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

The hidden cost of AI coding

terriblesoftware.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 475 posts

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#131

Post by milesrout »

doix wrote: post #127
dxroshan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I've noticed in that respect is that I just read what it does and then immediately reason why it's there .... How if it hallucinate and gives you wrong code and explanation? It is better to read documentations and tutorials first.

> How if it hallucinate and gives you wrong code Then the code won't compile, or more likely your editor/IDE will say that it's invalid code. If you're using something like Cursor in agent mode, if invalid code is generated then it gets detected and the LLM keeps re-running until something is valid. > It is better to read documentations and tutorials first. I "trust" LLM's more than tutorials, there's so much garbage…

Plenty of incorrect code compiles. It is a very bad sign that people are making comments like "Then the code won't compile".

As for my editor saying it is invalid..? That is just as untrustworthy as an LLM.

>I "trust" LLM's more than tutorials, there's so much garbage out there.

Yes, rubbish generated by AI. That is the rubbish out there. The stuff written by people is largely good.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#132

Post by milesrout »

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.

[flagged]

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#133

Post by ang_cire »

This comment section really shows the stark divide between people who love coding and thus hate AI, and people who hate coding and thus love AI.

Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding, are probably the devs who are already outputting the worst code right now.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#134

Post by discreteevent »

tptacek wrote: post #63
codr7 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The output of the LLM is probabilistic. The code you actually commit or merge is not.

The parent is saying that when higher-level languages replaced assembly languages you only had to learn the higher level language. Once you learned the higher level language the machine did precisely what you specified and you did not have to inspect the assembly language to make sure it was compliant. Furthermore you were forced to be precise and to understand what you were doing when you were writing the higher level language.

Now you don't really have to be precise at any level to get something 'working'. You may not be familiar with the generated language or libaries but it could look good enough (like the assembly would have looked good enough). So, sure, if you are very familiar with the generated language and libraries and you inspect every line of generated code then maybe you will be ok. But often the reason you are using an LLM is because e.g. you don't understand or use bash frequently enough to get it to do what you want. Well, the LLM doesn't understand it either. So that weird bash construct that it emitted - did you read the documentation for it? You might have if you had to write it yourself.

In the end there could be code in there that nothing (machine or human) understands. The less hard-won experience you have with the target and the more time-pressed you are the more likely it is that this will occur.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#135

Post by seper8 »

ang_cire wrote: post #133

This comment section really shows the stark divide between people who love coding and thus hate AI, and people who hate coding and thus love AI. Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding, are probably the devs who are already outputting the worst code right now.

>Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding

Alright, please stop using SDK's, google, stackoverflow, any system libraries. You prefer to do it for yourself right?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#136

Post by elicksaur »

seper8 wrote: post #135
ang_cire wrote: post #133

This comment section really shows the stark divide between people who love coding and thus hate AI, and people who hate coding and thus love AI. Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding, are probably the devs who are already outputting the worst code right now.

>Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding Alright, please stop using SDK's, google, stackoverflow, any system libraries. You prefer to do it for yourself right?

Do you typically find reductio ad absurdum arguments to be persuasive?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#137

Post by arvinsim »

ang_cire wrote: post #133

This comment section really shows the stark divide between people who love coding and thus hate AI, and people who hate coding and thus love AI. Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding, are probably the devs who are already outputting the worst code right now.

> Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding

Have we forgotten that we advanced in software by building on the work of others?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#138

Post by tcfhgj »

apothegm wrote: post #8
iamleppert wrote: post #3

There's nothing stopping you from coding if you enjoy it. It's not like they have taken away your keyboard. I have found that AI frees me up to focus on the parts of coding I'm actually interested in, which is maybe 5-10% of the project. The rest is boiler plate, cargo-culted, Dockerfile, build system and bash environment variable passing circle of hell that I really could care less about. I care about certain things…

So much this. The AI takes care of the tedious line by line what’s-the-name-of-that-stdlib-function parts (and most of the tedious test-writing parts) and lets me focus on the interesting bits like what it is I want to build and how the pieces should fit together. And debugging, which I find satisfying. Sadly, I find it sorely lacking at dealing with build systems and that particular type of boilerplate, mostly becau…

Aren't stdlib functions the ones you know by heart after a while anyways?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#139

Post by dxroshan »

apothegm wrote: post #8
iamleppert wrote: post #3

There's nothing stopping you from coding if you enjoy it. It's not like they have taken away your keyboard. I have found that AI frees me up to focus on the parts of coding I'm actually interested in, which is maybe 5-10% of the project. The rest is boiler plate, cargo-culted, Dockerfile, build system and bash environment variable passing circle of hell that I really could care less about. I care about certain things…

So much this. The AI takes care of the tedious line by line what’s-the-name-of-that-stdlib-function parts (and most of the tedious test-writing parts) and lets me focus on the interesting bits like what it is I want to build and how the pieces should fit together. And debugging, which I find satisfying. Sadly, I find it sorely lacking at dealing with build systems and that particular type of boilerplate, mostly becau…

> The AI takes care of the tedious line by line what’s-the-name-of-that-stdlib-function parts (and most of the tedious test-writing parts)

AI generated tests are a bad idea.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#140

Post by maelito »

Funny that I found this article going to hacker news as a pause in my work : I had to chose between using Aider or my brain to code a small algorithmic task, sorting items of a list based on dependences between items written in a YAML file.

Using Aider would probably solve the task in 5 minutes. Coding it in 30 minutes. The former choice would result in more time for other tasks or reading HN or having a hot beverage or walking in the sun. The second would challenge my rusting algorithmic skills and give me a better understanding of what I'm doing for the medium term.

Hard choice. In any case, I have a good salary, even with the latter option I can decide to spend good times.

Post reply on HN