Programming

A full-stack developer based in India, who identified himself to The Register but asked not to be named, explained that the financial software company where he's worked for the past few months has made a concerted effort to force developers to use AI coding tools while downsizing development staff.

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He also said the AI-generated code is often full of bugs. He cited one issue that occurred before his arrival that meant there was no session handling in his employer's application, so anybody could see the data of any organization using his company's software.

This kind of things are exactly what I see with a mid-level dev who enthusiastically tries to use GenAI in embedded development: He produces code that seems to work, but misses essential correctness features, like using correct locking in multi-threaded code. With the effect that his code is full of subtle races conditions, unexpected crashes, things that can't work but would take months to debug because the errors are non-deterministic. He has not fully understood why locks are necessary or what Undefined Behaviour in C++ really means. For example, he does not see a problem with a function with a declared return value to not return a value (inconceivably, gcc accepts such code by default, but using the value is undefined behaviour). He resists to eliminate compiler warnings or instrument his code with -Werror -Wall.

Unfortunately, I am not in the position to fire him. He was the top developer for two years. Also, the company was quite successful in the past and has, over these successful years, developed an unhealthy high level of tolerance for technucal debt.

And more unfortunately, the company's balance sheet is already underwater, because of extreme short-term thinking in upper management and large shifts in markets, and is unlikely to survive the resulting mess.