But hindsight is 20/20 as they say. In 2020 people predicted that Facebook Horizon would only go one direction, always improve and become as pervasive as the internet. So when you predict that the design and architecture capabilities of models will continue to improve, thus making code quality irrelevant, you sound very confident. And if in five years you are right, you will brag about it here. If not, well I for one will not track you down and rub it in your face. Peace out.
You're confusing betting on a company/product vs betting on technological improvement in general.
It is absolutely the case that virtual reality technology will only get better over time. Maybe it'll take 5, or 10, or 20, or 40 years, but it's almost a certainty that we'll eventually see better AR/VR tech in the future than we have in the past.
Would you bet against that? You'd be crazy to imo.
Well I wasn't talking about AR/VR tech. I was talking about a society where using VR like in the the visions the company Meta was drawing up. It hasn't manifested and since the company Meta is now downsizing their VR investments the progress of that AR/VR utopia is not _currently_ getting better, because people don't like it/use it. And I got a kid that was HOOKED on vr and spent so much time with his friends on VR, and now. They hang out on Discord and play CS2 on a very flat 2d screen. Will this change "In The Future(tm)"? I don't care but my point is that a statement like "code quality will be irrelevant" miiiight age poorly if in five years, taking into account model improvements, people still care about code quality and the agentic engineers still use extra effort to make certain the outputted code adhers to "good code" standards. I know I will but if ass code turns out to over time be objectively better than good code, I might change my mind or maybe start a new career in something tangible.
Well, I wouldn't say it's irrelevant. That's a high bar. But I think it's becoming less relevant. And I tried to explain this as a counterpoint to engineers who think AI coding won't catch on in a lasting way bc its code quality is garbage.
All else being equal, ofc you'd rather have good code than bad code.
But millions of non-developers who can suddenly build simple software for themselves (or use AI assistants that generate simple ephemeral software on the fly) aren't going to care about the underlying code quality so long as it works, which it does.
And hundreds of thousands of software engineers, who can suddenly build singlehandedly what in the past took a team of 5-10 to build, are going to be okay with the tradeoff of getting massive speed boosts but with quality not quite as high as if they were to build everything themselves. Same for software engineers who are now churning through their list of side project ideas, which has mostly sat dormant for the past 10 years.
Previously they lived in a world where the only axes were, "Build more things vs have good quality" or "Build ambitious things vs have good quality." Now they have a new axis which is, "Allow AI to help vs have total personal control of quality," which is quite similar to the pre-existing axis of, "Hire employees vs have total personal control of quality." But way cheaper and more accessible. Of course some will take advantage. Which means, de facto, a world where code quality (or at least personal control of code quality) is on average less important and prioritized than it used to be.
We're seeing all of this happen right now. People are making these choices in large numbers today.
There's a kid outside the window of the place I'm staying who's been in the yard playing and talking with people online through his VR headset for like 2+ hours. He's living in the future. Whatever happens, he and his friends are going to continue to be interested in more of this.
Whether what they're using in 20 years is produced by the company formerly known as Facebook or not is a whole different question.
