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Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

worksonmymachine.substack.com

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Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#21

Post by wrs »

nojs wrote: post #14
jvanderbot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's not faster to develop with AI if you watch it work. It's faster to develop with AI if you parallelize. Typing was never the bottleneck, but is is a now-parallelizeable part of the pipeline.

> Yes, it's not faster to develop with AI if you watch it work. It’s actually a lot faster. You read the diffs as soon as they start coming in, and immediately course correct or re-prompt when you see bad mistakes.

Indeed, I hit the stop button quite a bit when Claude goes off course. Then make a note of the right choice so maybe it won't do that again, revert and proceed. I have the feeling there is an optimal size of project proportional to the context size, where you can fit the critical design points into the context and/or there are enough examples in the code of how things should be done.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#22

Post by Flatcircle »

My theory on AI is it's the next iteration of google search, a better more conversational, base layer over all the information that exists on the internet.

Of course some people will lose jobs just like what happened to several industries when search became ubiquitous. (newspapers, phone books, encyclopedias, travel agents)

But IMHO this isn't the existential crisis people think it is.

It's just a tool. Smart, clever people can do lots of cool stuff with tools.

But you still have to use it,

Search has just become Chat.

You used to have to search, now you chat and it does the searching, and more!

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#23

Post by shermantanktop »

Im going to be overly picky about the subheading (which is an incidental aspect of TFA): “The future of software development might just be jazz. Everyone improvising. Nobody following the sheet music.”

That’s not jazz. Jazz being what it is, a lot of people in 2025 think it’s “everyone improvising,” but (outside of some free jazz) it’s quite structured and full of shared conventions.

Analogies work when you and your audience both understand the things being compared. In this case, the author doesn’t, and maybe some of the audience shares the same misperception, and so the analogy only works based on shared misunderstanding.

The analogy to jazz actually works better the more you know about it. But that’s accidental.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#24

Post by karel-3d »

Reading articles like this feels like being in a different reality.

I don't work like this, I don't want to work like this and maybe most importantly I don't want to work with somebody who works like this.

Also I am scared that any library that I am using through the myriad of dependencies is written like this.

On the other hand... if I look at this as some alternate universe where I don't need to directly or indirectly touch any of this... I am happy that it works for these people? I guess? Just keep it away from me

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#25

Post by lubujackson »

zwnow wrote: post #18
lordnacho wrote: post #15

I'm loving the new programming. I don't know where it goes either, but I like it for now. I'm actually producing code right this moment, where I would normally just relax and do something else. Instead, I'm relaxing and coding. It's great for a senior guy who has been in the business for a long time. Most of my edits nowadays are tedious. If I look at the code and decide I used the wrong pattern originally, I have to…

So you are relaxing and the AI is coding? Neat! Way to replace yourself, hope you won't cry after your job once it is gone.

What you miss is the constant need to refine and understand the bigger picture. AI makes everyone a lead architect. A non-coder can't do this or will definitely get lost in the weeds eventually.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#26

Post by logicchains »

zwnow wrote: post #18
lordnacho wrote: post #15

I'm loving the new programming. I don't know where it goes either, but I like it for now. I'm actually producing code right this moment, where I would normally just relax and do something else. Instead, I'm relaxing and coding. It's great for a senior guy who has been in the business for a long time. Most of my edits nowadays are tedious. If I look at the code and decide I used the wrong pattern originally, I have to…

So you are relaxing and the AI is coding? Neat! Way to replace yourself, hope you won't cry after your job once it is gone.

He's still telling the AI what to code. Prompting, i.e. deciding the right thing to build then clearly specifying and communicating it in English, is a skill in itself. People who spend time developing that skill are going to be more employable than people who just devote all their time to coding, the thing at which LLMs are more cost effective.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#27

Post by Loic »

lordnacho wrote: post #15

I'm loving the new programming. I don't know where it goes either, but I like it for now. I'm actually producing code right this moment, where I would normally just relax and do something else. Instead, I'm relaxing and coding. It's great for a senior guy who has been in the business for a long time. Most of my edits nowadays are tedious. If I look at the code and decide I used the wrong pattern originally, I have to…

> What junior devs will do, I'm not so sure. They somehow have to jump to the top of the mountain, but the stairs are gone.

Exactly my thinking, nearly 50, more than 30 years of experience in early every kind of programming, like you do, I can easily architect/control/adjust the agent to help me produce great code with a very robust architecture. By I do that out of my experience, both in modelling (science) and programming, I wonder how the junior devs will be able to build experience if everything comes cooked by the agent. Time will tell us.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#28

Post by wrs »

criley2 wrote: post #12
jvanderbot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's not faster to develop with AI if you watch it work. It's faster to develop with AI if you parallelize. Typing was never the bottleneck, but is is a now-parallelizeable part of the pipeline.

It can still be faster to develop with AI watching it work. It can legitimately introduce an entire simple fullstack change across multiple projects in my monorepo including graphql queries/mutations, typeorm repository, a service layer, and a reactnative frontend using apollo client, etc. It can do that in about 10 minutes in my local. I can't. If I turned it into a speed run event and practiced, maybe I could get i…

For me, one of the new superpowers is the ability to interactively do multiple drafts following different design principles and see which works better.

I just started an embedded project where two different people had implemented subsystems independently, and I asked Claude to merge the code into a single project and convert the existing synchronous code into asynchronous state machines called from a single main loop. It wrote three drafts with me giving it different stylistic principles to follow. I don't know if I would have had the patience to do that myself!

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#29

Post by jopsen »

Flatcircle wrote: post #22

My theory on AI is it's the next iteration of google search, a better more conversational, base layer over all the information that exists on the internet. Of course some people will lose jobs just like what happened to several industries when search became ubiquitous. (newspapers, phone books, encyclopedias, travel agents) But IMHO this isn't the existential crisis people think it is. It's just a tool. Smart, clever…

It's clearly useful for many things other than search.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#30

Post by staplers »

Flatcircle wrote: post #22

My theory on AI is it's the next iteration of google search, a better more conversational, base layer over all the information that exists on the internet. Of course some people will lose jobs just like what happened to several industries when search became ubiquitous. (newspapers, phone books, encyclopedias, travel agents) But IMHO this isn't the existential crisis people think it is. It's just a tool. Smart, clever…

A lot of modern entry-level jobs were filled by people who knew how to use google and follow instructions.

I imagine the next generation will have a similar relationship with AI. What might seem "common sense" with the younger, more tech-saavy crowd, will be difficult for older generations whose default behavior isn't to open up chatgpt or gemini and find the solution quickly.

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