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The AI coding trap

chrisloy.dev

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Re: The AI coding trap

#131

Post by overfeed »

reb wrote: post #7

I would love to see an anti-AI take that doesn't hinge on the idea that technology forces people to be lazy/careless/thoughtless. The plan-build-test-reflect loop is equally important when using an LLM to generate code, as anyone who's seriously used the tech knows: if you yolo your way through a build without thought, it will collapse in on itself quickly. But if you DO apply that loop, you get to spend much more ti…

> AI allows you to spend nearly all of your time there if you wish, from concept through troubleshooting

It does not! If you're using interactive IDE AI, you spend your time keeping the AI on the rails, and reminding it what the original task is. If you're using agents, then you're delegating all the the mid-level/tactical thinking, and perhaps even the planning, and you're left with the task of writing requirements granular enough for an intern to tackle, but this hews closer to "Business Analyst" than "Software Engineer"

Re: The AI coding trap

#132

Post by nharada »

bootsmann wrote: post #126
hansonkd wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of critisms of python decades ago. that you wouldn't understand what the "real code" was doing since you were using a scripting language. But then over the years it showed tremendous value and many unicorns were built by focusing on higher level details and not lower level code

Comparing LLMs to programming languages is a fake equivalence. I don’t have to write assembly because LLVM will do that for me correctly in 100% of the cases, while AI might or might not (especially the more I move away from template crud apps)

it might be functionally correct but if you wrote it yourself it could be orders of magnitude faster

Re: The AI coding trap

#133

Post by binoct »

PessimalDecimal wrote: post #87
danpat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you will never know code as well as a reader and you would have as the author for anything larger than a very small project. This feels very true - but also consider how much code exists for which many of the current maintainers were not involved in the original writing. There are many anecdotal rules out there about how much time is spent reading code vs writing. If you consider the industry as a whole, it see…

> What's the difference between a messy codebase created by a genAI, and a messy codebase where all the original authors of the code have moved on and aren't available to ask questions? The difference is the hope of getting out of that situation. If you've inherited a messy and incoherent code base, you recognize that as a problem and work on fixing it. You can build an understanding of the code through first reading…

So there’s another force at work here that to me answers the question in a different way. Agents also massively decrease the difficulty of coming into someone else’s messy code base and being productive.

Want to make a quick change or fix? The agent will likely figure out a way to do it in minutes rather the than hours it would take me to do so.

Want to get a good understanding of the architecture and code layout? Working with an agent for search and summary cuts my time down by an order of magnitude.

So while agree there’s a lot more “what the heck is this ugly pile of if else statements doing?” And “why are there three modules handling transforms?”, there is a corresponding drop in cost to adding features and paying down tech debt. Finding the right balance is a bit different in the agentic coding world, but it’s a different mindset and set of practices to develop.

Re: The AI coding trap

#134

Post by chamomeal »

hansonkd wrote: post #111
jstummbillig wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article sort of goes sideways with this idea but pointing out that AI coding robs you a deep understanding of the code it produces is a valid and important criticism of AI coding. Why? Code has always been the artifact. Thinking about and understanding the domain clearly and solving problems is where the intrinsic value is at (but I'd suspect that in the future this, too, will go away).

Reminds me of critisms of python decades ago. that you wouldn't understand what the "real code" was doing since you were using a scripting language. But then over the years it showed tremendous value and many unicorns were built by focusing on higher level details and not lower level code

But working with AI isn’t really a higher level of abstraction. It’s a completely different process. I’m not hating on it, I love LLMs and use em constantly, but it doesn’t go assembly > C > python > LLMs

Re: The AI coding trap

#135

Post by tptacek »

swiftcoder wrote: post #70
tptacek wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This logic doesn't even cohere. Thinking is a significant part of software delivery. So is getting actual code to work.

ideally there is an order of magnitude difference between, and the latter is trivially delegable (where the former is not)

No there isn't.

Re: The AI coding trap

#136

Post by chamomeal »

benoau wrote: post #124
strogonoff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never made a case against LLMs and similar ML applications in the sense that they negatively impact mental agility. The cases I made so far include, but are not limited to: — OSS exploded on the promise that software you voluntarily contributed to remains to benefit the public, and that a large corporation cannot tomorrow simply take your work and make it part of their product, never contributing anything back. Com…

> — The ends don’t justify the means. IP theft that lies in the beginning of this new wave of applied ML is essentially piracy Isn't "AI coding" trained almost entirely on open source code and published documentation?

Yeah but it’s the same issue. Open source licenses (just like other laws) weren’t designed for the age of LLMs. I’m sure most people don’t care, but I bet a lot of maintainers don’t want their code fed to LLMs!

Re: The AI coding trap

#137

Post by malyk »

overfeed wrote: post #131
reb wrote: post #7

I would love to see an anti-AI take that doesn't hinge on the idea that technology forces people to be lazy/careless/thoughtless. The plan-build-test-reflect loop is equally important when using an LLM to generate code, as anyone who's seriously used the tech knows: if you yolo your way through a build without thought, it will collapse in on itself quickly. But if you DO apply that loop, you get to spend much more ti…

> AI allows you to spend nearly all of your time there if you wish, from concept through troubleshooting It does not! If you're using interactive IDE AI, you spend your time keeping the AI on the rails, and reminding it what the original task is. If you're using agents, then you're delegating all the the mid-level/tactical thinking, and perhaps even the planning, and you're left with the task of writing requirements…

Using an agentic workflow does not require you to delegate tge thinking. Agents are great at taking exactly what you want to do and executing. So spend an extra few minutes and lay out the architecture YOU want then let the ai do the work.

Re: The AI coding trap

#138

Post by jowea »

benoau wrote: post #124
strogonoff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never made a case against LLMs and similar ML applications in the sense that they negatively impact mental agility. The cases I made so far include, but are not limited to: — OSS exploded on the promise that software you voluntarily contributed to remains to benefit the public, and that a large corporation cannot tomorrow simply take your work and make it part of their product, never contributing anything back. Com…

> — The ends don’t justify the means. IP theft that lies in the beginning of this new wave of applied ML is essentially piracy Isn't "AI coding" trained almost entirely on open source code and published documentation?

What about copylefted code?

Re: The AI coding trap

#139

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

reb wrote: post #7

I would love to see an anti-AI take that doesn't hinge on the idea that technology forces people to be lazy/careless/thoughtless. The plan-build-test-reflect loop is equally important when using an LLM to generate code, as anyone who's seriously used the tech knows: if you yolo your way through a build without thought, it will collapse in on itself quickly. But if you DO apply that loop, you get to spend much more ti…

It's like folks complaining that people don't know how to code in Assembly or Machine Language.

New-fangled compiled languages...

Or who use modern, strictly-typed languages.

New-fangled type-safe languages...

As someone that has been coding since it was wiring up NAND gates on a circuit board, I'm all for the new ways, but there will definitely be a lot of mistakes, jargon, and blind alleys; just like every other big advancement.

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