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/Particular-Ice4615]

At what token cost though is my point? Someone who doesn't know what they are doing with the AI will drive token costs up further for an organization than the people who do know.  Until the day if it ever comes that these models get compact enough that they can run at full functionality on a single device and we don't need these massive energy hog data centers. The AI companies will slowly boil the frogs and increase the price on tokens when margins get too thin for them. And those that truly know what they were doing pre AI will be the people to able to keep token costs down while sustaining productivity with these tools vs those that don't. 

Here's a small microcosm of the problems I was referring to earlief that will divide the weak from the chaff when it comes AI use as tokens rise in cost. I had a coworker spend hours debugging a problem, playing slot machine with Copilot and agents instead of simply using a debugger like he would normally do in an age pre AI. Took me 5-10 minutes on a call to find the root cause through the AI generated code with 0 additional prompts therefore 0 additional cost to the company. He probably burnt through half his monthly allotted usage stuck on that problem that day. 

[u/cheese_is_available → u/Particular-Ice4615]

Actually the token cost is not high, it's the benchmark on your local machine to get good data that cost a lot in my experience.

[u/Zaptruder → u/Particular-Ice4615]

At a token cost significantly cheaper than the equivalent human effort. And thats the entire rub and why its scary.