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Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

manuel.kiessling.net

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Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#91

Post by selcuka »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #89
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,…

>to a raciness in load_json where it's checked for file existence with an if and then carrying on as if the file is certainly there... Explain the issue with load_json to me more. From my reading it checks if the file exists, then raises an error if it does not. How is that carrying on as if the file is certainly there?

There is a small amount of time between the `if` and the `with` where another process can delete the file, hence causing a race condition. Attempting to open the file and catching any exceptions raised is generally safer.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#92

Post by noisy_boy »

nottorp wrote: post #50
bongodongobob wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on how toxic the culture is in your workplace. This could have been an opportunity to "work" on another JIRA task showing 600% improvement over AI generated code.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#93

Post by bdcravens »

only-one1701 wrote: post #5

Increasingly I’m realizing that in most cases there is a SIGNIFICANT difference between how useful AI is on greenfield projects vs how useful it is on brownfield projects. For the former: pretty good! For the brownfield, it’s often worse than useless.

I find that feeding in a bunch of context can help you refactor, add tests to a low coverage application pretty quickly, etc in brownfield apps.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#94

Post by taberiand »

selcuka wrote: post #91
NewsaHackO wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to a raciness in load_json where it's checked for file existence with an if and then carrying on as if the file is certainly there... Explain the issue with load_json to me more. From my reading it checks if the file exists, then raises an error if it does not. How is that carrying on as if the file is certainly there?

There is a small amount of time between the `if` and the `with` where another process can delete the file, hence causing a race condition. Attempting to open the file and catching any exceptions raised is generally safer.

Won't it throw the same "FileNotFound" exception in that case? The issue being bothering to check if it exists in the first place I suppose.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#95

Post by carpo »

echelon wrote: post #14
only-one1701 wrote: post #5

Increasingly I’m realizing that in most cases there is a SIGNIFICANT difference between how useful AI is on greenfield projects vs how useful it is on brownfield projects. For the former: pretty good! For the brownfield, it’s often worse than useless.

I think there's a similar analogy here for products in the AI era. Bolting AI onto existing products probably doesn't make sense. AI is going to produce an entirely new set of products with AI-first creation modalities. You don't need AI in Photoshop / Gimp / Krita to manipulate images. You need a brand new AI-first creation tool that uses your mouse inputs like magic to create images. Image creation looks nothing li…

I've been thinking about this a lot and agree. I think the UI will change drastically, maybe making voice central and you just describe what you want done. When language, image and voice models can be run locally things will get crazy.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#96

Post by Henchman21 »

gerdesj wrote: post #71
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,…

My current favourite LLM wankery example is this beauty: https://blog.fahadusman.com/proxmox-replacing-failed-drive-i... Note how it has invented the faster parameter for the zpool command. It is possible that the blog writer hallucinated a faster parameter themselves without needing a LLM - who knows. I think all developers should add a faster parameter to all commands to make them run faster. Perhaps a LLM could cr…

What makes you think this was created by an LLM?

I suspect they might actually have a pool named faster -- I know I've named pools similarly in the past. This is why I now name my pools after characters from the Matrix, as is tradition.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#97

Post by nunez »

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,…

Makes sense given that so much of the training data for so many of these tools are trained on hello world examples where this kind of configuration is okay. Not like this will matter in a world where there are no juniors to replace aged-out seniors because AI was "good enough"...

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#98

Post by BikiniPrince »

rybosome wrote: post #11
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,…

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.

I’ve found AI tools extremely helpful in getting me up to speed with a library or defining an internal override not exposed by the help. However, if I’m not explicit in how to solve a problem the result looks like the bad code it’s been ingesting.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#99

Post by 8note »

denkmoon wrote: post #79

Senior developer skills haven't changed. Wrangling paragraphs of business slop into real technical requirements, communicating these to various stakeholders, understanding how all the discrete parts of whatever system you're building fit together, being responsible for timelines, getting the rest of the team coordinated/aligned and on-track, etc. Actually coding is a relatively small part of my job. I could use an LL…

with the ai age, i think its also making sure team members use ai in similar was to get repeatable results

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#100

Post by istjohn »

pphysch wrote: post #70

I'm skeptical that 1. Clearly define requirements 2. Clearly sketch architecture 3. Setup code tool suite 4. Let AI agent write the remaining code Is better price-performance than going lighter on 1-3 and instead of 4, spending that time writing the code yourself with heavy input from LLM autocomplete, which is what LLMs are elite at. The agent will definitely(?) write the code faster, but quality and understanding (…

We're just in a transitional moment. It's not realistic to expect LLM capabilities to leapfrog from marginally better autocomplete to self-guided autocoder without passing through a phase where it shows tantalizing hints of being able to go solo yet lacks the ability to follow through. Over the next couple years, the reliability, versatility, and robustness of LLMs as coders will steadily increase.
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