Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I created my first AI-assisted pull request

nelson.cloud

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 83 posts

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#11

Post by tptacek »

largbae wrote: post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

We grew tomatoes last summer. Over the last 2 years, something about tomatoes (and BLTs in particular) really clicked for me; we'd grown tomatoes many previous summers, and I could give a shit, but last summer I cared a lot about our home-grown tomatoes.

And I totally did feel less good about BLTs I made with supermarket heirloom tomatoes!

It was irrational, but I did feel that way. I get where people are coming from.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#12

Post by viccis »

ilc wrote: post #4

When you realize that being a great "programmer", isn't about writing the most code, but getting the job done... AI will click as another tool in the toolbox.

I think being a great "software engineer" at a company is about getting the job done. A great "programmer" is about designing and writing great code.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#14

Post by Spooky23 »

My perspective on this is that my first real job in 1999 was a DBA. I was an intern and then junior focused on the Oracle and Informix database and optimization of the systems and storage. Basically the Unix sysadmin who grokked database.

We had 8 people on that team. The entire scope of what we did for a living was replaced, mostly by 2010 or so. My role was made redundant by improving storage performance and capacity. We had a few TB and lots of blob data. I cared about where data was stored from a disk geometry perspective. Today, I could smoke that infrastructure with my MacBook.

The other DBA roles also mostly moved on. ORMs automated a lot of schema work. Engine optimizations eliminated a lot of the operational tuning work that went on. Most of the other stuff moved into adjacent developer roles.

Most places have very few DBAs today. That startup today would have had zero.

I think the author is being way too hard on himself. He defined a problem, worked with the computer to “scratch the itch” presumably QA’d the result and sent it upstream. That’s valid and useful. The method is different. But the work is solving the problems - and just like crazy kids solved problems with VisualBasic and the real men wielding C++ shook their heads, the AI tools are going to produce alot of shit, but also solve alot of problems.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#16

Post by _vertigo »

largbae wrote: post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

The blog post discusses this point directly. Did you read it?

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#17

Post by bravura »

tptacek wrote: post #11
largbae wrote: post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

We grew tomatoes last summer. Over the last 2 years, something about tomatoes (and BLTs in particular) really clicked for me; we'd grown tomatoes many previous summers, and I could give a shit, but last summer I cared a lot about our home-grown tomatoes. And I totally did feel less good about BLTs I made with supermarket heirloom tomatoes! It was irrational, but I did feel that way. I get where people are coming from…

Hot take: We mostly eat garbage tomatoes.

"*A BLT is a tomato sandwich, seasoned with bacon.*

It wasn't until I tasted my first great tomato, at the vine-ripe old age of 22, that I finally understood the true nature of the BLT (and, by extension, why I'd never enjoyed tomatoes on my sandwiches or in my salads). Here we go: A BLT is not a well-dressed bacon sandwich. A BLT is a tomato sandwich, seasoned with bacon. From this basic premise, all else follows."

https://www.seriouseats.com/ultimate-blt-sandwich-bacon-lett...

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#18

Post by zem »

my advice for anyone in this situation - as the next step. work with claude to understand the context surrounding the change, and how it fits into the existing project. do a deeper dive into whether the change causes a performance regression, see if it's stylistically consistent with similar code, probe whether there is code duplication that you could clean up by pulling out a function. claude can absolutely help with all of this! and at the end of all that, read through the generated code with a fresh understanding of it, and see if you agree with how it was done or whether you might prefer anything to be changed.

you will get a proper sense of ownership and of at least having put some work into not delivering slop, though of course there might still be subtle issues that only the people familiar with the codebase would catch.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#19

Post by tptacek »

bravura wrote: post #17
tptacek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We grew tomatoes last summer. Over the last 2 years, something about tomatoes (and BLTs in particular) really clicked for me; we'd grown tomatoes many previous summers, and I could give a shit, but last summer I cared a lot about our home-grown tomatoes. And I totally did feel less good about BLTs I made with supermarket heirloom tomatoes! It was irrational, but I did feel that way. I get where people are coming from…

Hot take: We mostly eat garbage tomatoes. "*A BLT is a tomato sandwich, seasoned with bacon.* It wasn't until I tasted my first great tomato, at the vine-ripe old age of 22, that I finally understood the true nature of the BLT (and, by extension, why I'd never enjoyed tomatoes on my sandwiches or in my salads). Here we go: A BLT is not a well-dressed bacon sandwich. A BLT is a tomato sandwich, seasoned with bacon. Fr…

I mean, I'm not much of a gardener, but Erin sure is, and I had a direct basis for comparison. Our tomatoes were better, but the supermarket heirlooms were perfectly cromulent.

I think the key is just to make sure you're buying them in season, and that they didn't travel far.

Post reply on HN