AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#11

Post by bgwalter » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

8b16380d wrote: post #8

amradio1989 wrote: post #3

Developers hate AI coding tools for the same reasons musicians dislike AI music and artists dislike AI art. Its the 'craft' problem as you say. But an artist who values the end result over the craft is hardly an artist at all. They're a merchant at heart. The art is the product, and what excites them is shipping product. For an artist at heart, however, the process is the product. Lucky for them, its about to become…

I tend to agree, but at the end of the day I am providing for my family first and foremost. This means having to knock out tasks each sprint, whether they tickle my fancy or not. If I can offload that work to the AI “agent”, then so be it. I don’t feel the need to make my vocation a core part of my identity, so the time savings is worth more than elegantly crafted code or whatever other intrinsic value comes from a h…

What will happen to your salary in four years if that process works (which I doubt, but let's assume it)?

This is similar to the rage from 2010-2022 when developers, often at the behest of their employers, enthusiastically promoted the idea than everyone needs to learn how to code.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#12

Post by shigawire » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

samrus wrote: post #6

dingnuts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, to the point where I think this site should outright ban pro AI posts that don't show the code. That would END all this spam because they NEVER show the code, and we all know why.

Why?

As the article points out, there is a huge market for selling these tools. And this is a forum of many developers.

When there is no actual code or full explanation of how the vibe coding process works, it seems like a straight up ad with no useful info.

That is my feeling at least. And I'm even open to these tools - my current assumption is that I am just bad at them. I'd like to see more examples of how to deliver on all these promises.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#13

Post by aarestad » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

“Craft” vs “delivery” is a false dichotomy. Someone who is “delivering” needs to understand what they are delivering! How can you support vibe-coded cruft that you don’t understand? This is why tools like TypeScript exist; TS by itself adds little in terms of functionality or in “deliverables”, but it makes the code more _understandable_. It’s worth the time to invest in making sure your types are correct because it makes you think about constraints. There are no shortcuts.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#14

Post by lylejantzi3rd » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

amradio1989 wrote: post #3

Developers hate AI coding tools for the same reasons musicians dislike AI music and artists dislike AI art. Its the 'craft' problem as you say. But an artist who values the end result over the craft is hardly an artist at all. They're a merchant at heart. The art is the product, and what excites them is shipping product. For an artist at heart, however, the process is the product. Lucky for them, its about to become…

It's all about competition. Musicians dislike AI music because they're being outcompeted by AI. Same with artists. And, ironically, same with programmers.

AI programming isn't going to improve the state of the craft. Developers hate AI coding tools for the same reason they hated Dreamweaver back in the 00s: the generated code was crap. You'd spend more time "fixing" the generated code than you'd spend writing it from scratch.

What it is going to do is finally kill this obsession the tech industry has with moving fast and breaking things. We can't compete with AI on speed and breaking things. It's just not humanly possible. It's going to force the entire industry to find other metrics to compete on. I hope that's going to be quality (performance, uptime, and reliability), but, then again, I'm an optimist in this regard.

It's the same with music and art, too. AI isn't going to replace musicians and artists, but it is going to make them compete on different metrics than they're used to.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#15

Post by dimal » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:51 PM UTC

> developers fall into two camps:

> Craft-focused developers enjoy the process of writing code…

> Delivery-focused developers care about shipping products.

What the hell am I, then? I’m a craft-focused developer who cares about shipping products, and I like AI.

I find that AI doesn’t reduce my enjoyment of the craft. It reduces my need to type code with my fingers. I’m able to spend more time thinking above the code and put more time into getting a good design instead of getting something that just works. I’m not doing 100% AI generated code, though. I still find that there are lots of fiddly refactors that AI is too clumsy for.

I get the sense that most programmers don’t like to refactor. They enjoy the process of getting something working, but don’t like the process of making it good. To me, refactoring is the craft. That’s the part that I love. AI gives me more time for that.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#16

Post by ibash » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:54 PM UTC

I don’t think it’s a craft thing, I think it’s a speed thing. Senior engineers are faster in their existing workflows.

