The last couple of weeks, I…
- Listened to the always excellent Postlight Podcast, in which Rich and Paul talked about Code and, specifically, Python. That lead me to…
- Re-read Paul’s “Ode to Code,” better known as: What is Code?
- And then I shared a tertiary, virtual chuckle with Rich, Paul, and Bill Gates as Bill reminded us all that when it comes to code, nothing much has changed since Bill’s coding days.
- Then I read this bit by Ben Thompson over at Stratechery on, essentially, how code kinda helped save
the worlda lot of the economy.
That alone had me thinking a bunch about the nature of code and what it means for an organization. But then came…
- Github Copilot: An “AI” Pair Programmer. A service that promises to help make coding more efficient by providing a very advanced form of auto-complete or type-ahead for programmers. It won’t just suggest terms or variable names. It’ll suggest entire algorithms.
It’s caused quite a stir in the world of code. A lot of digital ink has already been spilled on this topic.
- Questions on how well it really works.
- Debates on whether it’s the end of programming as a career.
- Concerns about the legality of it all.
- Investigations into the security concerns it creates.
- Curiosity on if it will just make every piece of software into Quake 2.
But one thing I haven’t seen discussed yet is any concerns about what such a tool will do to creativity in code.
Software engineering isn’t “just programming.” Many people who can write code are not strong software engineers. Some folks who can write particularly good code – even genius algorithms – may not be particularly great engineers. As a manager of software engineers, I’ve found that sometimes “great coders” can be a tricky fit for a team. Software Engineers have an ability to build software products that solve problems in a given domain in a manner that makes some facet of life better. There’s a “zoom in, zoom out” nature to software engineering; A need to keep many of the details and the big picture in your head at once. The more zoomed in aspect of a software engineer’s work often involves code. And creativity springs up in both the zoomed out and zoomed in modes of a software engineer’s work.
This “AI” that Copilot represents is not clever. It’s simply not creative. It will often just repeat what it’s already “seen.” It’s really just a regression to a mean based on a massive body of historic coding records. It may never be creative. And while a lot of code writing can get repetitive or rote, occasionally someone finds a creative approach to the most mundane code and eeks out another competitive advantage. I’m not sure it’s particularly wise to forfeit those small moments of “ah ha!” that only ever seem to happen at the crossroads of domain specific knowledge and boredom.
A long time ago I worked for a CEO who would always say, “sales is the lifeblood of a company.” That may well be true. It’s certainly vital. But in the age when software is eating the world, every company is either already a software company, soon to be one, or soon to be killed off by at least one. Software may not be the lifeblood of a company, but it’s almost certainly the nervous system. The software a company runs defines how a company “thinks” and how it executes. Code in that software can define advantages. The advantages may be revolutionary or they may be on the margins. There are many opportunities to find advantages in code. So if software engineers begin adopting “AI” tools that “write code” for them, then those engineers are forfeiting an opportunity for creativity. Any forfeit of creativity is a forfeit of competitive advantage.
There’s sure to be a use for Copilot and its inevitable successors. I don’t really want to write any more code than is necessary myself. But we should tread carefully as we adopt these sorts of tools. We should think carefully about the strategic and competitive costs we may subject ourselves to while adopting tools that promise more efficiency.
UPDATE: This is a nice post showing where/when a “happy medium” between efficiency and lossless creativity might be found. It’s much more “you don’t need to remember this arcane API” and less, “here’s an algorithm.”