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AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

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Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#41

Post by pamelafox »

Both humans and coding agents have their strengths and weaknesses, but I've been appreciating help from coding agents, especially with languages or frameworks where I have less expertise, and the agent has more "knowledge", either in its weights or in its ability to more quickly ingest documentation.

One weakness of coding agents is that sometimes all it sees are the codes, and not the outputs. That's why I've been working on agent instructions/tools/MCP servers that empower it with all the same access that I have. For example, this is a custom chat mode for GitHub Copilot in VS Code: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure-Samples/azure-search...

I give it access to run code, run tests and see the output, run the local server and see the output, and use the Playwright MCP tools on that local server. That gives the agent almost every ability that I have - the only tool that it lacks is the breakpoint debugger, as that is not yet exposed to Copilot. I'm hoping it will be in the future, as it would be very interesting to see how an agent would step through and inspect variables.

I've had a lot more success when I actively customize the agent's environment, and then I can collaborate more easily with it.

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#42

Post by TheRoque »

jjangkke wrote: post #31
tjr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of comments here seem to be similar. I see people claiming that AI has all but taken over doing their work for them, and others claiming that it's almost useless. But usually, nobody even briefly mentions what the work is (other than, presumably, something related to programming). I imagine there's a big difference in using AI for building, say, an online forum vs. building a flight control system, both in term…

I can confidently state that for CRUD web apps, its truly over as in those jobs are never going to command the same wages it once used to. With the recent models its now encroaching similarly on all fronts, I think the next few iterations we'll see LLM solidify itself as a meta-compiler that will be deployed locally for more FCS type systems. At the end of the day the hazards are still same with or without AI, you ne…

"crud web apps" sounds like WordPress or Django anyways I mean, it's already kind of valueless ? The true value lies in what this crud app is about, marketing, and the extra bits you can add to make it special.

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#43

Post by bakugo »

ACCount37 wrote: post #27
manoDev wrote: post #10

I'm tired of the anthropomorphization marketing behind AI driving this kind of discussion. In a few years, all this talk will sound as dumb as stating "MS Word spell checker will replace writers" or "Photoshop will replace designers". We'll reap the productivity benefits from this new tool, create more work for ourselves, output will stabilize at a new level and salaries will stagnate again, as it always happens.

I'm tired of all the "yet another tool" reductionism. It reeks of cope. It took under a decade to get AI to this stage - where it can build small scripts and tiny services entirely on its own. I see no fundamental limitations that would prevent further improvements. I see no reason why it would stop at human level of performance either.

> I see no fundamental limitations that would prevent further improvements

How can you say this when progress has so clearly stagnated already? The past year has been nothing but marginal improvements at best, culminating in GPT-5 which can barely be considered an upgrade over 4o in terms of pure intelligence despite the significant connotation attached to the number.

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#44

Post by frank_nitti »

kazinator wrote: post #22
manoDev wrote: post #10

I'm tired of the anthropomorphization marketing behind AI driving this kind of discussion. In a few years, all this talk will sound as dumb as stating "MS Word spell checker will replace writers" or "Photoshop will replace designers". We'll reap the productivity benefits from this new tool, create more work for ourselves, output will stabilize at a new level and salaries will stagnate again, as it always happens.

Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. There is no exact measure of correctness in design; one bad bit does not stop the show. The clients don't even want real art. Artists sometimes refer to commer…

I agree with your sentiment. But where I struggle is: to what degree do each of those ads “represent one less person who would have been paid” versus those that represent one additional person who would not be able to afford to advertise in that medium.

Of course that line of reasoning reduces similar to other automation / minimum wage / etc discussions

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#45

Post by agentultra »

“Feels primitive,” is holding up a lot of assumptions.

What feels primitive to me is how we approach programming in industry as a process of trial and error rather than one of rigour.

These are tools that automate copy-pasting from Stack Overflow and GitHub, running tools, and generating a ton of noise to sift through. They hallucinate code, documentation, and various other artifacts that are sometimes useful and are occasionally complete BS.

Some people find that they can make useful tools out of these things. Great.

A real programmer is still a human.

