Isn't this proposal closely matching with the approach OpenSpec is taking? (Possibly other SDD tool kits, I'm just familiar with this one). I spend way more time in making my spec artifacts (proposal, design, spec, tasks) than I do in code review. During generation of each of these artifacts the code is referenced and surfaces at least some of the issues which are purely architecture based.
Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
61–70 of 151 posts
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLM has been hollowing out the mid and lower end of engineering. But has not eroded highest end. Otherwise all the LLM companies wouldn’t pay for talent, they’d just use their own LLM. The talent isn't used for writing code anymore though. They're used for directing, which an LLM isn't very good at since it has limited real world experience, interacting with other humans, and goals. OpenAI has said they're slowing do…
Source: Trust me, bro. A company selling an AI model telling others their AI model is so good that it's building itself. What could possibly motivate them to say that? Remember a few years ago when Sam Altman said we had to pause AI development for 6 months because otherwise we would have the singularity and it would end the world? Yeah, about that...
Claude Code creator is saying it too. He doesn't code anymore.
I personally don't code manually anymore either so I'm inclined to believe them.
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#63For me, AI is an enabler for things you can't do otherwise (or that would take many weeks of learning). But you still need to know how to do things properly in general, otherwise the results are bad. E.g. I'm a software architect and developer for many years. So I know already how to build software but I'm not familiar with every language or framework. AI enabled me to write other kind of software I never learned or…
Yes but in my experience this sometimes works great, other times you paint yourself in a corner and the sun total is that you still have to learn the thing, just the initial ram is less steep. For example I build my self a nice pipeline for converting jpegs on disk to h264 on disk via zero-copy nvjpeg to nvenc, with python bindings but have been pulling out my hair over bframe ordering and weird delays in playback etc. Nothing u solvable but I had to learn a great deal and when we were in the weeds, Opus was suggesting stupid hack quick fixes that made a whack a mole with the tests. In the end I had to lead e Pugh and read enough to be able to ask it with the right vocabulary to make it work. Similarly with entering many novel areas. Initially I get a rush because it "just works" but it really only works for the median case initially and it's up to you to even know what to test. And AIs can be quite dismissive of edge cases like saying this will not happen in most cases so we can skip it etc.
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep hearing this but I don’t understand. If inelegant code means more bugs that are harder to fix later, that translates into negative business value. You won’t see it right away which is probably where this sentiment is coming from, but it will absolutely catch up to you. Elegant code isn’t just for looks. It’s code that can still adapt weeks, months, years after it has shipped and created “business value”.
People sometimes conflate inelegance with buggy code, where the market fit and value matter more than code elegance. Bugs still are not acceptable even in your MVP. Actually I think buggy software especially if those bugs destroy user experience, will kill products. It’s not 2010 anymore. There are a lot of less buggy software out there and attention spans are narrower than before. edit: typo
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Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#65For me, AI is an enabler for things you can't do otherwise (or that would take many weeks of learning). But you still need to know how to do things properly in general, otherwise the results are bad. E.g. I'm a software architect and developer for many years. So I know already how to build software but I'm not familiar with every language or framework. AI enabled me to write other kind of software I never learned or…
Also most of the studies shown start to be obsolete with AI rapid path of improvements. Opus 4.5 has been a huge game changer for me (combined with CC that I had not used before) since December. Claude code arrived this summer if I’m not mistaken. So I’m not sure a study from 2024 or impact on code produced during 2024 2025 can be used to judge current ai coding possibilities.
Agreed, this space move so fast, 2024 feels like light-years away in terms of capabilities.
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#66this concept of bottlenecking on code review is definitely a problem. Either you (a) don't review the code, (b) invest more resources in review or (c) hope that AI assistance in the review process increases efficiency there enough to keep up with code production. But if none of those work, all AI assistance does is bottleneck the process at review.
If companies truly believed more code equals more productivity then they will remove all code review from their process and let IC’s ship AI generated code that they “review” as the prompter directly to prod.
you mean to Staging, right? even non AI code can't be trusted on "straight to prod on Friday evening" level
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#67[dead]
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#68"Experienced developers were 19% slower when using AI coding assistants—yet believed they were faster (METR, 2025)" Anecdotally I see this _all the time_...
Yes, that's true, because as developer you have to check if "generated" code meet your standards and if is handling all edge cases you see.
When you are an experienced developer and you "struggle" writing manually some code this is important warning indicator about project architecture - that something is wrong in it.
For such cases I like to step back and think about redesign/refactor. When coding goes smoothly, some "unpredicted" customer changes can be added easly into project then it is the best indicator that architecture is fine.
That's my humble human opinion ;)
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#69For me, AI is an enabler for things you can't do otherwise (or that would take many weeks of learning). But you still need to know how to do things properly in general, otherwise the results are bad. E.g. I'm a software architect and developer for many years. So I know already how to build software but I'm not familiar with every language or framework. AI enabled me to write other kind of software I never learned or…
I'm in the same boat. I've been taking on much more ambitious projects both at work and personally by collaborating with LLMs. There are many tasks that I know I could do myself but would require a ton of trial and error. I've found giving the LLMs the input and output interfaces really help keep them on rails, while still being involved in the overall process without just blindly "vibe coding." Having the AI also he…
100% agree with AI expanding core testing from my own edge and key tests.
I agree, I write out the sketch of what I want. With a recent embedded project in C I gave it a list of function signatures and high level description and was very satisfied with what it produced. It would have taken me days to nail down the particulars of the HAL (like what kind of sleep do I want what precisely is the way to setup the WDT and ports).
I think it's also language dependent.
I imagine JavaScript can be a crap shoot. The language is too forgiving.
Rust is where I have had most success. That is likely a personal skill issue, I know we want a Arc, will I remember all the foibles of accessing it? No.
But given the rigidity of the compiler and strong typing I can focus on what the code functionally is doing, that in happy with the shape/interface and function signature and the compiler is happy with the code.
It's quite fast work. It lets me use my high level skills without my lower level skills getting in the way.
And id rather rewrite the code at a mid-level then start it fresh, and agree with others once it's a large code base then in too far behind in understanding the overall system to easily work on it. That's true of human products too - someone elses code always gives me the ick.
Re: Coding assistants are solving the wrong problem
#70"Experienced developers were 19% slower when using AI coding assistants—yet believed they were faster (METR, 2025)" Anecdotally I see this _all the time_...
Yes, that's true, because as developer you have to check if "generated" code meet your standards and if is handling all edge cases you see. When you are an experienced developer and you "struggle" writing manually some code this is important warning indicator about project architecture - that something is wrong in it. For such cases I like to step back and think about redesign/refactor. When coding goes smoothly, som…
It's even simpler than that. "Reading code is harder than writing code" has been repeated for decades and everyone agrees.
When you use AI to generate your code, instead of you writing it and then someone else reviewing it, there are two people reviewing it (you and the reviewer), which obviously takes longer.