Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: GitHub touts unbelievable AI stats, and Intel’s beautiful open source typeface.
1. Survey Sounds Sus
First up this week: A GitHub survey implies the vast majority of devs use AI to write their code. Can that be true?
Analysis: No, it can’t
92% of developers use AI to help them code? If you believe that, there’s a bridge I’d like to discuss.
Thomas Claburn sounds slightly suspicious: GitHub finds 92% of developers love AI
“AI tools will improve the code”
GitHub, which has been doing a brisk business selling subscriptions to its litigation-encumbered Copilot AI helper, surveyed 500 US-based developers to find if any of them are already using AI coding tools at work. … They are, and in a big way.
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Among the key findings of the report … is that developers have already committed to AI assistance, evidently heedless of legal challenges that could limit such tools on copyright grounds. … 81% also see AI as a path toward greater collaboration within teams and organizations.
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The report indicates that developers believe AI tools will improve the code they create. … Respondents may not be aware of academic studies to the contrary.
Steven Vaughan-Nichols gets specific: AI isn’t programming’s future, it’s its present
“Becoming a real problem”
Specifically, developers said AI coding tools can help them meet existing performance standards with improved code quality, faster outputs, and fewer production-level incidents. … In other words, today, AI programming tools are part and parcel of modern business IT.
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Developers believe … code quality over code quantity should remain a top performance metric. The worry is that AI coding tools will make managers focus even more on simply shoving more code out the door rather than delivering good code.
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This is becoming a real problem. Yes, you can have ChatGPT write a program for you, but if you don’t understand what you’re doing in the first place … the code will still be garbage.
You can prove anythings with statistics. Count on silent_count:
GitHub finds 92% of developers love AI tools. And said tools are therefore less popular than Saddam Hussein, who was elected with 99% of the votes. In both cases I have questions about the methodology.
How about a real-world metaphor? Kiss the thesuperbigfrog:
“92% of McDonalds customers have eaten McDonalds fries, says McDonalds customer survey.” … The result seems expected and accordingly biased, given the source.
And enjoy a Bigburito:
New Headline: “Water is Wet.” A massive chunk of programming education focuses on automating tasks and reducing effort required to perform tasks by designing code so that it is easily re-used. It’s what we do, so of course AI plays a role in it.
Reminding us where the models’ source material comes from, here’s silvergig:
In other words, 92% of programmers are using Stack Overflow to get snippets of code that are not worth memorizing. … ChatGPT is not doing all of the work. How do they know that it’s ‘higher quality, faster outputs, and fewer production-level incidents’? They don’t, unless they already know how to write code.
Conversely, thaway_thaway34 sounds scared:
I am an engineer with 20 years in, working mostly on web development. I have a pretty high salary. … AI scares me for job security. … Rent is sky high. I don’t feel comfortable taking on mortgage despite having multiples of needed deposit, because I am not sure how much longer I can maintain my comp. with AI automating everything.
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I use ChatGPT on a daily basis to build projects, and the more I use it, the more scared I get. It is just too powerful. The more I use it, the less proud I feel for my output. It just feels like anyone could do it.
2. Intel One Mono
Intel’s been working on an open source typeface for developers. It’s rather beautiful, with an important target audience.
Analysis: Very visible for vision impaired individuals
It aims to serve “the typographically underserved low-vision developer audience.” And in doing so, might improve the DevX and productivity of everyone else, too.
Joey Sneddon: Intel’s New Open Source Mono Font is Pretty Decent
“Helps reduce eyestrain”
Between IBM Plex Mono, Hack, Fira Code, and JetBrains Mono I think we Linux users are spoilt for choice when it comes to open-source monospace fonts that look good and work great. Still, there’s always room for more, right?
Intel thinks so, hence the release of Intel One Mono. This is an “expressive monospaced font family that’s built with clarity, legibility, and the needs of developers in mind.” Better yet it’s … free to download … edit, and … redistribute.
[An] important group of people had input in this glyph’s genesis: Low-vision and legally blind developers. Yes, Intel One Mono isn’t just an “aww, looks nice” font. Intel says it makes reading and entering code easier, helps reduce eyestrain, and may possibly lessen fatigue.
But, “It doesn’t look great,” opines AmiMoJo:
I’m not expert but I think the lines are not high enough. They look compressed and that makes the outlines of the characters and the words less clear.
I think some of the characters are a bit wide too. The thin characters like i and l are better being narrow, even with monospace it helps differentiate them. It looks less visually pleasing, but for coding I want readability.
Anyway, do we really need yet another resizable monospace font? Yes, says stormcrow:
Spoken like someone that hasn’t had to tell programmers their UI sucks because it doesn’t take into account visually impaired users who may need to increase font, icon, button, or visual indicator sizes. There’s a hell of a lot of users out there that are at least mildly visually impaired whether from age, disease, accident, or birth deformity. We all want visual elements that can be resized for comfortable viewing.
The Moral of the Story:
Live as if you were to die tomorrow—learn as if you were to live forever
—Mahatma Gandhi
You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or [email protected].
Image: Fabrizio Coco (via Unsplash; leveled and cropped)