Update: nothing wrong with trial and error as a process. I use it a lot. But there are lots of places where we use this method that seem inappropriate and sometimes even dangerous. Yet it’s the most common tool we have and everything starts to look like a nail.

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#46

Post by matheusd »

biophysboy wrote: post #36
kazinator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. There is no exact measure of correctness in design; one bad bit does not stop the show. The clients don't even want real art. Artists sometimes refer to commer…

YouTube has the lowest quality ads of any online platform I use by several orders of magnitude. AI being used for belly fat and erectile dysfunction ads is not exactly good for its creative reputation

Local governments in BR have already made ads using generative AI that were shown during prime time TV hours[1].

You can argue that is a bad thing (local designers/content producers/actors/etc lost revenue, while the money was sent to $BigTech) or that this was a good thing (lower cost to make ad means taxpayer money saved, paying $BigTech has lower chance of corruption vs hiring local marketing firm - which is very common here).

[1]https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/tecnologia/video-feito-com-inte...

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#47

Post by bakugo »

anthonypasq wrote: post #25
crooked-v wrote: post #2

For me it's simple: even the best models are "lazy" and will confidently declare they're finished when they're obviously not, and the immensely increased amount of training effort to get ChatGPT 5's mild improvements on benchmarks suggests that that quality won't go away anytime soon.

gpt-5 is extremely cheap, what makes you think they couldn't produce a larger, smarter, more expensive model? gpt-5 was created to be able to service 200m daily active users.

> what makes you think they couldn't produce a larger, smarter, more expensive model?

Because they already did try making a much larger, more expensive model, it was called GPT-4.5. It failed, it wasn't actually that much smarter despite being insanely expensive, and they retired it after a few months.

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#48

Post by whatever1 »

kazinator wrote: post #22
manoDev wrote: post #10

I'm tired of the anthropomorphization marketing behind AI driving this kind of discussion. In a few years, all this talk will sound as dumb as stating "MS Word spell checker will replace writers" or "Photoshop will replace designers". We'll reap the productivity benefits from this new tool, create more work for ourselves, output will stabilize at a new level and salaries will stagnate again, as it always happens.

Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. There is no exact measure of correctness in design; one bad bit does not stop the show. The clients don't even want real art. Artists sometimes refer to commer…

“ Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid.”

The thing is that they would not have paid for the actor anyway. It’s that having an “actor” and special effects for your ads cost nothing, so why not?

The quality of their ads went up, the money changing hands did not change.

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#49

Post by [deleted] »

TheRoque wrote: post #42
jjangkke wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confidently state that for CRUD web apps, its truly over as in those jobs are never going to command the same wages it once used to. With the recent models its now encroaching similarly on all fronts, I think the next few iterations we'll see LLM solidify itself as a meta-compiler that will be deployed locally for more FCS type systems. At the end of the day the hazards are still same with or without AI, you ne…

"crud web apps" sounds like WordPress or Django anyways I mean, it's already kind of valueless ? The true value lies in what this crud app is about, marketing, and the extra bits you can add to make it special.

[deleted]

Re: AI’s coding evolution hinges on collaboration and trust

#50

Post by mjr00 »

kazinator wrote: post #22
manoDev wrote: post #10

I'm tired of the anthropomorphization marketing behind AI driving this kind of discussion. In a few years, all this talk will sound as dumb as stating "MS Word spell checker will replace writers" or "Photoshop will replace designers". We'll reap the productivity benefits from this new tool, create more work for ourselves, output will stabilize at a new level and salaries will stagnate again, as it always happens.

Generative AI is replacing writers, designers, actors, ... it is nothing like just a spell checker or Phtoshop. Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid. There is no exact measure of correctness in design; one bad bit does not stop the show. The clients don't even want real art. Artists sometimes refer to commer…

> Everyday, I see ads on YouTube with smooth-talking, real-looking AI-generated actors. Each one represents one less person that would have been paid.

Were AI-generated actors chosen over real actors, or was the alternative using some other low-cost method for an advertisement like just colorful words moving around on a screen? Or the ad not being made at all?

The existence of ads using generative AI "actors" doesn't prove that an actor wasn't paid. This is the same logical fallacy as claiming that one pirated copy of software represents a lost sale.

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