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Agentic Coding Is a Trap

larsfaye.com

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Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#251

Post by AdieuToLogic »

Terr_ wrote: post #227
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using AI to go faster is optimizing the wrong thing. At every place I've worked, the "code writing" part takes the least amount of time, compared to all the other things you need to do in order to implement a feature. This reminds me of one of my software engineering axioms: When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of your understanding of the problem. It states to all, including your future-self, your…

> a snapshot of your understanding of the problem Relevant: Programming as Theory Building (1985) by Peter Naur. The actual text is rather stuffy, but basically the code+docs cannot replace the richer in-human-heads ideas for what the real-world problem is and how computers should (or shouldn't) be used to face the problem.

>> a snapshot of your understanding of the problem

> Relevant: Programming as Theory Building (1985) by Peter Naur.

Great reference and I agree. From the abstract in the PDF I have of same:

  Peter Naur’s classic 1985 essay “Programming as Theory 
  Building” argues that a program is not its source code. A 
  program is a shared mental construct (he uses the word 
  theory) that lives in the minds of the people who work on 
  it. If you lose the people, you lose the program. The code 
  is merely a written representation of the program, and it’s 
  lossy, so you can’t reconstruct a program from its code.
Programming is a fascinating combination of mathematical determinism and pure expression of consciousness. Both are entirely abstract, whose worth is only quantified indirectly.

Entire organizations are built upon these intangible work products. Careers are made, promotions given, "free valence problem solvers" allowed to soar, stock options issued to birth millionaires.

But Valhalla is only reached if a cadre of engineers can "see" the system, both for what it is now as well as what it must become.

EDIT: removed irrelevant "physical world" sentence fragment.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#252

Post by echelon »

rimliu wrote: post #248
echelon wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the juniors who start today don't have that, they overrely on agentic coding and do not know what they don't know Y'all need to stop worrying about the kids. They're smarter than us and will run circles around us. They're going to look at us like dinosaurs and they're going to solve problems of scale and scope 10x or more than what we ever did. Hate to "old man yells at cloud" this, but so many people are falling i…

Was not a IQ decline observed for the first time recently? Also, no one gets smarter by outsourcing thinking.

> Also, no one gets smarter by outsourcing thinking.

Thinking is happening at a higher level. Humans are adepts at abstraction, and they are always capable of looking under the hood when needed.

We've never had so much societal capability as now. And that's only going to accelerate. Smart people will use these tools effectively. Don't be so bearish on human ingenuity.

Think of these tools as bullshit / busy work removers. You can focus on what matters and get more done than ever before. Deeper work, more connective work. It also opens fields of research up in an interdisciplinary fashion. People might explore outside of their limited domain now that they have help.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#253

Post by rimliu »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #146

I think AI will evolve to the point where it produces working, bug free code. But that code won't necessarily be that readable, clean or modular. In the future the complexity or how "bad" the code is won't matter because the LLM will deal with the complexity and clean up the messes automatically. Your code wasn't modular enough to account for a certain new feature? Well the LLM will simply make it modular enough. Is…

Indeed, the AI coding is most likely to go the way of self-driving: always around the corner.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#254

Post by maxrev17 »

keyle wrote: post #79

As a senior developer, 25+ years, I have been thrown recently into a meeting "hey can you join in for 5 mins". I really don't like these meetings where you're dragged in in the middle of them without any clue. The questions came flying in fast, without any introduction, and this was about an external integration out of a dozen. They have their own lingo, different from ours, to make the situation worse. I had a _very…

I’d just say to this.. who cares, drop the ego. The tool was used and if you didn’t use it you’d be in worse trouble. I just say I dno I’ll ask the AI… easy :D

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#255

Post by terseus »

ryandrake wrote: post #177
josephg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a senior developer, 25+ years, I have been thrown recently into a meeting "hey can you join in for 5 mins". This is a common thing doctors complain about. Patients come in, saying they just need a prescription for some drug or other. Good doctors often refuse to give any drugs or any advice until they understand the whole situation properly. If you're a senior developer, you're the one who has to push back again…

> This is a common thing doctors complain about. Patients come in, saying they just need a prescription for some drug or other. Off topic, but this must be a USA-specific problem, where prescription drugs are actually marketed at Joe consumer. I think there is maybe one other country where this insane practice is allowed. Nowhere else are patients told to “Ask your doctor about Procrapin for your irritable bowl syndr…

I don't know in other countries, but in Spain you definitely don't go to the doctor asking for anything more complex than a paracetamol.

