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Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

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Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#211

Post by greenpizza13 »

I work at a very prominent AI company. We have access to every tool under the sun. There are various levels of success for all levels — managers, PMs, engineers.

We have cursor with essentially unlimited Opus 4.6 and it’s fundamentally changed my workflow as a senior engineer. I find I spend much more time designing and testing my software and development time is almost entirely prompting and reviewing AI changes.

I’m afraid my coding skills are atrophying, in fact I know the are, but I’m not sure if the coding was the part of my job I truly enjoyed. I enjoy thinking higher-level: architecture, connecting components, focusing on the user experience. But I think using these AI tools is a form of golden handcuffs. If I go work at a startup without the money I pay for these models, I think for the first time in my career I would be less likely to be able to successfully code a feature than I could last year.

So professionally there are pros and cons. My design and architecture skills have greatly improved as I am spending more time doing this.

Personally it’s so much fun. I’ve made several side projects I would have never done otherwise. Working with Claude code on greenfield projects is a blast.

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#212

Post by piker »

I am working on a sub 100KLOC Rust application and can't productively use the agentic workflows to improve that application.

On the other hand, I have tried them a number of times in greenfield situations with Python and the web stack and experienced the simultaneous joy and existential dread of others. They can really stand new projects up quick.

As a founder, this leaves me with what I describe as the "generation ship" problem. Is it possible that the architecture we have chosen for my project is so far out of the training data that it would be faster to ditch the project and reimplement it from scratch in a Claude-yolo style? So far, I'm convinced not because the code I've seen in somewhat novel circumstances is fairly mid, but it's hard to shake the thought.

I do find chatting with the models incredibly helpful in all contexts. They are also excellent at configuring services.

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#213

Post by humbleharbinger »

I'm an engineer at Amazon - we use Kiro (our own harness) with Opus 4.6 underneath.

Most of my gripes are with the harness, CC is way better.

In terms of productivity I'm def 2-4X more productive at work, >10x more productive on my side business. I used to work overtime to deliver my features. Now I work 9-5 and am job hunting on the side while delivering relatively more features.

I think a lot of people are missing that AI is not just good for writing code. It's good for data analysis and all sorts of other tasks like debugging and deploying. I regularly use it to manage deployment loops (ex. make a code change and then deploy the changes to gamma and verify they work by making a sample request and verifying output from cloudwatch logs etc). I have built features in 2 weeks that would take me a month just because I'd have to learn some nitty technical details that I'd never use again in my life.

For data analysis I have an internal glue catalog, I can just tell it to query data and write a script that analyzes X for me.

AI and agents particularly have been a huge boon for me. I'm really scared about automation but also it doesn't make sense to me that SWE would be automated first before other careers since SWE itself is necessary to automate others. I think there are some fundamental limitations on LLMs (without understanding the details too much), but whatever level of intelligence we've currently unlocked is fundamentally going to change the world and is already changing how SWE looks.

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#214

Post by jansan »

It is great to solve "puzzle" problems and remove road blocks. In the past, whenever I got stuck, I often got frustrated and gave up. In so many cases AI hints to the corret solution and helps me continue. It's like a knowledgeable colleague that you can ask for help when you get stuck.

Another thing is auditing and code polishing. I asked Claude to polish a working, but still rough browser pluging, consisting of two simple Javascript files. It took ten iterations and a full day of highly intensive work to get the quality I wanted. I would say the result is good, but I could not do this process vey often without going insane. And I do not want to do this with a more complex project, yet.

So, yes, I am using it. For me it's a tool, knowledge resource, puzzle solver, code reviewer and source for inspiration. It's not a robot to write my code.

And never trust it blindly!

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#215

Post by turlockmike »

csto12 wrote: post #205
NinjaTrance wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use Claude Opus (4.5, 4.6) all the time and catch it making making subtle mistakes, all the time. Didn't we make subtle mistakes without AI? Why did we spend so much time debugging and doing code reviews? > Are you really being more productive (let’s say 3x times more) At least 2x more productive, and that's huge.

I think you’ve forgotten about the context of OP’s post. He said he uninstalled vscode and uses a dashboard for managing his agents. How are you going to be able to do code review well when you don’t even know what’s going on in your own project? I catch subtle bugs Claude emits because I know exactly what’s happening because I’m actively working with Claude, not letting Claude do everything.

The code is still visible if i want to review it.

But since I have a strong rule about always writing unit tests before code, my confidence is a lot higher.

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#216

Post by turlockmike »

baq wrote: post #159
csto12 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read comments about this on X, here, and other places, yet I have ever seen there be proof this is an actual productivity boost. I use Claude Opus (4.5, 4.6) all the time and catch it making making subtle mistakes, all the time. Are you really being more productive (let’s say 3x times more), or just feel that way because you are constantly prompting Claude? Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t buy it.

typical experience when only using one foundational model TBH. results are much better if you let different models review each other. the bottleneck now is testing. that isn't going away anytime soon, it'll get much worse for a bit while models are good at churning code out that's slightly wrong or technically correct, but solving a different problem than intended; it's going to be a relatively short lived situation…

The way LLMs work, different tokens can activate different parts of the network. I generally have 2-3 different agents review it from different perspectives. I give them identities, like Martin Fowler, or Uncle Bob, or whatever I think is relevant.

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#217

Post by boredemployee »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #208
boredemployee wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely understand. We're in a phase where founders are obsessed with productivity so everything seens to work just fine and as intended with few slops. They're racing to be as productive as possible so we can get who knows where. There are times when I honestly don't even know why we're automating certain tasks anymore. In the past, we had the option of saying we didn't know something, especially when it was an…

> Today, we no longer have that option, because knowledge is just a prompt away Something resembling knowledge anyway. A sort of shambling mound wearing knowledge like a skinsuit

While I agree, I can't deny that AI is doing the job most of the time. But the hunt for the supreme productivity feels disgusting sometimes.

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#218

Post by dawnerd »

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #13

It has made my job an awful slog, and my personal projects move faster. At work, the devs up the chain now do everything with AI – not just coding – then task me with cleaning it up. It is painful and time consuming, the code base is a mess. In one case I had to merge a feature from one team into the main code base, but the feature was AI coded so it did not obey the API design of the main project. It also included a…

We’ve had this too and made a change to our code review guidelines to mention rejection if code is clearly just ai slop. We’ve let like four contractors go so far over it. Like ya they get work done fast but then when it comes to making it production ready they’re completely incapable. Last time we just merged it anyways to hit a budget it set everyone back and we’re still cleaning up the mess.

Re: Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?

#219

Post by turlockmike »

wg0 wrote: post #142
wcedmisten wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software engineering is a mostly solved problem at this point I guess that's why Claude Code has 0 open issues on Github. Since software engineering is solved, their autonomous agents can easily fix their own software much better and faster than human devs. They can just add "make no mistakes" to their prompt and the model can solve any problem! Oh wait, they have 5,000+ open issues on Github[1]. I'm yet to be conv…

The OP probably is the only person in their team. There's no other plausible explanation of this level of AI psychosis. PS: All in for AI agents I use all the time but sorry - SE is not a solved problem. Yet.

We have 80 engineers.
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