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Why agents are bad pair programmers

justin.searls.co

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Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#81

Post by girvo »

Timwi wrote: post #69
girvo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite amusing to see you complain about patronisation, and then see you turn about and do it yourself one comment later.

As an observer to this conversation, I can't help but notice that both have a good point here. Soulofmischief’s main point is that meesles made an inappropriate generalization. Meesles said that something was impossible to do, and soulofmischief pointed out that you can't really infer that it's impossible for everyone just because you couldn't find a way. This is a perfectly valid point, but it wasn't helped by soulo…

Oh 100%. I deliberately passed no judgement on the actual main points, as my experience is quite literally in between both of theirs.

I find agent mode incredibly distracting and it does get in the way of very deep focus for implementation for myself for the work I do... but not always. It has serious value for some tasks!

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#82

Post by haneul »

khendron wrote: post #29

When I first tried an LLM agent, I was hoping for an interactive, 2-way, pair collaboration. Instead, what I got was a pairing partner who wanted to do everything themselves. I couldn't even tweak the code they had written, because it would mess up their context. I want a pairing partner where I can write a little, they write a little, I write a little, they write a little. You know, an actual collaboration.

Hmm you can tweak fine these days without messing up context. But, I run in “ask mode” only, with opus in claude code and o3 max in cursor. I specifically avoid agent mode because, like in the post, I feel like I gain less over time.

I infrequently tab complete. I type out 80-90% of what is suggested, with some modifications. It does help I can maintain 170 wpm indefinitely on the low-medium end.

Keeping up with the output isn’t much an issue at the moment given the limited typing speed of opus and o3 max. Having gained more familiarity with the workflow, the reading feels easier. Felt too fast at first for sure.

My hot take is that if GitHub copilot is your window into llms, you’re getting the motel experience.

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#83

Post by tomkwong »

carpo wrote: post #49
psadri wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually add “discuss first. Don’t modify code yet”. Then we do some back and forth. And finally, “apply”.

Same. I use /ask in Aider so I can read what it's planning, ask follow-up questions, get it to change things, then after a few iterations I can type "Make it so" while sitting back to sip on my Earl Grey.

I had done something slightly different. I would ask LLM to prepare a design doc, not code, and iterate on that doc before I ask them to start coding. That seems to have worked a little better as it’s less likely to go rogue.

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#84

Post by catlifeonmars »

haneul wrote: post #82
khendron wrote: post #29

When I first tried an LLM agent, I was hoping for an interactive, 2-way, pair collaboration. Instead, what I got was a pairing partner who wanted to do everything themselves. I couldn't even tweak the code they had written, because it would mess up their context. I want a pairing partner where I can write a little, they write a little, I write a little, they write a little. You know, an actual collaboration.

Hmm you can tweak fine these days without messing up context. But, I run in “ask mode” only, with opus in claude code and o3 max in cursor. I specifically avoid agent mode because, like in the post, I feel like I gain less over time. I infrequently tab complete. I type out 80-90% of what is suggested, with some modifications. It does help I can maintain 170 wpm indefinitely on the low-medium end. Keeping up with the…

> My hot take is that if GitHub copilot is your window into llms, you’re getting the motel experience.

I’ve long suspected this; I lean heavily on tab completion from copilot to speed up my coding. Unsurprisingly, it fails to read my mind a large portion of the time.

Thing is, mind reading tab completion is what I actually want in my tooling. It is easier for me to communicate via code rather than prose, and I find the experience of pausing and using natural language to be jarring and distracting.

Writing the code feels like a much more direct form of communicating my intent (in this case to the compiler/interpreter). Maybe I’m just weird; and to be honest I’m afraid to give up my “code first” communication style for programming.

Edit: I think the reason why I find the conversational approach so difficult is that I tend to think as I code. I have fairly strong ADHD and coding gives me appropriate amount of stimulation to do design work.

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#85

Post by Bob_LaBLahh »

UltraSane wrote: post #43

It is rather soul crushing how fast LLMs spit out decent code.

