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The hidden cost of AI coding

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#91

Post by JohnFen »

tptacek wrote: post #4

After all, if we lose the joy in our craft, what exactly are we optimizing for? Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? Our field has a whole ethos of open-source side projects people do for love and enjoyment. In the same way that you might spend your weekends in a basement woodworking shop without furnishing your entire house by hand, I think the craft of programming will be just fi…

> Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious?

No. There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method.

Presumably, the reason for choosing software development as the method of solving problems for people is because software development itself brings joy. Different people find joy in different aspects even of that, though.

For my part, the stuff that AI is promising to automate away is much of the stuff that I enjoy about software development. If I don't get to do that, that would turn my career into miserable drudgery.

Perhaps that's the future, though. I hope not, but if it is, then I need to face up to the truth that there is no role for me in the industry anymore. That would pretty much be a life crisis, as I'd have to find and train for something else.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#92

Post by JohnFen »

tptacek wrote: post #40
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? Look at the majority of the tech sector for the last ten years or so and tell me this answer again. Like I guess this is kind of true, if "problems for real people" equals "compensating for inefficiencies in our system for people with money" and "solutions" equals "making a poor person do it for them and paying them as little as legally possib…

Those of us who write software professionally are literally in a field premised on automating other people's jobs away. There is no profession with less claim to the moral high ground of worker rights than ours.

> Those of us who write software professionally are literally in a field premised on automating other people's jobs away.

How true that is depends on what sort of software you write. Very little of what I've accomplished in my career can be fairly described as "automating other people's jobs away".

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#93

Post by tmpz22 »

only-one1701 wrote: post #61
tmpz22 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prompt engineering is just trying that task on a variety of models and prompt variations until you can better understand the syntax needed to get the desired outcome, if the desired outcome can be gotten. Honestly you’re trying to prove AI is ineffective by telling us it didn’t work with your ineffective protocol. That is not a strong argument.

What should I have done there? Tell it to make sure that it gives me all 10 objects I give it back? Tell it to not put brackets in the wrong place? This is a real question --- what would you have done?

In no particular order:

* experiment with multiple models, preferably free high quality models like Gemini 2.5. Make sure you're using the right model, usually NOT one of the "mini" varieties even if its marketed for coding.

* experiment with different ways of delivering necessary context. I use repomix to compile a codebase to a text file and upload that file. I've found more integrated tooling like cursor, aider, or copilot, are less effective then dumping a text file into the prompt

* use multi-step workflows like the one described [1] to allow the llm to ask you questions to better understand the task

* similarly use a back-and-forth one-question-at-a-time conversation to have the llm draft the prompt for you

* for this prompt I would focus less on specifying 10 results and more about uploading all necessary modules (like with repomix) and then verifying all 10 were completed. Sometimes the act of over specifying results can corrupt the answer.

[1]: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/

I'm a pretty vocal AI-hater, partly because I use it day to day and am more familiar with its shortfalls - and I hate the naive zealotry so many pro-AI people bring to AI discussions. BUTTT we can also be a bit more scientific in our assessments before discarding LLMs - or else we become just like those naive pro-AI-everything zealots.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#94

Post by fragmede »

JohnFen wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #4

After all, if we lose the joy in our craft, what exactly are we optimizing for? Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? Our field has a whole ethos of open-source side projects people do for love and enjoyment. In the same way that you might spend your weekends in a basement woodworking shop without furnishing your entire house by hand, I think the craft of programming will be just fi…

> Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? No. There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method. Presumably, the reason for choosing software development as the method of solving problems for people is because software development itself brings joy. Different people find joy in di…

I'm probably just not as smart or creative as you, but say my problem is I have a ski cabin that I want to rent it to strangers for money. Nevermind a thousand, What are 100 ways without using software that I could do something about that, vs listing it on Airbnb?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#95

Post by eddd-ddde »

codr7 wrote: post #46
frollogaston wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as when higher-level languages replaced assembly for a lot of use cases. And btw, at least in places I've worked, better traditional tooling would replace a lot more headcount than AI would.

