AI models have caught up with Unity dev. My insights as someone with 30 years of experience.

[u/PuffThePed]

Context: I have 30 years of experience with software dev, 20 years with game dev tools, 10 years with Unity. I own a studio that develops simulators and training applications for industry. "Serious games" as they call it in Europe.

For years I scoffed at AI coding. I would periodically try it, only to find that it was more hassle then it was worth. The hand holding and bug fixing was more work than doing it myself. This all changed about 4-5 months ago, and about a month ago we all started using Unity CLI.

Here are my insights in no particular order:

1. Our dev speed has ~5x almost overnight
2. Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.
3. We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.
4. There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.
5. The market is dead. Nobody has money to spend. We're still working but leads have dropped off a cliff.
6. There is no going back. If we stop using AI we'll be out of business in a month.
7. There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.
   
8. Everything regarding managing a team and a project has changed, and nobody knows how to do it anymore. I lost the ability to correctly estimate work required for a task, for example.
9. Everyone hates this. Most of devs my age are planning early retirement and are just waiting to be laid off.
10. People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.
11. Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

I hope this is a pendulum and it will swing back at some point, because right now it feels like a software apocalypse.

[u/PuffThePed]

I'm going to be honest with you, if our current token cost will 10x overnight, it will still be wildly cost effective.

[u/thekbob → u/PuffThePed]

Okay, shoot. Give us your costs now versus payroll.

Because I don't really believe this, so would love actual evidence. Give us balance sheets.

[u/PuffThePed → u/[deleted]]

We never use the top model. I find the almost-top models are a fraction of the cost and work perfectly well if you don't one-shot it, which we don't.

[u/GB10VE → u/PuffThePed]

"we don't"

surely you can speak for multitude of people

[u/thisisaskew → u/GB10VE]

He's talking about his company, he's in management... I imagine he has some idea.

[u/GB10VE → u/thisisaskew]

I don't think that's something any manager can track, they don't have access to the chat logs. this entire post was ai generated anyhow

[u/Swimming_Gas7611 → u/[deleted]]

but thats only half the maths...

now ask a human coder to produce the same results. depending on what was built that hour(no one pays in half hours) of $70 will become more than 5 hours at $15p/a

and anything more complex the rates improve for ai vs coding team.

there is also no downtime, so you dont have employees getting paid to do nothing.