In my experience, LLMs are idiot savant coders--but currently more idiot than savant. Claude 3.7 (via cursor and roo) can comment code well, create a starter project 10x faster than I could, and they spit out common crud apps pretty well.

However I've come to the conclusion that LLMs are terrible at decision making. I would much rather have an intern architect my code than let AI do it. It's just too unreliable. It seems like 3 out of 4 decisions that it makes are fine. But that 4th decision is usually asinine.

That said, I now consider LLMs a mandatory addition to my toolkit because they have improved my developer efficiency so much. I really am a fan. But without a seasoned dev to write detailed instructions, break down the project into manageable chunks, make all of the key design decisions, and review every line of code that it writes, today's AI will only add a mountain of technical debt to your project.

I guess I'm trying to say: don't worry because the robots cannot replace use yet. We're still in the middle of the hype cycle.

But what do I know? I'm just an average meat coder.

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#86

Post by worldsayshi »

atemerev wrote: post #74

Aider does everything right. Stop using Cursor or any other agentic environments. Try Aider, it works exactly as suggested here.

I've been wanting to use Aider but I want to use Copilot as a provider (to stay compliant with the wishes of my employer). Haven't gone down that road yet because Aider copilot support seems a bit tentative. I see they have some docs about it up now though: https://aider.chat/docs/llms/github.html

"The easiest path is to sign in to Copilot from any JetBrains IDE"

Somebody must've made a standalone login script by now right? I wonder if `gh auth login` can be used to get a token?

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#87

Post by [deleted] »

soulofmischief wrote: post #41
hnthrowaway121 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analysis in the last 5-10 years has shown the Dunning-Kruger effect may not really exist. So it’s a poor basis on which to be judgmental and condescending.

> judgmental and condescending pushing back against judgement and condescension is not judgemental and condescending. > may not really exist I'm open to reading over any resources you would like to provide, maybe it's "real", maybe it isn't, but I have personally both experienced and witnessed the effect in myself, other individuals and groups. It's a good heuristic for certain scenarios, even if it isn't necesarily…

[deleted]

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#88

Post by dkersten »

icedchai wrote: post #47
khendron wrote: post #29

When I first tried an LLM agent, I was hoping for an interactive, 2-way, pair collaboration. Instead, what I got was a pairing partner who wanted to do everything themselves. I couldn't even tweak the code they had written, because it would mess up their context. I want a pairing partner where I can write a little, they write a little, I write a little, they write a little. You know, an actual collaboration.

Have you tried recently? This hasn't been my experience. I modify the code it's written, then ask it to reread the file. It generally responds "I see you changed file and [something.]" Or when it makes a change, I tell it I need to run some tests. I provide feedback, explain the problem, and it iterates. This is with Zed and Claude Sonnet.

I do notice though that if I edit what it wrote before accepting it, and then it sees it (either because I didn’t wait for it to finish or because I send it another message), it will overwrite my changes with what it had before my changes every single time, without fail.

(Zed with Claude 4)

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#89

Post by dawnerd »

palisade wrote: post #34

LLM agents don't know how to shut up and always think they're right about everything. They also lack the ability to be brief. Sometimes things can be solved with a single character or line, but no they write a full page. And, they write paragraphs of comments for even the most minuscule of changes. They talk at you, are overbearing and arrogant.

I was trying out sonnet 4 yesterday and it spent 15 minutes changing testing changing etc just to get one config item changed. It ended up changing 40 files for no reason. Also kept trying to open a debugger that didn’t exist and load a webpage that requires auth.

They’re far from perfect that’s for sure.

Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers

#90

Post by Pandabob »

I basically jump away from Cursor to ChatGPT when I need to think thoroughly on something like an architecture decision or an edge case etc. Then when I've used ChatGPT to come up with an implementation plan, I jump back to Cursor and have Claude do the actual coding. O3 and ChatGPT's search functionality are just better (at least for myself) currently for "type 2" thinking tasks.
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