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Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

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Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#151

Post by UncleMeat »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #22

My most recent example of this is mentoring young, ambitious, but inexperienced interns. Not only did they produce about the same amount of code in a day that they used to produce in a week (or two), several other things made my work harder than before: - During review, they hadn't thought as deeply about their code so my comments seemed to often go over their heads. Instead of a discussion I'd get something like "go…

> Instead of fixing the things in the original PR, I'd often get a completely different approach as the response to my first review. Again, often broken in new and subtle ways.

I didn't expect this initially but I am seeing it a ton at work now and it is infuriating. Some big change lands in my lap to review and it has a bunch of issues but they can ultimately be worked out. Then kaboom it is an entirely different change that I need to review from scratch. Usually the second review is just focused on the edits that fixed the comments from my first review. But now we have to start all over.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#152

Post by danaris »

Sammi wrote: post #88
lionkor wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pray for whoever has to review code you didn't bother writing

Software is going to be of two types: 1. Mostly written by LLMs, and only superficially reviewed by humans. 2. Written 50-50% by devs and LLMs. Reviewed to the same degree as now. Software of type 2 will be more expensive and probably of higher quality. Type 1 software will be much much more common, as it will be cheaper. Quality will be lower, but the open question is whether it will be good enough for the use cases…

I 100% guarantee you there will be plenty of software still written fully by humans—and even more that's written 95% by humans, with minor LLM-based code autocomplete or boilerplate generation.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#153

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gdiamos wrote: post #18

I used to think I needed to type faster. As I get older I spend more of my coding time on walks, at the whiteboard, reading research, and running experiments

Exactly; it's not about the volume of code, it's about the value of it. The best code is the code never written.

Reminds me of a former colleague of mine, I'd sit next to him and get frustrated because he was a two-finger typer. But, none of his code was wasted. I frequently write code, then cmd+z back to ten minutes ago or just `git checkout .` because I lost track.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#154

Post by conartist6 »

Sammi wrote: post #79
dizhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Many bugs were of a new kind (to me), the code would look like it does the right thing but actually not work at all, or just be much more broken than code with that level of "polish" would normally be. This reminded me of a quarter million dollar software project one of my employers had contracted to a team in a different country. On the face of it - especially if you go and check by the spec sheet - everything w…

I'm expecting to see so much more poor quality software being made. We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software. Good experienced devs will be able to make better software, but so many inexperienced devs will be regurgitating so much more lousy software at a pace never seen before, it's going to be overwhelming. Or as the original commenter described, they're already being overwhelmed.

Yes, but some of us have seen this coming for a long time now.

I will have my word in the matter before all is said and done. While everyone is busy pivoting to AI I keep my head down and build the tools that will be needed to clean up the mess...

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#155

Post by calrain »

I've always enjoyed software design, for me the coding was the bottleneck and it was frustrating as I had to roll through different approaches when I so clearly knew the outcome that I wanted.

Using Claude Code to first write specs, then break it down into cards, build glossaries, design blueprints, and finally write code, is just a perfect fit for someone like me.

I know the fundamentals of programming, but since 1978 I've written in so many languages that the syntax now gets in the way, I just want to write code that does what I want, and LLM's are beyond amazing at that.

I'm building API's and implementing things I'd never dreamed of spending time on learning, and I can focus on what I really want, design, optimisation, simplification, and outcomes.

LLM's are amazing for me.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#156

Post by fredrikholm »

pjmlp wrote: post #144
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a tale of failed 'waterfall model' software development. Was it not possible to sees the quality issues before the project was finished?

As participant in many kinds of similar projects, lets put it this way, the crew already knows that the ship has a few holes while at the harbour, but captain decides for sailing anyway. Eventually you will find yourself on deep waters, with the ship lower than it should be, routinely taking out buckets of water, whishing for the nearest island, only to repair ship with whatever is on that island, and keep sailing to…

My suspicion is that all type of work is this; a universal issue where quality and forethought are at odds with quantity and good enough (where good enough trends towards worse over time).

Before SE I had a bunch of vastly different jobs and they all suffered from something akin to crab bucket mentality where doing a good job was something you got away with.

I've had jobs where doing the right thing was something you kept to yourself or suffer for it.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#158

Post by orwin »

I used Sonnet4 to write my last frontend task, fully, with minimal input. It is so much better than ChatGPT it's unbelievable, but while a 6hour coding task was transformed into a 30 minutes supervision task that generated good, but also correct code, I was a bit afraid for new engineers coming into an old project.

How are you supposed to understand code if you don't at least read it and fail a bit?

I'll continue using Sonnet4 for frontend personally, it always had been a pain point in the team and I ended up being the most knowledgeable on it. Unless it's a new code architecture, I will understand what was changed and why, so I have confidence I can handle rapid iteration of code on it, but my coworkers who already struggled with our design will probably have even more struggles.

Sadly I think in the end our code will be worse, but we are a team of 5 doing the work of a team of 8, so any help is welcome (we used to do the work of 15 but our 10x developper sadly (for us) got caught being his excellent self by the CTO and now handle a new project. Hopefully with executive-level pay)

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#159

Post by dmezzetti »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #124
dmezzetti wrote: post #97

There has long been ways to reduce writing boilerplate code with IDEs. AI code generation is just another tool and it will help enable competent people.

Not unless it is deterministic If I have to manually review the boilerplate after it generates then I may as well just write it myself. AI is not improving this unless you just blindly trust it without review, AND YOU SHOULDN'T

I'm not sure many seasoned developers are really using AI that much in their workflows.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#160

Post by sokoloff »

steveBK123 wrote: post #127
dizhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Many bugs were of a new kind (to me), the code would look like it does the right thing but actually not work at all, or just be much more broken than code with that level of "polish" would normally be. This reminded me of a quarter million dollar software project one of my employers had contracted to a team in a different country. On the face of it - especially if you go and check by the spec sheet - everything w…

I dealt with a 4x as expensive statement-of-work fixed price contract that was nearshored and then subbed out to a revolving cast of characters. The SOW was so poorly specified that it was easy to maliciously comply with it, and it had no real acceptance tests. As a result legal didn't think IT would have a leg to stand on arguing with the vendor on the contract, and we ended up constantly re-negotiating on cost for…

I have seen the revolving cast of characters bit play out several times. It’s as if they hire 1 or 2 competent people and rotate them to face the client that is currently screaming the loudest.

To be fair though, in your case it aounds like 51% (and maybe even 75+%) of the defect was in the specifications.

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