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Agentic Coding Recommendations

lucumr.pocoo.org

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131–140 of 210 posts

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#131

Post by fibers »

linguistbreaker wrote: post #111

My take on choice of language: 1) Java has the largest, oldest and most explicit data set for the LLM to reference, so it's likely to be the most thorough, if not the most correct. 2) Go with the language YOU know best because you'll be able to spot when the LLM is incorrect, flawed in its 'reasoning', hallucinating etc.

Why is this? is there just a insanely large codebase of open source projects in Java (the only thing i can think of is the entire Apache suite)? Or is it because the docs are that expressive and detailed for a given OSS library?

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#132

Post by bgwalter »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #123
bgwalter wrote: post #102

Well, the author's previous blog posts were shorter (e.g., https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2022/1/30/unsafe-rust/ ) and more succinct. I've no idea what he is saying here. It is all about vaguely defined processes and tools and people increasingly adopt an LLM writing style.

> and people increasingly adopt an LLM writing style. If you are insinuating that this is written by an LLM: it is not.

No, I didn't try to claim that. I seem to see the influence in many people's writing and verbosity though. It could be as simple as a counter reaction: If an LLM is allowed to be verbose, so are humans. It could also be that people who use LLMs a lot subconsciously adopt the style.

I infer that you are the author of the post. Take it as a compliment, I think you have written many good pre-LLM articles.

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#133

Post by linsomniac »

I had a recent discussion with another member of the Python community (OA is written by a big name in Python).

He started off saying "learning to code with AI is like learning to cook by ordering off the menu". I know he meant "an AI being the way you learn how to code", but there's another meaning that I've been thinking a lot about because my 16yo son is really into coding and I'm trying to come up with how I can help him be successful in the world at the horizon where he starts doing it professionally.

In that way, "learning how to work together with an AI to code" is a really, really interesting question. Because the world is going to look VERY different in 2-6 years.

The thread in question: https://bsky.app/profile/alsweigart.bsky.social/post/3lr6guv...

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#134

Post by diggan »

square_usual wrote: post #127
diggan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI discourse would be more effective if we could all see the actual work one another is doing with it Yes, this is a frequent problem both here and everywhere else. The discussions need to include things like exact model version, inference parameters, what system prompt you used, what user prompt, what code you gave it, what exactly it replied and so much more details, as currently almost every comment is "Well, I…

There's many examples of exactly what you're asking for, such as Kenton Varda's Cloudlfare oauth provider [1] and Simon Willison's tools [2]. I see a new blog post like this with detailed explanations of what they did pretty frequently, like Steve Klabnik's recent post [3], which while it isn't as detailed has a lot of very concrete facts. There's even more blog posts from prominent devs like antirez who talk about o…

Maybe I should have been more specific, I was talking specifically about discussions and comments on forums like HN and r/localllama, not that people who are writing blogposts aren't specific enough in their blogposts.

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#135

Post by physicles »

fvdessen wrote: post #3

I find it excellent news that all the techniques that make agentic coding more efficient also make human coding more efficient. There was a worry that code would become big mud balls that only AI understand, but it looks like the opposite. Clear code is important for AI productivity, so it now matters even more, because the difference of productivity is immediately and objectively measurable. Before AIs what code was…

I was struck by this too. Good error messages, fast tools, stable ecosystems, simple code without magic, straight SQL… it’s what I always want. Maybe agents will be what raises the bar for dev experience, simply because they work so quickly that every slowdown matters.

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#136

Post by bgwalter »

linsomniac wrote: post #133

I had a recent discussion with another member of the Python community (OA is written by a big name in Python). He started off saying "learning to code with AI is like learning to cook by ordering off the menu". I know he meant "an AI being the way you learn how to code", but there's another meaning that I've been thinking a lot about because my 16yo son is really into coding and I'm trying to come up with how I can h…

I think this discussion boxes new students into the mediocre category right from the start.

Do we really want to tell Fabrice Bellard that he isn't productive enough?

If you want to train people to become fungible factory workers on the other hand, train them to work on the conveyor belt.

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#137

Post by robertlagrant »

> Likewise with AI I strongly prefer more code generation over using more dependencies. I wrote about why you should write your own code before, but the more I work with agentic coding, the more I am convinced of this.

This is an interesting statement!

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#138

Post by telotortium »

mark_h wrote: post #36
e40 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of which, anyone had success using these tools for coding Common Lisp?

Joe Marshall had a couple of posts about... No: https://funcall.blogspot.com/2025/05/vibe-coding-common-lisp...

Vibe coding Common Lisp could probably work well with additional tool support. Even a good documentation lookup and search tool, exposed in an AGENTS.md file, could significantly improve the problem Joe ran into of having the code generate bogus symbols. If you provide a small MCP server or other tool to introspect a running image containing your application, it could be even better.

LLMs can handle the syntax of basically any language, but the library knowledge is significantly improved by having a larger corpus of code than Common Lisp tends to have publicly available.

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#139

Post by mountainriver »

robertlagrant wrote: post #137

> Likewise with AI I strongly prefer more code generation over using more dependencies. I wrote about why you should write your own code before, but the more I work with agentic coding, the more I am convinced of this. This is an interesting statement!

Packages have communities though.

Re: Agentic Coding Recommendations

#140

Post by bluefirebrand »

soulofmischief wrote: post #19
v5v3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There was a worry that code would become big mud balls that only AI understand, but it looks like the opposite." For now...

As long as interfaces are well defined, comprehensive tests are written, memory is safely handled and time complexity is analyzable, who cares what the rest of the code looks like. I understand programming for the sake of programming, chasing purity and really digging into the creative aspects of coding. But I get that same kick out of writing perfect interfaces, knowing that the messier the code underneath is, the m…

> As long as interfaces are well defined, comprehensive tests are written, memory is safely handled and time complexity is analyzable, who cares what the rest of the code looks like

The thing is, code that does all of the things you listed here is good looking code almost by definition

If AI was anywhere near capable of producing this quality then it would be so thrilling, wouldn't it?

But it's not. The consensus seems to be pretty universal that AI code is Junior to Intermediate quality at best, the majority of the time

That generally isn't code that satisfies the list of quality criteria you mentioned

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