Writing out hundreds of lines of code is not what I meant by proactive tools…
Where are the proactive coding tools? https://austinhenley.com/blog/proactiveai.html
Why agents are bad pair programmers
131–140 of 239 posts
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#132I think this has put into words a reason why I bounced off using AI this way, when I need something done I often have a rough idea of how I want it done, and how AI does it often doesn't match what I want, but because it's gone off and written a 2,000 lines of code it's suddenly more work for me to go through and say "Ok, so first off, strip all these comments out, you're doubling the file with trivial explanations o…
Personally, I’ve gone from working with the AI to code to working on it to develop specifications. It’s also useful at troubleshooting issues.
I’m no longer a developer by trade and it’s more a hobby or specific problem solving scenario now. But I find using it to identify gaps in my thinking and edit English is ultimately better than getting random code — I love editing English text, but find editing code without consistent style a drag for my purposes.
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Take a look at aider's watch mode. It seems like a bridge for code completion with more powerful models than Copilot.
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#134I think this has put into words a reason why I bounced off using AI this way, when I need something done I often have a rough idea of how I want it done, and how AI does it often doesn't match what I want, but because it's gone off and written a 2,000 lines of code it's suddenly more work for me to go through and say "Ok, so first off, strip all these comments out, you're doubling the file with trivial explanations o…
At the start of prompt before project requirements I copy paste paragraph about the code I want.
No emojis, no comments, no console log statements, no read me file, no error handling. Act as a senior developer working with other experienced developers.
Otherwise it happily generates bunch of trash that is unreadable. Error handling generated will most of the times just hide errors instead of actually dealing with them.
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#135The collaborative style of AI use struck me as the obvious correct use of AI, just as the more popular "AI writing code" style struck me as horribly incorrect and indication of yet again the software industry going off on a fool's tangent, as the larger industry so often does.
I never have AI write code. I ask it to criticize code I've written, and I use it to strategize about large code organization. As a strategy consult, with careful LLM context construction, one can create amazing effective guides that teach one new information very successfully. That is me using my mind to understand and then do, never giving any AI responsibilities beyond advice. AI is an idiot savant, and must be treated as such.
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#136The major problem I see with current LLM-based code generation is their overconfidence beyond a certain point. I've experienced agents losing track of what they are developing; a single line change can literally mess up my entire codebase, making debugging a nightmare.
I believe we need more structured, policy-driven models that exhibit a bit of self-doubt, prompting them to revert to us for clarification. Furthermore, there should be certain industry standards in place. Another significant issue is testing and handling edge cases. No matter what, today's AI consistently fails when dealing with these scenarios, and security remains a concern. what are some problems you have noticed ??
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#137Whenever I land on the front page, I check the comments and brace for HN coming and telling me how stupid I am and lighting me aflame in front of my peers. But sometimes if I manage to nail the right headline, nobody reads my post and just has their own discussion, and I am spared.
I liked your post, a bit of a “how to enjoy pair programming with an AI”. Useful, so thank you!
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently - having AI automate product manager user research. My thread of thought goes something like this: 0. AI can scour the web for user comments/complaints about our product and automatically synthesize those into insights. 1. AI research can be integrated directly into our product, allowing the user to complain to it just-in-time, whereby the AI would ask for clarification, a…
> 3. Wait a minute - if the AI can change the interface on its own - do we even need to have a single interface for everyone? Perhaps future software would only expose an API and a collection of customizable UI widgets (perhaps coupled with official example interfaces), which each user's "user agent AI" would then continuously adapt to that user's needs? Nice, in theory. In practice it will be "Use our Premium Agent…
Well, at the end of the day, capitalism is about competition, and I would hope for a future where that "User Agent AI" is a local model fully controlled by the user, and the competition is about which APIs you access through them - so maybe "24.99$/month to get all the best features", but (unless you relinquish control to MS or Google), users wouldn't be shown any ads unless they choose to receive them.
We're seeing something similar in VS Code and its zoo of forks - we're choosing which API/subscriptions to access (e.g. GitLens Pro, or Copilot, or Cursor/Windsurf/Trae etc.), but because the client itself is open source, there aren't any ads.
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#139I think this has put into words a reason why I bounced off using AI this way, when I need something done I often have a rough idea of how I want it done, and how AI does it often doesn't match what I want, but because it's gone off and written a 2,000 lines of code it's suddenly more work for me to go through and say "Ok, so first off, strip all these comments out, you're doubling the file with trivial explanations o…
This absolutely captures my experience.
My successful AI written projects are those where I care solely on the output and have little to no knowledge about the subject matter.
When I try to walk an agent through creating anything about which I have a deeply held opinion of what good looks like, I end up frustrated and abandoning the project.
I've enjoyed using roo code's architect function to document an agreed upon approach, then been delighted and frustrated in equal measure by the implementation of code mode.
On revelation is to always start new tasks and avoid continuing large conversations, because I would typically tackle any problem myself in smaller steps with verifiable outputs, whereas I tend to pose the entire problem space to the agent which it invariably fails at.
I've settled on spending time finding what works for me. Earlier today I took 30 minutes to add functionality to an app that would've taken me days to write. And what's more I only put 30 minutes into the diary for it, because I knew what I wanted and didn't care how it got there.
This leads me to conclude that using AI to write code that a(nother) human is one day to interact with is a no-go, for all the reasons listed.
Re: Why agents are bad pair programmers
#140Pair programming is also not suitable for all cases Maybe not for many cases I mentioned this elsewhere but I find it absolutely impossible to get into a good programming flow anymore while the LLM constantly interrupts me with suggested autocompletes that I have to stop, read, review, and accept/reject It's been miserable trying to incorporate this into my workflow
Second this. My solution is to have a 'non-AI' IDE and then a Cursor/VS Code to switch between. Deep work cannot be achieved by chatting with the coding bots, sorry.
I just cmd + shift + p -> disable Cursor tab -> enter
Sure, you could just add a shortcut too.
After a while, it turns into a habit.