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How I program with agents

crawshaw.io

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Re: How I program with agents

#121

Post by aqme28 »

marvstazar wrote: post #103
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.

Yeah was going to make the same point.

> 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.

What they're saying is that they never have coworkers.

Re: How I program with agents

#122

Post by sundar_p »

I wonder if not exercising code writing will atrophy this ability. Similarly to how the ability to read a book does not necessarily imply the ability to write a book.

I find that I understand and am more opinionated about code when I personally write it; conversely, I am more lenient/less careful when reviewing someone else's work.

Re: How I program with agents

#123

Post by owl_vision »

vmg12 wrote: post #13
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…

Here are the cases where it helps me (I promise this isn't ai generated even though im using a list...) - Formulaic code. It basically obviates the need for macros / code gen. The downside is that they are slower and you can't just update the macro and re-generate. The upside is it works for code that is slightly formulaic but has some slight differences across implementations that make macros impossible to use. - Us…

plus 1 for using agents for api refresher and discovery. i also use regular search to find possible alternatives and about 3-4 out of 10 normal search wins.

Discovering private api using an agent is super useful.

Re: How I program with agents

#124

Post by verifex »

Some of my favorite things to use AI for when coding (I swear I wrote this not AI!):

- CSS: I don't like working with CSS on any website ever, and all of the kludges added on-top of it don't make it any more fun. AI makes it a little fun since it can remember all the CSS hacks so I don't have to spend an hour figuring out how to center some element on the page. Even if it doesn't get it right the first time, it still takes less time than me struggling with it to center some div in a complex Wordpress or other nightmare site.

- Unit Tests: Assuming the embedded code in the AI isn't too outdated (caveat: sometimes it is, and that invalidates this one sometimes). Farming out unit tests to AI is a fun little exercise.

- Summarizing a commit: It's not bad at summarizing, at least an initial draft.

- Very small first-year-software-engineering-exercise-type tasks.

Re: How I program with agents

#125

Post by danielbln »

JackFr wrote: post #102
arrowleaf wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, it can infer quite a bit. I've seen many times in reasoning traces "The user is frustrated, understandably, and I should explain what I have done" after an exasperated "why???"

Re: How I program with agents

#126

Post by danielbln »

bgwalter wrote: post #95
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…

Some people cannot do anything without a tool. These people are early adopters and power users, who then evangelize their latest discovery. GitHub's value proposition was that mediocre coders can appear productive in the maze of PRs, reviews, green squares, todo lists etc. LLMs again give mediocre coders the appearance of being productive by juggling non-essential tools and agents (which their managers also love).

What is an essential tool? IDE? Editor? Pencil? Can I scratch my code into a French cave wall if I want to be a senior developer?

Re: How I program with agents

#127

Post by addaon »

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.

You can ask it "why", and it gives a probable English string that could reasonably explain why, had a developer written that code, they made certain choices; but there's no causal link between that and the actual code generation process that was previously used, is there? As a corollary, if Model A generates code, Model A is no better able to explain it than Model B.

Re: How I program with agents

#128

Post by zombiwoof »

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.

But you would have learned something if you invested the time. Now when your infra blows up you have no idea what to fix and will go fishing into the LLM lake to find how to fix it

Re: How I program with agents

#129

Post by johnfn »

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…

Senior engineers delegate to junior engineers, which have all the same downsides you described, all the time. This pattern seems to work fine for virtually every software company in existence.

Re: How I program with agents

#130

Post by danielbln »

sundar_p wrote: post #122

I wonder if not exercising code writing will atrophy this ability. Similarly to how the ability to read a book does not necessarily imply the ability to write a book. I find that I understand and am more opinionated about code when I personally write it; conversely, I am more lenient/less careful when reviewing someone else's work.

To drag out the trite comparison once more: not writing assembly will atrophy your skill to write assembly, yet the vast majority of us is perfectly happy handing this work to a compiler. I know, this analogy has issues (deterministic vs stochastic, etc.) but the code remains true: you might lose that particular skill, but it might not matter as you slide on up the abstraction latter.
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