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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

#161

Post by dheera »

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,…

I disagree, I think it's absolutely astounding that they've gotten this good in such a short time, and I think we'll get better models in the near future.

By the way, prompting models properly helps a lot for generating good code. They get lazy if you don't explicitly ask for well-written code (or put that in the system prompt).

It also helps immensely to have two contexts, one that generates the code and one that reviews it (and has a different system prompt).

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#162

Post by manmal »

sivaragavan wrote: post #138

Aah.. I have been repeating this to my team for several days now. Thanks for putting this together. I start every piece of work, green or brown, with a markdown file that often contains my plan, task breakdown, data models (including key fields), API / function details, and sample responses. For the tool part, though, I took a slightly different approach. I decided to use Rust primarily for all my projects, as the co…

> I have noticed many more errors are detected in AI-generated Rust code than in any other language.

Is that because the Rust compiler is just a very strong guardrail? Sounds like it could work well for Swift too. If only xcodebuild were less of a pain for big projects.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#163

Post by ManuelKiessling »

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,…

Thanks for looking into it.

While I would have hoped for a better result, I'm not surprised. In this particular case, I really didn't care about the code at all; I cared about the end result at runtime, that is, can I create a working, stable solution that solves my problem, in a tech stack I'm not familiar with?

(While still taking care of well-structured requirements and guard rails — not to guarantee a specific level of code quality per se, but to ensure that the AI works towards my goals without the need to intervene as much as possible).

I will spin up another session where I ask it to improve the implementation, and report back.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#164

Post by conductr »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #123
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…

I know what you mean. It takes the satisfaction out of a certain class of problems knowing that you can just generate the solution. On the other hand, most tasks aren't fun nor satisfying and frankly they are a waste of time, like realizing you're about to spend the afternoon recredentializing in some aspect of Webpack/Gradle/BouncyCastle/Next.js/Combine/x/y/z just to solve one minor issue. And it's pure bliss when t…

I like the antidote and does remind me that I tried to create a game, which gamedev has always been a challenge for me. I’ve attempted a few times and didn’t get very far with this one either. I think I could do the coding even though scale is large, but I’m not artistic and asset generation/iteration is my block. I tried a handful of ai tools specifically for this and found they were all really far behind. I don’t particularly like working with asset store art, maybe for parts but characters and the vibe of the game usually would excite and motivate me early on and I can’t quite get there to sustain the effort

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#165

Post by johnnyanmac »

ramesh31 wrote: post #76
nsonha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you HAVE TO one-shot? No one says you have to code like those influencers. You are a software engineer, use AI like one, iteratively.

>No one says you have to code like those influencers. You are a software engineer, use AI like one, iteratively. This is my issue with all the AI naysayers at this point. It seems to all boil down to "haha, stupid noob can't code so he uses AI" in their minds. It's like they are incapable of understanding that there could simultaneously be a bunch of junior devs pushing greenfield YouTube demos of vibe coding, while…

My grievances are simple: an expert programming utilizing AI will be a truly dangerous force.

But that's not what we get in this early stage of grifting. We get 10% marketing buzz on how cool this is with stuff that cannot be recreated in the tool alone, and 89% of lazy or inexperienced developers who just turn in slop with little or no iteration. The latter don't even understand the code they generated.

That 1% will be amazing, it's too bad the barrel is full of rotten apples hiding that potential. The experts also tend to keep to themselves, in my experience. the 89% includes a lot of dunning-kruger as well which makes those outspoken experts questionable (maybe a part of why real experts aren't commenting on their experience).

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#166

Post by ManuelKiessling »

ramesh31 wrote: post #28
milicat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I browse through this, the more I agree. I feel like one could delete almost all comments from that project without losing any information – which means, at least the variable naming is (probably?) sensible. Then again, I don't know the application domain. Also… def _save_current_date_time(current_date_time_file: str, current_date_time: str) -> None: with Path(current_date_time_file).open("w") as f: f.write(…

>The scary thing is: I have seen professional human developers write worse code. This is kind of the rub of it all. If the code works, passes all relevant tests, is reasonably maintainable, and can be fitted into the system correctly with a well defined interface, does it really matter? I mean at that point its kind of like looking at the output of a bytecode compiler and being like "wow what a mess". And it's not li…

Good insight, and indeed quite exactly my state of mind while creating this particular solution.

Iin this case, I did put in the guard rails to ensure that I reach my goal in hopefully a straight line and a quickly as possible, but to be honest, I did not give much thought to long-term maintainability or ease of extending it with more and more features, because I needed a very specific solution for a use case that doesn't change much.

I'm definitely working differently in my brown-field projects where I'm intimately familiar with the tech stack and architecture — I do very thorough code reviews afterwards.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#167

Post by conductr »

woah wrote: post #125
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…

Try being a drummer!

I’ve actually been considering it. Although I think I’m probably tone deaf or rhythmically challenged and my rotator cuff is kinda messed up from an old injury, I’ve been trying to convince my 6 year old to take it up so I could justify having a kit around the house

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#168

Post by ManuelKiessling »

mjr00 wrote: post #33
ramesh31 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The scary thing is: I have seen professional human developers write worse code. This is kind of the rub of it all. If the code works, passes all relevant tests, is reasonably maintainable, and can be fitted into the system correctly with a well defined interface, does it really matter? I mean at that point its kind of like looking at the output of a bytecode compiler and being like "wow what a mess". And it's not li…

> If the code works, passes all relevant tests, is reasonably maintainable, and can be fitted into the system correctly with a well defined interface, does it really matter? You're not wrong here, but there's a big difference in programming one-off tooling or prototype MVPs and programming things that need to be maintained for years and years. We did this song and dance pretty recently with dynamic typing. Developers…

I'm certainly extremely happy for having an extensive type system in my daily driver languages especially when working with AI coding assistance — it's yet another very crucial guard rail that ensures that keeps the AI on track and makes a lot of fuckups downright impossible.

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#169

Post by FeepingCreature »

milicat wrote: post #24
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,…

The more I browse through this, the more I agree. I feel like one could delete almost all comments from that project without losing any information – which means, at least the variable naming is (probably?) sensible. Then again, I don't know the application domain. Also… def _save_current_date_time(current_date_time_file: str, current_date_time: str) -> None: with Path(current_date_time_file).open("w") as f: f.write(…

> there is a lot of obviously useful abstraction being missed, wasting lines of code that will all need to be maintained.

This is a human sentiment because we can fairly easily pick up abstractions during reading. AIs have a much harder time with this - they can do it, but it takes up very limited cognitive resources. In contrast, rewriting the entire software for a change is cheap and easy. So to a point, flat and redundant code is actually beneficial for a LLM.

Remember, the code is written primarily for AIs to read and only incidentally for humans to execute :)

Re: Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age

#170

Post by johnnyanmac »

bongodongobob wrote: post #131
nottorp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you blindly trust any code? Did you tell it to optimize for speed? If not, why are you surprised it didn't?

>Why would you blindly trust any code?

because that is what the market is trying to sell?

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