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Agentic Coding Is a Trap

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Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#271

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

It's not exclusive to the USA. Happens every single day here in Brazil too. Prescriptions expire, but people still need their medications, so they come in for routine consults. Good opportunity to reevaluate the patient and make adjustments if necessary.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#273

Post by sshine »

terseus wrote: post #255
ryandrake wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

I also come from a country where the doctor decides the prescription.

But you might have prior experience and preference.

A friend of mine always asks "Hey, can you bring antibiotics back?" when I go on vacation somewhere where access is easier.

Doctors here will give you a hard time if you want it.

I think that's how it should be. But sometimes you know you need antibiotics.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#274

Post by helloplanets »

habinero wrote: post #264
helloplanets wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SotA models have cracked a handful of research-level math problems though. The default Claude Code style harness is bad for complicated problems as well. Just taking the specific class or function you're working on, and putting it into a deep research style loop yields way better results. Limiting the initial context by hand is still the way to go in a lot of cases.

No, it's the same for math from what I've seen, aka it can do some of the easy things, usually with a lot of help. People usually mean the Erdos problems (aka "a list of things Paul Erdos thought were neat") and, well, here: > While Erdős generated a huge number of problems, they are not all equally significant and important. I have, unfortunately, seen some mathematicians grow dismissive of Erdős problems recently,…

You're right, definitely as a helper, not a one shot thing.

Here's an example unrelated to the Erdos problems: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23513

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#276

Post by keyle »

maxrev17 wrote: post #254
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

Thanks, that's an interesting take from all that I've read.

If you're happy for me to do the job in 1/10th of the time, be happy with me not being fully across it on a whim.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#277

Post by blks »

throwaway041207 wrote: post #133
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

IMO, by the time todays juniors would have 5-10 years of expected experience, the entire field will be something different altogether. Language choice distribution will collapse (if not change altogether), whole new modalities of monitoring and progressive delivery guardrails will come into play, essentially creating a 24/7 incremental rollout of pure agentic code, correctness will be determined by a mix of language…

Everything looks a nail for our hammer-shaped chat bot.

I think you’re overly hyped if your actually believe this is going to be a reality in 5-10 years.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#278

Post by blks »

bhagyeshsp wrote: post #159
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

Self-taught, "junior" here. Due to English-language limitation my most adult life, I struggled to code. Used visual coding etc. But of course, I can't make a living on drag-and-drop harness. Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta. The point is: when people use "juniors" as a fixed…

I didn’t speak English my early teenage years, and that haven’t stopped me from reading books about programming in my native language. I remember spending hours in bookshops, excited to pick up next book to devour and try out.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#279

Post by blks »

danenania wrote: post #152
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

If a junior builds something with agents that turns into a mess they can’t debug, that will teach them something. If they care about getting better, they will learn to understand why that happened and how to avoid it next time. It’s not all that different than writing code directly and having it turn into a mess they can’t debug—something we all did when we were learning to program. It is in many ways far easier to w…

Coding by hand is not mere typing symbols into editor that LLMs are now replacing, it’s thinking, abstracting, deciding how to apply your knowledge and experience, searching for information.

And of course in the current workplace where there’s often a push from managers to use LLMs as much as possible and to put as much work as possible on yourself, in this churn junior will not get to learn anything besides prompting and simple tooling.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#280

Post by backwardsponcho »

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…

While I'm sure the US has its quirks, this is not a US-only "problem" (not a health expert so I'm not sure if it's even a problem to begin with).

I live in Norway and have heard from lots of people (coworkers, friends, acquaintances) that doctors are very reluctant to prescribing anything at all - the running joke is that they'll advise you to "get some fresh air and go for a walk" even if you just broke your leg in half

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