I'm very happy I don't write anything on .NET if this is what they'll use as a guinea pig for the snake oil.
  - the-lazy-guy 1y ago
    That is exactly what you want to evaluate the thechnology. Not make a buggy commit into softwared not used by nobody and reviewed by an intern. But actually review it by domain professionals, in real world very well-tested project. So they could make an informed decision on where it lacks in capabilities and what needs to be fixed before they try it again. I doubt that anyone expected to merge any of these PRs. Question is - can the machine solve minor (but non-trivial) issues listed on github in an efficient way with minimal guidance. Current answer is no. Also, _if_ anything was to be merged, dotnet is dogfooded extensively at Microsoft, so bugs in it are much more likely to be noticed and fixed before you get a stable release on your plate.
    - Draiken 1y ago

constantcrying 1y ago

Who is "we" and how and why would "we" "support" or not "support" anything. Personally I just think it is funny that MS is soft launching a product into total failure.

lawn 1y ago

Because they're using it on an extremely popular repository that many people depend on? And given the absolute garbage the AI is putting out the quality of the repo will drop. Either slop code will get committed or the bots will suck away time from people who could've done something productive instead.

mrguyorama 1y ago

>supporting progress This presupposes AI IS progress. Nevermind that what this actually shows is an executive or engineering team that so buys their own hype that they didn't even try to run this locally and internally before blasting to the world that their system can't even ensure tests are passing before submitting a PR. They are having a problem with firewall rules blocking the system from seeing CI outcomes and that's part of why it's doing so badly, so why wasn't that verified BEFORE doing this on stage? "Working out in the open" here is a bad thing. These are issues that SHOULD have been caught by an internal POC FIRST. You don't publicly do bullshit. "Dogfooding" doesn't require throwing this at important infrastructure code. Does VS code not have small bugs that need fixing? Infrastructure should expect high standards. "Pushing the state of the art" is comedy. This is the state of the art? This is pushing the state of the art? How much money has been thrown into the fire for this result? How much did each of those PRs cost anyway?