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Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#21

Post by WillAdams »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #15

Since we are on this topic, how would I make an agent that does this job: I am writing an automation software that interfaces with a legacy windows CAD program. Depending on the automation, I just need a picture of the part. Sometimes I need part thickness. Sometimes I need to delete parts. Etc... Its very much interacting with the CAD system and checking the CAD file or output for desired results. I was considering…

What controls the legacy CAD app? Are you using AutoLISP? or VB scripting? Or something else?

Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#23

Post by Boxxed »

cdelsolar wrote: post #12
Gazoche wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing with debt is that it has to be paid eventually.

not if you get acquired

Is your argument that it's now someone else's problem? That it must be paid, just by someone else? Thanks, I hate it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#24

Post by traceroute66 »

I am in the same boat as you.

The only positive antigenic coding experience I had was using it as a "translator" from some old unmaintained shell + C code to Go.

I gave it the old code, told it to translate to Go. I pre-installed a compiled C binary and told it to validate its work using interop tests.

It took about four hours of what the vibecoding lovers call "prompt engineering" but at the end I have to admit it did give me a pretty decent "translation".

However for everything else I have tried (and yes, vibecoders, "tried" means very tightly defined tasks) all I have ever got is over-engineered vibecoding slop.

The worst part of of it is that because the typical cut-off window is anywhere between 6–18 months prior, you get slop that is full of deprecated code because there is almost always a newer/more efficient way to do things. Even in languages like Go. The difference between an AI-slop answer for Go 1.20 and a human coded Go 1.24/1.25 one can be substantial.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#25

Post by 3vidence »

Googler opinions are my own.

If agentic coding worked as well as people claimed on large codebases I would be seeing a massive shift at my Job... Im really not seeing it.

We have access to pretty much all the latest and greatest internally at no cost and it still seems the majority of code is still written and reviewed by people.

AI assisted coding has been a huge help to everyone but straight up agentic coding seems like it does not scale to these very large codebases. You need to keep it on the rails ALL THE TIME.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#27

Post by antonvs »

proc0 wrote: post #3

My experience is the same. In short, agents cannot plan ahead, or plan at a high level. This means they have a blindspot for design. Since they cannot design properly, it limits the kind of projects that are viable to smaller scopes (not sure exactly how small but in my experience, extremely small and simple). Anything that exceeds this abstract threshold has a good chance of being a net negative, with most of the co…

> Anyone who claims AI is great is not building a large or complex enough app

That might be true for agentic coding (caveat below), but AI in the hands of expert users can be very useful - "great" - in building large and complex apps. It's just that it has to be guided and reviewed by the human expert.

As for agentic coding, it may depend on the app. For example, Steve Yegge's "beads" system is over a quarter million lines of allegedly vibe-coded Go code. But developing a CLI like that may be a sweet spot for LLMs, it doesn't have all the messiness of typical business system requirements.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#28

Post by baal80spam »

lukebechtel wrote: post #19

1. Start with a plan. Get AI to help you make it, and edit. 2. Part of the plan should be automated tests. AI can make these for you too, but you should spot check for reasonable behavior. 3. Use Claude 4.5 Opus 4. Use Git, get the AI to check in its work in meaningful chunks, on its own git branch. 5. Ask the AI to keep am append-only developer log as a markdown file, and to update it whenever its state significantl…

> Use Claude 4.5 Opus

In my org we are experimenting with agentic flows, and we've noticed that model choice matters especially for autonomy.

GPT-5.2 performed much better for long-running tasks. It stayed focused, followed instructions, and completed work more reliably.

Opus 4.5 tended to stop earlier and take shortcuts to hand control back sooner.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?

#29

Post by PaulHoule »

Treat it as a pair programmer. Ask it questions like "How do I?", "When I do X, Y happens, why is that?", "I think Z, prove me wrong" or "I want to do P, how do you think we should do it?"

Feed it little tasks (30 s-5 min) and if you don't like this or that about the code it gives you either tell it something like

   Rewrite the selection so it uses const, ? and :
or edit something yourself and say

   I edited what you wrote to make it my own,  what do you think about my changes?
If you want to use it as a junior dev who gets sent off to do tickets and comes back with a patch three days later that will fail code review be my guest, but I greatly enjoy working with a tight feedback loop.
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