I’ve found ai tools most valuable for:

1. Quick “how to do x in y” language

2. Large scale refactorings that are mostly mechanical.

This still takes a bit of guidance to get the right output (and breaking down the refactoring an into multiple steps). But it does speed things up when I would touch 40-some files. I still review all the code.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#17

Post by AnotherGoodName » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

>Most developers hate AI coding tools

Not sure about that. If you go online and post anything disparaging AI you will definitely get a lot of support and +1's but my opinion is that there's a lot of noise from non-developers in these.

As in make a blog post "AI deleted my code" or "AI is worthless and slows me down, here's a very singular and specific example where this is true" and you'll be re-shared across the web with downvotes to the reasonable followup questions of "Just revert?" or "Don't use AI in that specific scenario?".

In the real world talking to peers i hear; "it's really good for getting out the boilerplate", "it's great for refactors", "it's pretty good at writing tests", "it one shot the UI implementation". Etc.

As in i hear measured praise and measured criticism for it that you just don't seem to get online. I guess that's true of any topic but AI and programming is something i know enough about to see the unreasonableness of these extremes.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#18

Post by ibash » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #14

amradio1989 wrote: post #3

Developers hate AI coding tools for the same reasons musicians dislike AI music and artists dislike AI art. Its the 'craft' problem as you say. But an artist who values the end result over the craft is hardly an artist at all. They're a merchant at heart. The art is the product, and what excites them is shipping product. For an artist at heart, however, the process is the product. Lucky for them, its about to become…

It's all about competition. Musicians dislike AI music because they're being outcompeted by AI. Same with artists. And, ironically, same with programmers. AI programming isn't going to improve the state of the craft. Developers hate AI coding tools for the same reason they hated Dreamweaver back in the 00s: the generated code was crap. You'd spend more time "fixing" the generated code than you'd spend writing it from…

That’s not quite right.

The tools are going to get better, and it’s going to lift everyone while doing so. But it will vary across task.

The bottom tier of engineers will have improvements to their code.

The top engineers will move faster. Top engineers will still be great at what they do.

—-

The same thing is happening in music. Everyone gets lifted but on different dimensions.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#19

Post by drcongo » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

dimal wrote: post #15

> developers fall into two camps: > Craft-focused developers enjoy the process of writing code… > Delivery-focused developers care about shipping products. What the hell am I, then? I’m a craft-focused developer who cares about shipping products, and I like AI. I find that AI doesn’t reduce my enjoyment of the craft. It reduces my need to type code with my fingers. I’m able to spend more time thinking above the code…

I find it useful for some things, and not for others. I've gotten pretty good at judging what both Claude and I are going to do well, and what each of us will make a right mess of. Happiness lies in the middle ground.

Re: AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

#20

Post by lylejantzi3rd » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

ibash wrote: post #18

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about competition. Musicians dislike AI music because they're being outcompeted by AI. Same with artists. And, ironically, same with programmers. AI programming isn't going to improve the state of the craft. Developers hate AI coding tools for the same reason they hated Dreamweaver back in the 00s: the generated code was crap. You'd spend more time "fixing" the generated code than you'd spend writing it from…

That’s not quite right. The tools are going to get better, and it’s going to lift everyone while doing so. But it will vary across task. The bottom tier of engineers will have improvements to their code. The top engineers will move faster. Top engineers will still be great at what they do. —- The same thing is happening in music. Everyone gets lifted but on different dimensions.

Unless there's a fundamental change in how the technology works, it'll never get to the point you're talking about. We're still waiting on our self-driving cars, remember.

Also, when it comes to music, who are the people in the rock and roll hall of fame? Those who can play the guitar real good? Or those who crafted songs that people love? AI will never be able to do the latter. But, AI can play power chords better than any session guitarist. That session guitarist is going to have to learn how to compete in another way than his guitar playing skill.