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

181–190 of 308 posts

Re: How I program with agents

#181

Post by davely »

gyomu wrote: post #167
divan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one codebase I work with, there are often tasks that involve changing multiple files in a relatively predictable way. Like there is little creativity/challenge, but a lot of typing in multiple parts/files. Tasks like these used to take 3-4 hours complete before just because I had to physically open all these files, find right places to modify, type the code etc. With AI agent I just describe the task, and it does…

So you went from being able to handle at most 10 or so of these tasks you often get per week, to >500/week. Did you reap any workplace benefits from this insane boost in productivity?

My house has never been cleaner. I have time to catch up on chores that I normally do during the weekend. Dishes, laundry, walk the dog more.

It seems silly but it’s opened up a lot of extra time for some of this stuff. Heck, I even play my guitar more, something I’ve neglected for years. Noodle around while I wait for Claude to finish something and then I review it.

All in all, I dig this new world. But I also code JS web apps for a living, so just about the easiest code for an LLM to tackle.

EDIT: Though I think you are asking about work specifically. i.e., does management recognize your contributions and reward you?

For me, no. But like I said, I get more done at work and more done at home. It’s weird. And awesome.

Re: How I program with agents

#182

Post by amrocha »

hintymad wrote: post #101
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,…

Copy and paste gives us a fast draft of repetitive code. That’s never been the bottle neck.

The bottle neck is in the architecture and the details. Which is exactly what AI gets wrong, and which is why any engineer who respects his craft sees this snake oil for what it is.

Re: How I program with agents

#183

Post by amrocha »

rgbrenner wrote: post #68
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…

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

Reviewing code is harder than writing code. I know staff engineers that can’t review code. I don’t know where this confidence that you’ll be able to catch all the AI mistakes comes from.

Re: How I program with agents

#184

Post by ramchip »

addaon wrote: post #154
ramchip wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's right, and not a problem in practice. It's like asking a human why: "because it avoids an allocation" is a more useful response than "because Bob told me I should", even if the latter is the actual cause.

> I think that's right, and not a problem in practice. It's like asking a human why: "because it avoids an allocation" is a more useful response than "because Bob told me I should", even if the latter is the actual cause. Maybe this is the source of the confusion between us? If I see someone writing overly convoluted code to avoid an allocation, and I ask why, I will take different actions based on those two answers!…

Right. I don't treat the LLM like a colleague at all, it's just a text generator, so I partially agree with your earlier statement:

> it's like reviewing a PR with no trust possible, no opportunity to learn or to teach, and no possibility for insight that will lead to a better code base in the future

The first part is 100% true. There is no trust. I treat any LLM code as toxic waste and its explanations as lies until proven otherwise.

The second part I disagree somewhat. I've learned plenty of things from AI output and analysis. You can't teach it to analyze allocations or code complexity, but you can feed it guidelines or samples of code in a certain style and that can be quite effective at nudging it towards similar output. Sometimes that doesn't work, and that's fine, it can still be a big time saver to have the LLM output as a starting point and tweak it (manually, or by giving the agent additional instructions).

Re: How I program with agents

#185

Post by jonas21 »

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…

If there's something that you don't understand, ask the LLM to explain it to you. Drill into the parts that don't make sense to you. Ask for references. One of the big advantages of LLMs over, say, reading a tutorial on the web is that you can have this conversation.

Re: How I program with agents

#186

Post by wrs »

Verdex wrote: post #109
wrs wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

I guess I don't really understand the goal of "one-shot" parser generation, since I can't even do that as a human using a parser generator! There's always an iterative process, as I find out how the language I wanted isn't quite the language I defined. Having somebody or something else write tests actually helps with that problem, as it'll exercise grammar cases outside my mental happy path.

Re: How I program with agents

#187

Post by rco8786 »

svaha1728 wrote: post #5

I completely agree with the author's comment that code review is half-hearted and mostly broken. With agents, the bottleneck is really in reading code, not writing it. If everyone is just half-heartedly reviewing code, or using it as a soapbox for their individual preferences, using agents will completely fall apart as they can easily introduce serious security issues or performance hits. Let's be honest, many of tho…

What’s not clear to me is how agents/AI written code solves the “half hearted review” problem.

People don’t like to do code reviews because it sucks. It’s tedious and boring.

I genuinely hope that we’re not giving up the fun parts of software, writing code, and in exchange getting a mountain of code to read and review instead.

Re: How I program with agents

#188

Post by mlboss »

Wilduck wrote: post #152
johnfn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Another way to look at this is you’re outsourcing your understanding to something that ultimately doesn’t think. You read this quote wrong. Senior devs outsource _work_ to junior engineers, not _understanding_. The way they became senior in the first place is by not outsourcing work so they could develop their understanding.

How about a CEO delegating the work to an Engineer ? CEO does not understand all the technical detail but only knows what the outcome will look like.

Re: How I program with agents

#189

Post by mewpmewp2 »

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…

It is just faster and less effort. I can't write code as quickly as the LLM can. It is all in my head, but I can't spit it out as quickly. I just see LLMs as getting what is in my head quickly out there. I have learned to prompt it in such a way that I know what to expect, I know its weakspots and strengths. I could predict what it is going output, so it is not that difficult to understand.

Re: How I program with agents

#190

Post by mewpmewp2 »

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…

I am pretty confident that my learnings have massively sped up working together with LLMs. I can build so much more and learn through what they are putting out. This goes to so many domains in my life now, it is like I have this super mentor. It is DIY house things, smart home things, hardware, things I never would have been confident to work with otherwise. I feel like I have been massively empowered and all of this is so exciting. Maybe I missed a mentor type of guidance when I was younger to be able to do all DYI stuff, but it is definitely sufficient now. Life feels amazing thanks to it honestly.
Post reply on HN