[HN Gopher] Is 30% of Microsoft's code AI-generated?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Is 30% of Microsoft's code AI-generated?
        
       Author : foxfired
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2025-11-19 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (idiallo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (idiallo.com)
        
       | cedilla wrote:
       | Up to 70% or more of statistics in sales calls are exaggerated,
       | waffley or completely made up.
        
         | jethronethro wrote:
         | 83% of people know that ...
        
       | m463 wrote:
       | I wonder about ai-generated code with respect to copyright.
        
       | AlexandrB wrote:
       | Even if true it's quite funny because code volume is not a good
       | metric. It's why developer productivity generally should not
       | measured in "LOC produced".
       | 
       | Or to paraphrase Blaise Pascal: "If I had more time, I would have
       | written less code."
        
       | almoehi wrote:
       | What I found in practise is that AI generated code is typically
       | 30% longer than it should be compared to how an experienced
       | senior would write it.
       | 
       | It's not that it is wrong or anything - it's just unnecessary
       | verbose.
       | 
       | Which you could argue is not a problem if it won't be read by
       | humans anyways anymore in the near future.
        
         | furyofantares wrote:
         | > Which you could argue is not a problem if it won't be read by
         | humans anyways anymore in the near future.
         | 
         | It's a problem right now for code that isn't being read by
         | humans.
         | 
         | LLM-backed agents start by writing slightly bad code that's a
         | little too verbose, too careful in error handling, writes too
         | much fallback code, among other common minor LLM-ish flaws. And
         | then it's next turn of the crank sees all that, both as an
         | example but also as code it must maintain, and is slightly more
         | bad in all those ways.
         | 
         | This is why vibing ends up so bad. It keeps producing code that
         | does what you asked for a fairly long time, so you can get a
         | long way vibing. By the time you hit a brick wall it will have
         | been writing very bad code for a long while, and it's not clear
         | that it's easier to fix it than start over and try not to
         | accept any amount of slop.
        
       | hightrix wrote:
       | I'd be curious how much of MSFT's code is generated by simple
       | auto-complete (intellisense) vs AI powered auto-complete vs
       | generated from a prompt.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-19 23:01 UTC)