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

Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

dbreunig.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 260 posts

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#81

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

spicyusername wrote: post #74

A lot of people down on AI in this thread, but I'm watching the industry slip over the line of trust with these latest frontier models. GPT 5.5 is the first model good enough for me to just let rip. Every jira ticket I see now has acceptance criteria, reproduction steps, and detailed information about why the ticket exists. Every commit message now matches the repo style, and has detailed information about what's con…

> I regularly ship four features at a time now across multiple projects.

Many people are missing the fact that LLMs allow ICs to start operating like managers.

You can manage 4 streams now. Within a couple years, you may be able to manage 10 streams like a typical manager does today.

IME, LLMs don't speed you up that much if 1) you're already an expert at what you're doing (inherently not scalable), 2) you're only working on one thing (doesn't make sense when you can manage multiple streams), or 3) doing something LLMs are particularly bad it (not many remaining coding tasks, but definitely still some).

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#82

Post by happytoexplain »

spicyusername wrote: post #74

A lot of people down on AI in this thread, but I'm watching the industry slip over the line of trust with these latest frontier models. GPT 5.5 is the first model good enough for me to just let rip. Every jira ticket I see now has acceptance criteria, reproduction steps, and detailed information about why the ticket exists. Every commit message now matches the repo style, and has detailed information about what's con…

I think numerically this is the exception - and it's a fantastic exception! But in practice what I've seen is things getting worse because people still just aren't very good at thinking, so the great-looking Jira ticket actually turns out to be nonsensical in some subtle way, whereas before it was just lacking in some obvious way that could immediately be called out and had an obvious solution.

I.e. it's making good output better, but it's making mediocre output (which is most output) worse by adding volume and the appearance of quality, creating a new layer of FUD, stress, tedium, and unhappiness on top of the previously more-manageable problems that come with mediocre output.

I'm still seeing this even with the newest models, because the problem is the user, not the model - the model just empowers them to be even worse, in a new and different way.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#83

Post by p2detar »

spicyusername wrote: post #74

A lot of people down on AI in this thread, but I'm watching the industry slip over the line of trust with these latest frontier models. GPT 5.5 is the first model good enough for me to just let rip. Every jira ticket I see now has acceptance criteria, reproduction steps, and detailed information about why the ticket exists. Every commit message now matches the repo style, and has detailed information about what's con…

> I regularly ship four features at a time now across multiple projects.

Can that happen without you? I would assume this is the next step. I don't find it either good or bad, but I'm genuinely curious where this all goes.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#84

Post by lionkor »

GrinningFool wrote: post #75
orangecoffee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not happening at least for 25 years, is what seniors I trust tell me.

I'd say closer to 10-15 but... I'm not sure the point you're making. Is it okay because it's 25 years in the future?

If we try hard enough, we can destroy the planet before we get there, I guess? 25 years is not a long time.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#85

Post by lionkor »

svantana wrote: post #51
codebje wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brain drain. If you fire all your SWEs they won't sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for an AI collapse, they'll career shift. Maybe to an unemployment line and/or homelessness, maybe to something else productive, but either way they'll lose SWE skills. If you close down all the SWE junior positions you'll strongly discourage young people training in the field. They'll do something else. Then if you want to go…

Why would anyone want to go back? It seems likely that the automated dev systems will just keep improving and get faster, cheaper, stronger.

> automated dev systems

They are large language models. Not automated development machines. They hallucinate.

The goal post has not shifted since 2023 or so. Make an LLM that doesn't blatantly disregard knowledge it has, instructions it has been giving, over and over, and you win. If trillions of USD of investment can't do it, I'd be curious to see what can.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#86

Post by lionkor »

amelius wrote: post #11
theshrike79 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will close the way back?

Time. In a few years there might be no old-school way to develop anymore. Everything will be built around AI.

And blockchain, don't forget blockchain.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#87

Post by zozbot234 »

alrtkh wrote: post #79
spicyusername wrote: post #74

A lot of people down on AI in this thread, but I'm watching the industry slip over the line of trust with these latest frontier models. GPT 5.5 is the first model good enough for me to just let rip. Every jira ticket I see now has acceptance criteria, reproduction steps, and detailed information about why the ticket exists. Every commit message now matches the repo style, and has detailed information about what's con…

For people who like to tick boxes, which is essentially most of the above, AI is welcome. That includes managers. It still has nothing to do with software engineering. All good code was written by humans. AI took it, plagiarizes it, launders it and repackages it in a bloated form. Whenever I look deeply at an AI plagiarized mess, it looks like it is 90% there but in reality it is only 50%. Fixing the mess takes longe…

The hard part of software engineering is turning a vague problem description into a set of box-ticking exercises. If ticking boxes became genuinely easier, the software engineering part is now a lot more valuable.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#89

Post by zozbot234 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #81
spicyusername wrote: post #74

A lot of people down on AI in this thread, but I'm watching the industry slip over the line of trust with these latest frontier models. GPT 5.5 is the first model good enough for me to just let rip. Every jira ticket I see now has acceptance criteria, reproduction steps, and detailed information about why the ticket exists. Every commit message now matches the repo style, and has detailed information about what's con…

> I regularly ship four features at a time now across multiple projects. Many people are missing the fact that LLMs allow ICs to start operating like managers. You can manage 4 streams now. Within a couple years, you may be able to manage 10 streams like a typical manager does today. IME, LLMs don't speed you up that much if 1) you're already an expert at what you're doing (inherently not scalable), 2) you're only wo…

A manager doesn't have to look at the code that's being shipped. An IC will still need to do that, and this will eventually take up much of their work. It can be addressed by moving up the stack to higher level and more strictly checked languages, where there's overall less stuff to review manually.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#90

Post by nyxtom »

spicyusername wrote: post #74

A lot of people down on AI in this thread, but I'm watching the industry slip over the line of trust with these latest frontier models. GPT 5.5 is the first model good enough for me to just let rip. Every jira ticket I see now has acceptance criteria, reproduction steps, and detailed information about why the ticket exists. Every commit message now matches the repo style, and has detailed information about what's con…

I agree with most of this, I just have sort of turned a blind eye to what the code actually probably looks like. Reviews are rapid, and I’ll admit I do feel like I’m betraying my inner programmer by just optimizing directly against the claims of token bot. But the way I see it, as long as the numbers don’t lie I’m okay with the process.
Post reply on HN