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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?

#591

Post by diacritical »

gilbetron wrote: post #546
diacritical wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My org [...] is all-in on AI with the goal of having 100% of our code AI generated within the next year. > People who disagree at all levels of seniority have been made to leave the organization. So either they're right (100% AI-generated code soon) and you'll be out of a job or they'll be wrong, but by then the smart people will have been gone for a while. Do you see a third future where next year you'll still hav…

"100% AI-generated code soon" doesn't mean no humans, just that the code itself is generated by AI. Generating code is a relatively small part of software engineering. And if AI can do the whole job, then white collar work will largely be gone.

I agree, but it seems like if we can tell the AI "follow these requirements and use this architecture to make these features", we're a small step away from letting the AI choose the requirements, the architecture and the features. And even if it's not 100% autonomous, I don't see how companies will still need the same number of employees. If you're the lead $role, you'll likely stay, but what would be the use of anyone else?

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

#592

Post by rxm233 »

viccis wrote: post #268

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but the worst part for me is that a lot of management LOVES to use Claude to generate 50 page design documents, PRDs, etc., and send them to us to "please review as soon as you can". Nobody reads it, not even the people making it. I'm watching some employees just generate endless slide decks of nonsense and then waffle when asked any specific questions. If any of that is read, it is b…

I've definitely seen this, I have a theory as to how this kind of thing actually would affect AI predictions since people seem to only focus on the pure-productivity enhancing effects of AI and discounting the fact that a large portion of work was never productive to begin with...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347983

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

#593

Post by bdangubic »

johnsimer wrote: post #572
bdangubic wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possibility yes - reality often no due to cost that would have to be incurred to make this happen. the "how they got those users" is the easy part if you offering is same(ish) at a fraction of the cost.

not if LTV is already only a little higher than CAC and all the marketing channels are already saturated

I don't disagree but in this day/age figuring out who the customers are is fairly trivial with "AI" and then simple marketing campaign will at least point the right eyes to the right place. Unless there is large moat switching will happen (it is already happening across the industry which is why we are hearing about the death of SaaS all that jazz...)

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

#594

Post by stephbook »

input_sh wrote: post #534
stephbook wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, good agents do that themselves. Second, specifying an exact and current version also works. Third, I'm mostly concerned about having a working example. I'm talking about breaking changes and APIs not existing in newer framework version. As long as it compiles, it's clear the approach still works.

Well then your experience is not really relevant in this thread when the prompt is specifically asking for professional coding work now, is it? You're not an LLM (at least I don't think you are), you're not obliged to respond with an answer even when that answer is only tangentially related to the prompt.

I'm a full-time software engineer and develop those prototypes as part of my work. Also, I won't respond any further to your comments unless they improve. If you don't like what I'm doing – fine. Just shut up. You don't have to respond to every one of my comments.

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

#595

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

zaphar wrote: post #527
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're falling victim to the just-world fallacy.

I am absolutely certain the world isn't just. I'm also absolutely certain the world can't get just unless you let people suffer consequences for their decisions. It's the only way people can world.

IME that simply doesn't work in professional environments. People will either misrepresent the failure as a success or find someone else to pin the blame on. Others won't bother taking the time to understand what actually happened because they're too busy and often simply don't care. And if it's nominally your responsibility to keep something up, running, and stable then you're a very likely scapegoat if it fails. Which is probably why people are throwing stuff that doesn't work at you in the first place. Trying to solve the problem through politics is highly unlikely to work because if you were any good at politics you wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.

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

#596

Post by cyanydeez »

MarkusQ wrote: post #395
cyanydeez wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, you'd think these commercial organizations would sit down with like, one marketer, and just put a non-trivial app together in real time and screen cap it all... like, we've had this technology for several decades now, and none of these AI tools are like: "This is so great, let me show everyone how to write a CRUD database with a notepad and calendar app" or whatever.

Several decades? Seriously? Several decades ago, we barely had the internet, rockets were single use only, and smart phones were coming any day now. CRISPR was yet to be named, social media meant movies from Blockbusters or HBO that you watched with friends. GLP-1 was a meh option for diabetics. I agree with your overall point but...your time frame is way off.

I was refering to the YouTubification of decades of marketing these products.

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

#598

Post by blandflakes »

sjducb wrote: post #514
tenacious_tuna wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately that's only an option if you can sustain the impact to your career (not getting promoted, or getting fired). My org (publicly traded, household name, People who disagree at all levels of seniority have been made to leave the organization. Practically speaking, there's no sexy pitch you can make about doing quality grunt work. I've made that mistake virtually every time I've joined a company: I make perform…

Hi thanks for this brilliant feature. It will really improve the product. However it needs a little bit more work before we can merge it into our main product. 1) The new feature does not follow the existing API guidelines found here: see examples an and b. 2) The new feature does not use our existing input validation and security checking code, see example. Once the following points have been addressed we will be ha…

Engineers also wrote good code before AI. We don't get to pretend that the speed increase of AI only increases the output of quality code - it also allows engineers to send much more crap!

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

#599

Post by xantronix »

slazien wrote: post #566
xantronix wrote: post #565

Before the advent of widespread LLM usage, and more particularly, before LLM-using coworkers began submitting large PRs against codebases I am the primary maintainer of, my velocity had never been greater. I do not like the current culture around LLMs. I do not use LLMs, I shall continue to resist any peer pressure to use them, much as I have resisted IDEs in favour of CLI tooling, vim, tmux and the like. I feel my o…

This feels like a pretty negative take on what seems like impactful technology that is not going away, and will (and already has had) big impacts on how people work and build. Do you completely reject the idea of using them, ever? Do they have absolutely 0 utility for you?

It's a multifaceted principled stand I take for reasons I do not wish to get into on HN. There are more than enough people I can associate with who feel similarly to me outside of work and HN that I will not feel particularly compelled to use LLMs anytime soon. I cannot say this will remain the case forever, however, I just don't experience FOMO about these things.

As it stands today, I accomplish tasks at the speed of understanding, and that's with my "ancient" tooling.

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

#600

Post by stephenr »

scuff3d wrote: post #574
stephenr wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... you can't use JetBrains? What logic created a scenario where you can't use arguably the best range of cross platform IDEs, but you can somehow use spicy autocomplete to imitate some of their functionality, poorly?

I work in an extremely security minded industry. There are strict guidelines about what we can and can't use. JetBrains isn't excluded for technical reasons, but geopolitical ones. The AI models we use are all internally hosted, and any software we use has to go through an extensive security review.

> JetBrains isn't excluded for technical reasons, but geopolitical ones.

This makes perfect sense. Who could possibly trust a company run from... the Netherlands.

I get that you don't make the rules you're working under, but Jetbrains of all companies seems like a bizarre "risk" factor, given their history and actions.

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