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AI for Coding: Why Most Developers Are Getting It Wrong

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

#21

Post by paxys »

hakunin wrote: post #7

It's not about solving puzzles for us, craft-focused developers. It's about caring about the clarity of our writing, for the same reason a writer wouldn't want an AI agent writing their book.

A writer wouldn't want an AI agent writing their book because the end product is their writing. Readers actually care about the words and prose. That's what they are paying for after all. Users of a software program meanwhile want it to work as promised, that's it. The syntax, language, design patterns used, how elegant the code is etc. are all irrelevant. If an AI agent can write "better" code (in terms of meeting that promise) than a human programmer than that is objectively the right way forward.

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

#22

Post by hakunin »

paxys wrote: post #21
hakunin wrote: post #7

It's not about solving puzzles for us, craft-focused developers. It's about caring about the clarity of our writing, for the same reason a writer wouldn't want an AI agent writing their book.

A writer wouldn't want an AI agent writing their book because the end product is their writing. Readers actually care about the words and prose. That's what they are paying for after all. Users of a software program meanwhile want it to work as promised, that's it. The syntax, language, design patterns used, how elegant the code is etc. are all irrelevant. If an AI agent can write "better" code (in terms of meeting t…

This can apply to anything. Why care about how well a shovel is built if all you care about is a hole in the ground. Why care about the quality of the hole in the ground if all you need is laying foundation that can hold a house… Why care about a neat kitchen, if all you care about is a cooked dish. At every layer there are multiple sets of end users. Code is used by programmers and businesses as the source of truth and automation. Just like shovels are used by people who dig with them, not just customers who need holes.

If your point is nobody will ever need to read the code, there's a reason why truly self-driving cars aren't happening yet. We will need human intervention as a failsafe, probably for a while. And humans have been known to care deeply about way lesser things than reducing friction for handling a failure contingency.

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

#23

Post by geekymartian »

I'm wary of these "I don't use an IDE anymore, just chat with claude-code".

It's like playing a game of blindfold navigation and you need to direct somebody to get somewhere by shouting commands "go left, no, no go right, my right".

I do use claude-code, but you can't ditch the code editor because you got to tweak things here and there. It gets very time consuming if you rely on claude for small stuff also. Merely the roundtrip to apply some small changes through Claude can take longer than just go and edit the file.

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

#24

Post by samrus »

shigawire wrote: post #12
samrus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

It might be shilling, but it might also be someone just putting out low effort content to get traffic

I was actually referring more to what could be wrong with the code that they would want to hide?

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

#25

Post by drewcoo »

I was hoping that AI would lead to a golden age of testing, with devs focusing on making the best tests possible to determine if the AIs writing prod code were correct. Devs leading AI to correct code.

Unfortunately, expecting the AIs to make poop and the devs to wipe their butts only came half-true.

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

#26

Post by 8b16380d »

bgwalter wrote: post #11
8b16380d wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, I think the time horizon is long enough that I can make it to retirement.

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

#27

Post by teiferer »

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…

The divide described in the article is just nonsense. Maybe it's more along the lines of those who focus on quality versus those who focus on shipping. In the end, we want both, but which aspect is more important to either party is what I get from a good faith read of the article.

If you care most about quality then you realize that AI coding assistants are fundamentally unable to provide that since they fundamentally rehash what they have been trained on, which is, fundamentally, mediocre code, on average. It must be, because it's hard (impossible?) to measure, so can't be filtered out of the training data. Quality focus engineers (the "craft" folks) don't consider that enough. If all you want is ship, you don't care.

And that'a fair, it's a matter of personal priorities, and customers value these things differently too, so there is a place in the market for either. But please stop phrasing this in terms of loving syntax puzzles or such nonsense.

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

#28

Post by 8b16380d »

kookamamie wrote: post #9

Have fun maintaining a slop blob. It's not just about the craft. It's about understability, explainability and accountability.

Slop blobs happen without AI tooling though, unless everyone in the org is completely dedicated to their craft and on the same skill level.

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

#29

Post by sublinear »

paxys wrote: post #21
hakunin wrote: post #7

It's not about solving puzzles for us, craft-focused developers. It's about caring about the clarity of our writing, for the same reason a writer wouldn't want an AI agent writing their book.

A writer wouldn't want an AI agent writing their book because the end product is their writing. Readers actually care about the words and prose. That's what they are paying for after all. Users of a software program meanwhile want it to work as promised, that's it. The syntax, language, design patterns used, how elegant the code is etc. are all irrelevant. If an AI agent can write "better" code (in terms of meeting t…

The code being written really is the end product. Code is unreasonably effective because it is an efficient representation of an idea.

Dismissing all the other concerns it addresses except what the user thinks and how much money it makes is not only irresponsible and short-sighted, but an objectively inferior product. In one word: fraud.

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

#30

Post by sublinear »

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…

Why is this work so hard for you to do in the first place?
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