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Agentic Engineering Patterns

simonwillison.net

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Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#71

Post by offbynull »

yoaviram wrote: post #24

Yesterday I wrote a post about exactly this. Software development, as the act of manually producing code, is dying. A new discipline is being born. It is much closer to proper engineering. Like an engineer overseeing the construction of a bridge, the job is not to lay bricks. It is to ensure the structure does not collapse. The marginal cost of code is collapsing. That single fact changes everything. https://nonstruc…

This is such a strange take. Your words remind me of past crypto hype cycles, where people pushed web3.0 and NFT FOMO hysteria.

Engineering is the practical application of science and mathematics to solve problems. It sounds like you're maybe describing construction management instead. I'm not denying that there's value here, but what you're espousing seems divorced from reality. Good luck vibecoding a nontrivial actuarial model, then having it to pass the laundry list of reviews and having large firms actually pick it up.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#73

Post by sd9 »

dude250711 wrote: post #72

Slop Engineering Patterns

Do you think there’s a chance that the hundreds of thousands or millions of developers - real developers - using these tools, might actually find them useful?

Dismissing everything AI as slop strikes me as an attitude that is not going to age well. You’ll miss the boat when it does come (and I believe it already has).

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#74

Post by badestrand »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #52
benrutter wrote: post #10

I use AI in my workflow mostly for simple boilerplate, or to troubleshoot issues/docs. I've dipped into agentic work now and again, but never been very impressed with the output (well, that there is any functioning output is insanely impressive, but it isn't code I want to be on the hook for complaining). I hear a lot of people saying the same, but similarly a bunch of people I respect saying they barely write code a…

One thing I rarely see mentioned is that often creating code by hand is simply faster (at least for me) than using AI. Creating a plan for AI, waiting for execution, verifying, prompting again etc. can take more time than just doing it on my own with a plan in my head (and maybe some notes). Creating something from scratch or doing advanced refactoring is almost always faster with AI, but most of my daily tasks are b…

For me it _can_ be faster to code than to instruct but it takes me significantly less effort to write the prompt than the actual code. So a few hours of concentrates coding leave me completely drained of energy while after a few hours with the agents I still have a lot of mental energy. That's the huge difference for me and I don't want to go back.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#75

Post by vidarh »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #52
benrutter wrote: post #10

I use AI in my workflow mostly for simple boilerplate, or to troubleshoot issues/docs. I've dipped into agentic work now and again, but never been very impressed with the output (well, that there is any functioning output is insanely impressive, but it isn't code I want to be on the hook for complaining). I hear a lot of people saying the same, but similarly a bunch of people I respect saying they barely write code a…

One thing I rarely see mentioned is that often creating code by hand is simply faster (at least for me) than using AI. Creating a plan for AI, waiting for execution, verifying, prompting again etc. can take more time than just doing it on my own with a plan in my head (and maybe some notes). Creating something from scratch or doing advanced refactoring is almost always faster with AI, but most of my daily tasks are b…

Yes, it's often faster if you sit around waiting. What I will do instead is prompt the AI to create various plans, do other stuff while they do, review and approve the plans, do other stuff while multiple plans are being implemented, and then review and revise the output.

And I have the AI deal with "knowing how to do it" as well. Often it's slower to have it do enough research to know how to do it, but my time is more expensive than Claude's time, and so as long as I'm not sitting around waiting it's a net win.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#76

Post by vidarh »

paganel wrote: post #61
abm53 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal to this would be that you can do many such tasks in parallel. I’m not sure it’s really true in practice yet, but that would certainly be the claim.

But can you mentally "keep hold" (for lack of a better term) of those tasks that are getting executed in parallel? Honestly asking. Because, after they're done/have finished executing, I guess you still have to "check" their output, integrate their results into the bigger project they're (supposedly) part of etc, and for me the context-switching required to do all that is mentally taxing. But maybe this only happens…

I have the AI integrate their results themselves. That's if anything one of the things they do best. I also have them do reviews and test their own work first before I check it, and that usually makes the remaining verification fairly quick and painless.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#77

Post by dude250711 »

sd9 wrote: post #73
dude250711 wrote: post #72

Slop Engineering Patterns

Do you think there’s a chance that the hundreds of thousands or millions of developers - real developers - using these tools, might actually find them useful? Dismissing everything AI as slop strikes me as an attitude that is not going to age well. You’ll miss the boat when it does come (and I believe it already has).

> You’ll miss the boat when it does come

Is the boat:

1) unmissable since the tools get better all the time and are intelligent

or

2) nearly-impossible to board since the tools will replace most of the developers

or

3) a boat of small productivity improvements?

?

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#78

Post by sd9 »

dude250711 wrote: post #77
sd9 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there’s a chance that the hundreds of thousands or millions of developers - real developers - using these tools, might actually find them useful? Dismissing everything AI as slop strikes me as an attitude that is not going to age well. You’ll miss the boat when it does come (and I believe it already has).

> You’ll miss the boat when it does come Is the boat: 1) unmissable since the tools get better all the time and are intelligent or 2) nearly-impossible to board since the tools will replace most of the developers or 3) a boat of small productivity improvements? ?

Personally today I think it’s 3.

Eventually I do think it will be 2.

I think you’ve got to make hay while the sun shines. Nobody knows how this is all going to play out, I just want to make sure I’m at the forefront of it.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#79

Post by fragmede »

raincole wrote: post #54
yoaviram wrote: post #24

Yesterday I wrote a post about exactly this. Software development, as the act of manually producing code, is dying. A new discipline is being born. It is much closer to proper engineering. Like an engineer overseeing the construction of a bridge, the job is not to lay bricks. It is to ensure the structure does not collapse. The marginal cost of code is collapsing. That single fact changes everything. https://nonstruc…

> wrote Quite a heavy-lifting word here. You understand why people flagged that post right? It's painfully non-human. I'm all for utilizing LLM, but I highly suggest you read Simon's posts. He's obviously a heavy AI user, but even his blog posts aren't that inorganic and that's why he became the new HN blog babe. [0]: I personally believe Simon writes with his own voice, but who knows?

How paranoid do you want to get? Simone's written enough, such that you could just feed his blog to AI and ask it to write in his voice. Which, taken to the logical extreme, means that the last time he went to visit OpenAI, he was captured, and locked in a dungeon, and his online presence is now entirely AI with the right prompt. In fact, that's happened to everyone on this site, and we're all LLMs just predicting the next word at each other.

There's no actual way to determine if any words are from a silicon token generator or meat-based generator. It's not AI, it's human! Emdash. You're absolutely right!

system failure.

Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns

#80

Post by dude250711 »

sd9 wrote: post #78
dude250711 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’ll miss the boat when it does come Is the boat: 1) unmissable since the tools get better all the time and are intelligent or 2) nearly-impossible to board since the tools will replace most of the developers or 3) a boat of small productivity improvements? ?

Personally today I think it’s 3. Eventually I do think it will be 2. I think you’ve got to make hay while the sun shines. Nobody knows how this is all going to play out, I just want to make sure I’m at the forefront of it.

So you think the tools will be intelligent yet somehow hard to master?

And the progress is slowing down in such a way, that knowledge learned today will not be outdated anymore?

Should investors be worried, since AGI is not coming anymore?

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