Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

manuel.kiessling.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 323 posts

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#41

Post by nottorp »

necovek wrote: post #9

The premise might possibly be true, but as an actually seasoned Python developer, I've taken a look at one file: https://github.com/dx-tooling/platform-problem-monitoring-co... All of it smells of a (lousy) junior software engineer: from configuring root logger at the top, module level (which relies on module import caching not to be reapplied), over not using a stdlib config file parser and building one themselves,…

Here's a rl example from today:

I asked $random_llm to give me code to recursively scan a directory and give me a list of file names relative to the top directory scanned and their sizes.

It gave me working code. On my test data directory it needed ... 6.8 seconds.

After 5 min of eliminating obvious inefficiencies the new code needed ... 1.4 seconds. And i didn't even read the docs for the used functions yet, just changed what seemed to generate too many filesystem calls for each file.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#42

Post by atemerev »

This is excellent, and matches my experience.

Those lamenting the loss of manual programming: we are free to hone our skills on personal projects, but for corporate/consulting work, you cannot ignore 5x speed advantage. It's over. AI-assisted coding won.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#43

Post by cglace »

fragmede wrote: post #40
conductr wrote: post #37

As a long time hobby coder, like 25 years and I think I’m pretty good(?), this whole LLM /vibecoding thing has zapped my creativity the past year or so. I like the craft of making things. I used tools I enjoy working with and learn new ones all the time (never got on the JS/react train). Sometimes I have an entrepreneur bug and want to create a marketable solution, but I often just like to build. Im also the kind of…

Fascinating. it's gone the other way for me. because I can now whip up a serious contender to any SaaS business in a week, it's made everything more fun, not less.

So you can create a serious contender to Salesforce or Zapier in a week?

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#44

Post by fragmede »

cglace wrote: post #43
fragmede wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. it's gone the other way for me. because I can now whip up a serious contender to any SaaS business in a week, it's made everything more fun, not less.

So you can create a serious contender to Salesforce or Zapier in a week?

like an Eventbrite or a shopmonkey. but yeah, you don't think you could? Salesforce is a whole morass. not every customer uses every corner of it, and Salesforce will nickel and dime you with their consultants and add ons and plugins. if you can be more specific as to which bit of Salesforce you want to provide to a client we can go deep.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#45

Post by noodletheworld »

> Once again, the AI agent implemented this entire feature without requiring me to write any code manually.

> For controllers, I might include a small amount of essential details like the route name: [code]

Commit history: https://github.com/dx-tooling/platform-problem-monitoring-co...

Look, I honestly think this is a fair article and some good examples, but what is with this inane “I didn’t write any of it myself” claim that is clearly false that every one of these articles keeps bringing up?

What’s wrong with the fact you did write some code as part of it? You clearly did.

So weird.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#46

Post by bongodongobob »

nottorp wrote: post #41
necovek wrote: post #9

The premise might possibly be true, but as an actually seasoned Python developer, I've taken a look at one file: https://github.com/dx-tooling/platform-problem-monitoring-co... All of it smells of a (lousy) junior software engineer: from configuring root logger at the top, module level (which relies on module import caching not to be reapplied), over not using a stdlib config file parser and building one themselves,…

Here's a rl example from today: I asked $random_llm to give me code to recursively scan a directory and give me a list of file names relative to the top directory scanned and their sizes. It gave me working code. On my test data directory it needed ... 6.8 seconds. After 5 min of eliminating obvious inefficiencies the new code needed ... 1.4 seconds. And i didn't even read the docs for the used functions yet, just ch…

Nice, sounds like it saved you some time.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#47

Post by bsoles »

datavirtue wrote: post #15

That free GitHub Copilot though. Microsoft is a relentless drug dealer. If you haven't tried Copilot Edits yet, hold on to your hat. I started using it in a clean Express project and a Vue3 project in VS Code. Basically flawless edits from prompt over multiple files, new files...the works. Easy.

But can it center a div?

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#48

Post by bongodongobob »

imiric wrote: post #18
rybosome wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok - not wrong at all. Now take that feedback and put it in a prompt back to the LLM. They’re very good at honing bad code into good code with good feedback. And when you can describe good code faster than you can write it - for instance it uses a library you’re not intimately familiar with - this kind of coding can be enormously productive.

> They’re very good at honing bad code into good code with good feedback. And they're very bad at keeping other code good across iterations. So you might find that while they might've fixed the specific thing you asked for—in the best case scenario, assuming no hallucinations and such—they inadvertently broke something else. So this quickly becomes a game of whack-a-mole, at which point it's safer, quicker, and easie…

This typically happens when you run the chat too long. When it gives you a new codebase, fire up a new chat so the old stuff doesn't poison the context window.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#49

Post by conductr »

fragmede wrote: post #40
conductr wrote: post #37

As a long time hobby coder, like 25 years and I think I’m pretty good(?), this whole LLM /vibecoding thing has zapped my creativity the past year or so. I like the craft of making things. I used tools I enjoy working with and learn new ones all the time (never got on the JS/react train). Sometimes I have an entrepreneur bug and want to create a marketable solution, but I often just like to build. Im also the kind of…

Fascinating. it's gone the other way for me. because I can now whip up a serious contender to any SaaS business in a week, it's made everything more fun, not less.

Yeah, I see that perspective bu I guess my thought process is “what’s the point, if everyone else can now do the same”

I had long ago culled many of those ideas based on my ability to execute the marketing plan or the “do I really even want to run that kind of business?” test. I already knew I could build whatever I wanted to exist so My days of pumping out side projects ended long ago and I became more selective with my time.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#50

Post by nottorp »

bongodongobob wrote: post #46
nottorp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a rl example from today: I asked $random_llm to give me code to recursively scan a directory and give me a list of file names relative to the top directory scanned and their sizes. It gave me working code. On my test data directory it needed ... 6.8 seconds. After 5 min of eliminating obvious inefficiencies the new code needed ... 1.4 seconds. And i didn't even read the docs for the used functions yet, just ch…

Nice, sounds like it saved you some time.

You "AI" enthusiasts always try to find a positive spin :)

What if I had trusted the code? It was working after all.

I'm guessing that if i asked for string manipulation code it would have done something worth posting on accidentally quadratic.

Post reply on HN