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

How I program with agents

crawshaw.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 308 posts

Re: How I program with agents

#101

Post by hintymad »

zOneLetter wrote: post #7

Maybe it's because I only code for my own tools, but I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it, understand it, fixing it, etc. Although asking an LLM to extract and find the thing I'm looking for in an API Doc is super useful and time saving. To me, it's not even about how good these LLMs get in the future. I just don't like reading other people's…

> I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it

Maybe the key is this: our brains are great at spotting patterns, but not so great at remembering every little detail. And a lot of coding involves boilerplate—stuff that’s hard to describe precisely but can be generated anyway. Even if we like to think our work is all unique and creative, the truth is, a lot of it is repetitive and statistically has a limited number of sound variations. It’s like code that could be part of a library, but hasn’t been abstracted yet. That’s where AI comes in: it’s really good at generating that kind of code.

It’s kind of like NP problems: finding a solution may take exponentially longer, but checking one takes only polynomial time. Similarly, AI gives us a fast draft that may take a human much longer to write, and we review it quickly. The result? We get more done, faster.

Re: How I program with agents

#102

Post by JackFr »

arrowleaf wrote: post #98
addaon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you work on a team most code you see isn’t yours.. ai code review is really no different than reviewing a pr… except you can edit the output easier and maybe get the author to fix it immediately And you can't ask "why" about a decision you don't understand (or at least, not with the expectation that the answer holds any particular causal relationship with the actual reason)... so it's like reviewing a PR with no…

Are you using the same tools as everyone else here? You absolutely can ask "why" and it does a better job of explaining with the appropriate context than most developers I know. If you realize it's using a design pattern that doesn't fit, add it to your rules file.

Although it cannot understand the rhetorical why as in a frustrated “Why on earth would you possibly do it that brain dead way?”

Instead of the downcast, chastened look of a junior developer, it responds with a bulleted list of the reasons why it did it that way.

Re: How I program with agents

#103

Post by marvstazar »

zOneLetter wrote: post #7

Maybe it's because I only code for my own tools, but I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it, understand it, fixing it, etc. Although asking an LLM to extract and find the thing I'm looking for in an API Doc is super useful and time saving. To me, it's not even about how good these LLMs get in the future. I just don't like reading other people's…

As a senior developer you already spend a significant amount of time planning new feature implementations and reviewing other people's code (PRs). I find that this skill transitions quite nicely to working with coding agents.

Re: How I program with agents

#104

Post by jdalton »

zOneLetter wrote: post #7

Maybe it's because I only code for my own tools, but I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it, understand it, fixing it, etc. Although asking an LLM to extract and find the thing I'm looking for in an API Doc is super useful and time saving. To me, it's not even about how good these LLMs get in the future. I just don't like reading other people's…

No different than most practices now. PM write a ticket, dev codes it, PRs it, then someone else reviews it. Not a bad practice. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes really helps.

Re: How I program with agents

#105

Post by ofjcihen »

silverlake wrote: post #96
zOneLetter wrote: post #7

Maybe it's because I only code for my own tools, but I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it, understand it, fixing it, etc. Although asking an LLM to extract and find the thing I'm looking for in an API Doc is super useful and time saving. To me, it's not even about how good these LLMs get in the future. I just don't like reading other people's…

You’re clinging to an old model of work. Today an LLM converted my docker compose infrastructure to Kubernetes, using operators and helm charts as needed. It did in 10 minutes what would take me several days to learn and cobble together a bad solution. I review every small update and correct it when needed. It is so much more productive. I’m driving a tractor while you are pulling an ox cart.

“ It did in 10 minutes what would take me several days to learn and cobble together a bad solution.”

Another way to look at this is you’re outsourcing your understanding to something that ultimately doesn’t think.

This means 2 things: your solution could be severely suboptimal in multiple areas such as security and two because you didn’t bother understanding it yourself you’ll never be able to identify that.

You might think “that’s fine, the LLM can fix it”. The issue with that is when you don’t know enough to know something needs to be fixed.

So maybe instead of carts and oxen this is more akin to grandpa taking his computer to Best Buy to have them fix it for him?

Re: How I program with agents

#107

Post by dkkergoog »

zOneLetter wrote: post #7

Maybe it's because I only code for my own tools, but I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it, understand it, fixing it, etc. Although asking an LLM to extract and find the thing I'm looking for in an API Doc is super useful and time saving. To me, it's not even about how good these LLMs get in the future. I just don't like reading other people's…

[dead]

Re: How I program with agents

#108

Post by silverlake »

ofjcihen wrote: post #105
silverlake wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re clinging to an old model of work. Today an LLM converted my docker compose infrastructure to Kubernetes, using operators and helm charts as needed. It did in 10 minutes what would take me several days to learn and cobble together a bad solution. I review every small update and correct it when needed. It is so much more productive. I’m driving a tractor while you are pulling an ox cart.

“ It did in 10 minutes what would take me several days to learn and cobble together a bad solution.” Another way to look at this is you’re outsourcing your understanding to something that ultimately doesn’t think. This means 2 things: your solution could be severely suboptimal in multiple areas such as security and two because you didn’t bother understanding it yourself you’ll never be able to identify that. You migh…

No one is an expert on all the things. I use libraries and tools to take care of things that are less important. I use my brain for things that are important. LLMs are another tool, more flexible and capable than any other. So yes, grandpa goes to Best Buy because he’s running his legal practice and doesn’t need to be an expert on computers.

Re: How I program with agents

#109

Post by Verdex »

wrs wrote: post #91
Verdex wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parsing is an area that I'm interested in. Can you talk more about your experience getting LLMs to one-shot parsers? From scratch LLMs seem to be completely lost writing parsers. The bleeding edge appears to be able to maybe parse xml, but gives up on programming languages with even the most minimal complexity (an example being C where Gemini refused to even try with macros and then when told to parse C without macro…

A few weeks ago I gave an LLM (Gemini 2.5 something in Cursor) a bunch of examples of a new language, and asked it to write a recursive descent parser in Ruby. The language was nothing crazy, intentionally reminiscent of C/JS style, but certainly the exact definition was new. I didn’t want to use a parser generator because (a) I’d have to learn a new one for Ruby, and (b) I’ve always found it easier to generate usefu…

Thanks for giving details about your workflow. At least for me it helps a lot in these sorts of discussions.

Although, it is interesting to me that the original posting mentioned LLMs "one-shot"ing parsers and this description sounds like a much more in depth process.

"And there is no parser generator [...] that starts with examples [...]"

People. People can generate parsers by starting with examples. Which, again, is more in line with the original "one-shot parsers" comment.

If people are finding LLMs useful as part of a process for parser generation then I'm glad. (And I mean testing parsers is pretty painful to me so I'm interested in the test case generation). However I'm much more interested in the existence or non-existent of one-shot parser generation.

Re: How I program with agents

#110

Post by 12345hn6789 »

silverlake wrote: post #96
zOneLetter wrote: post #7

Maybe it's because I only code for my own tools, but I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it, understand it, fixing it, etc. Although asking an LLM to extract and find the thing I'm looking for in an API Doc is super useful and time saving. To me, it's not even about how good these LLMs get in the future. I just don't like reading other people's…

You’re clinging to an old model of work. Today an LLM converted my docker compose infrastructure to Kubernetes, using operators and helm charts as needed. It did in 10 minutes what would take me several days to learn and cobble together a bad solution. I review every small update and correct it when needed. It is so much more productive. I’m driving a tractor while you are pulling an ox cart.

How did you verify this works correctly, and as intended, in 10 minutes if it would have taken you 2 days to do it yourself?
Post reply on HN