You tell the doctor your symptoms, he explores you and perform any tests considered appropriate, and the doctor decides the prescription.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#256

Post by habinero »

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #12
cyanydeez wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but then it's not really saving you time is it.

IMO it still does save time generally but it’s not as much of a huge gain if you’re doing this. I will admit there are occasional times after iterating so much I’m not sure if I’ve even saved time because going from “it works” to “it’s up to quality” takes so long

I've run a few experiments where I give it well-defined small side projects where I have a good idea of what I would do and how long it would take, and I time the process from start to finish.

So far, it's been pretty underwhelming--on par or slower, and it's definitely more frustrating lol.

Honestly, the only killer feature I found so far is overcoming ADHD activation energy lol. Getting annoyed with the idiot robot screwing up the Terraform migration is apparently a good way to get me to finish a Terraform migration.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#257

Post by adrian_b »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #51

Interestingly I’ve learned more about languages and systems and tools I use in the last few years working with agentic coding than I did in 35 years of artisanal programming. I am still vastly superior at making decisions about systems and techniques and approaches than the agentic tools, but they are like a really really well read intern who knows a great deal of detail about errata but have very little experience.…

> The claim you should know everything about everything you work on is an intensely naive one.

It is true that you normally do not need to know everything, or even most of it.

Despite this, it is necessary to be able to discover and understand quickly anything about the project or system on which you work.

I have seen plenty of software teams that became stuck at some point because they could not solve some trivial problem that required a zoom into the project where some extra skills were required for understanding what they saw, like understanding a lower-level language, or assembly language or some less usual algorithms or networking protocols and so on.

Or otherwise they were stuck not because they lacked the skills to interpret what they saw, but because they used something that was a black box, like a proprietary library or a proprietary operating system, and it was impossible to determine what it really did instead of what it was expected to do, without being able to dive into its internals.

So I believe that the environment should always enable you to know everything about everything you work on, even if this should be only very seldom necessary.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#258

Post by ruicraveiro »

enigmoid wrote: post #83

> only a skilled developer who's thinking critically, and comfortable operating at the architectural level, can spot issues in the thousands of lines of generated code, before they become a problem. An additional factor: to find issues in generated code, the developer has to care . Many developers (especially at big firms) are already profoundly checked out from their work and are just looking for a way to close thei…

And by the comments in this section, there’s a lot of them.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#260

Post by esailija »

echelon wrote: post #139
byzantinegene wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have 35 years of experience and have already built up the learning capability and general framework to acquire new knowledge. you know how to use agentic coding as a tool to supplement your work. the juniors who start today don't have that, they overrely on agentic coding and do not know what they don't know

> the juniors who start today don't have that, they overrely on agentic coding and do not know what they don't know Y'all need to stop worrying about the kids. They're smarter than us and will run circles around us. They're going to look at us like dinosaurs and they're going to solve problems of scale and scope 10x or more than what we ever did. Hate to "old man yells at cloud" this, but so many people are falling i…

Not really.

For example preliterate people have absolutely insane memory. In comparison my memory sucks. Having to use notes, look things up etc sucks. Literacy is a tradeoff but at least it can be argued to be worth it.

Then there is smartphones. This is not the same. The tradeoffs compared to pre smartphones cannot be argued to be worth it imo and I was 20 years old when they were introduced. They make society and lives worse. It's not just about not being able to use PC but your attention and social skills sucking.

Then there is AI which is even worse than smartphones. The tradeoffs are so unthinkably bad I can't really even describe it.

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