Not even close, those were all deterministic, this is probabilistic.

Yet the words you chose to use in this comment were entirely modelled inside your brain in a not so different manner.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#96

Post by simonw »

JohnFen wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #4

After all, if we lose the joy in our craft, what exactly are we optimizing for? Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? Our field has a whole ethos of open-source side projects people do for love and enjoyment. In the same way that you might spend your weekends in a basement woodworking shop without furnishing your entire house by hand, I think the craft of programming will be just fi…

> Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? No. There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method. Presumably, the reason for choosing software development as the method of solving problems for people is because software development itself brings joy. Different people find joy in di…

"There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method."

Software development is almost unique in the scale that it operates at. I can write code once and have it solve problems for dozens, hundreds, thousands or even millions of people.

If you want your work to solve problems for large numbers of people I have trouble thinking of any other form of work that's this accessible but allows you to help this many others.

Fields like civil engineering are a lot harder to break into!

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#97

Post by pdimitar »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #79
pdimitar wrote: post #17

I don't know man, maybe prompt most of your work, eyeball it and verify it rigorously (which if you cannot do, you should absolutely never touch an LLM!), run a script to commit and push after 3 hours and then... work on whatever code makes you happy without using an LLM? Let's stop pretending or denying it: most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could. Still, prompting LLMs…

> most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could Not me. I code because I love to code, and I get paid to do what I love. If that's not you…find a different profession?

Needlessly polarizing. I love coding since 12 years old (so more than 30 years at this point) but most work tasks I'm given are fairly boring and uninteresting and don't move almost any science or knowledge forward.

Delegating part of that to an LLM so I can code the stuff I love is a big win for my motivation and is making me doing the work tasks with a bit more desire and pleasure.

Please don't forget that most of us out there can't code for money anything that their heart wants. If you can, I'd be happy for you (and envious) but please understand that's also a fairly privileged life you'd be having in that case.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#98

Post by tptacek »

myk9001 wrote: post #90
tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Compare the quality of life of the Computers to that of any stably employed person today who owns a computer.

Got it, you're talking about workers getting ahead as a category -- no objections to that. I doubt the displaced computers managed to find a better job on average. Probably even their kids were disadvantaged since the parents had fewer options to support their education. So, who knows if this specific group of people and their descendants ever fully recovered let alone got ahead.

My argument is explicitly not premised on the claim that productivity improvements reliably work out to the benefit of existing workers. It's that practicing commercial software developers are agents of economic productivity, whether anticapitalist developers are happy about that or not, and have really no moral standing to complain about their jobs (or the joy in those jobs) being automated away. That's what increased economic productivity means: more getting done with less labor.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#99

Post by threatofrain »

JohnFen wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #4

After all, if we lose the joy in our craft, what exactly are we optimizing for? Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? Our field has a whole ethos of open-source side projects people do for love and enjoyment. In the same way that you might spend your weekends in a basement woodworking shop without furnishing your entire house by hand, I think the craft of programming will be just fi…

> Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? No. There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method. Presumably, the reason for choosing software development as the method of solving problems for people is because software development itself brings joy. Different people find joy in di…

> No. There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method.

I don't see why we should seek an explanation if there are thousands of ways to be useful to people. Is being a lawyer particularly better than being an accountant?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#100

Post by FuckButtons »

pdimitar wrote: post #17

I don't know man, maybe prompt most of your work, eyeball it and verify it rigorously (which if you cannot do, you should absolutely never touch an LLM!), run a script to commit and push after 3 hours and then... work on whatever code makes you happy without using an LLM? Let's stop pretending or denying it: most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could. Still, prompting LLMs…

> Let's stop pretending or denying it: most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could.

Hard disagree, I get to hyperfocus on making magical things that surprise and delight me every day.

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