Now I understand why at each windows 11 update, they introduce more bugs than ever
Satya Nadella has given an evasive answer there and both Zuckerberg and the journalists have been taken in.
It is common in programming languages that have a lot of boilerplate to use code generation, where you take some information about data and generate code automatically, like code that translates data between formats (for example reading and writing xml for saving to disk or json to send over the network). Being very routine to write and easy to deduce logically from other information, this process has been automated for years and years, long before AI existed.
Microsoft’s flagship software such as operating systems, office software, is unbelievably vast and complex, far beyond the complexity of most business software, and has been developed over decades. They absolutely have not replaced 30% of their code since the very recent advent of useful AI. I can believe that 30% of it is automatically generated, but not by AI.
If they mean “30% of the code we wrote last month” then I might believe it. Though I bet it is not across the board but deep in one or two areas. Still, it’s a crazy number.
But he said something like “30% of the code in our repositories” which would mean everything, including their entire legacy of code. And that I simply do not believe.
Its a shit article with Tech crunch changing the words to get people in a flap about AI (for or against), the actual quote is
“I’d say maybe 20 percent, 30 percent of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software”
“Written by software” reasonably included machine refactored code, automatically generated boilerplate and things generated by AI assistants. Through that lens 20% doesnt seem crazy.
So the CEO is trying to tell investors that they are saving money by not paying employees. But to me it sounds more like: we are letting our sub-par products continue to enshitify, and any other company using AI to program will be equal competition.
It shows
Stole it as if I wrote it
Horseshit.
The current state of code generated by AI is sketchy at best. I often get plain wrong answers because the model tries to derive. It comes up with calls to functions and properties that just do not exist.
“You are right, I made a mistake. Here is a better answer.” Continues to give wrong answers.
Apart from that, apps that are glued together from AI generated code are not maintainable at all. What if there is a bug somewhere and you so not comprehend what is actually happening? Ask AI to fix it? Yeah good luck with that.
I do use AI for simple questions, and it works fairly well for that, but this claim by MS is just marketing bullshit.
I bet they’re counting code written while someone had an AI plugin installed as “written by AI” and I bet that accounts for almost all of that 30%. On top of that, I’m betting that they made it mandatory to have such a plug in, and the other 70% is just code written before they mandated this.
Work for a big software company. With all the offshoring of devs, I expect most of our code is now AI. And it shows.
How does it show? (Asking for red flags, not to create an argument).
Quality degredation and Disjointed experience comes to minds. Microsofts tech is such a mess right now i dont know how they come back from it honestly. Too many competing frameworks, bad schemas, broken tooling, bad documentation.
Im not even factoring in windows 11.
I used to be a windows dev guy, but with this landscape I dunno why i would do it to myself. Developing for linux systens is such a better experience. At least there are standards and ubernerds who adhere to them.
Coming back from this is easy.
Extend support for windows 10 for another 4 years. Take a break from their OS release cycle and get the next OS right. Remove the Microsoft account mandate from sign in. Remove AI by default. Remove Ads, weather, news and other bloat from the OS. The focus should be creating the cleanest, simplest, abstraction between the user and the hardware.
Its not nearly that easy. They are dealing with personalities behind all of this, investors they made promises to, etc. What you are describing is the right thing to do, its just very complicated with a ship as big as microsoft to turn on a dime like that. The bigger the org, the slower it is to react and the harder it is to course correct
this makes way more sense than hundreds of shitty devs.
