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

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

#91

Post by oblio »

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…

> Software is going to pile up because developing it is now cheap.

https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/17/code-is-a-liability-not...

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

#92

Post by luodaint »

#10 needs more emphasis than it receives. Cheaper code doesn't automatically lead to good product decisions.

Instead of focusing on whether you can build it, the scarcer resource becomes whether you should build it. And most teams lack a clear process for addressing this latter question. Requirements are collected in all sorts of places without ever being prioritized in an organized fashion. This is exacerbated by cheaper code. With cheaper code, you can release five times what you used to be able to release in a given period of time, but only if you knew which five products you needed.

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

#93

Post by readitalready »

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…

No fixing the mess definitely does not take longer than writing it oneself.

Your linter should identify all issues - including architectural and stylistic choices - and the AI agents will immediately repair them.

It's about 1000x faster than a human code at repairing its own mess.

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

#94

Post by kiba »

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…

Everyone talks about productivity as if that is the only metric that matters in the business.

The MCP has now automated away all of the drudgery of programming, from summarizing emails, to generating confluence documentation, to generating slide decks.

I wonder about the hallucination. Reading someone's writing doesn't take all that long.

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

#95

Post by svantana »

lionkor wrote: post #85
svantana wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are definitely automated dev systems, of which an LLM is a part. The remaining part may be called a 'harness' or whatever. The quality of the generated software is another matter.

If the AI is not good enough, then don't fire the devs. If/when the devs are no longer needed, I don't see why the need would return later, that was my point.

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

#96

Post by applfanboysbgon »

readitalready wrote: post #93
alrtkh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No fixing the mess definitely does not take longer than writing it oneself. Your linter should identify all issues - including architectural and stylistic choices - and the AI agents will immediately repair them. It's about 1000x faster than a human code at repairing its own mess.

> Your linter should identify all issues - including architectural

If a linter could deterministically identify bad architecture, you wouldn't need an LLM, your linters could just write your code for you. The vibe coding takes are just getting more and more empty-headed...

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

#97

Post by xantronix »

kiba wrote: post #94
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…

Everyone talks about productivity as if that is the only metric that matters in the business. The MCP has now automated away all of the drudgery of programming, from summarizing emails, to generating confluence documentation, to generating slide decks. I wonder about the hallucination. Reading someone's writing doesn't take all that long.

> the drudgery of programming

Is programming supposed to suck all the time? Am I doing it wrong? I mean yeah, sure, it sucks sometimes, but overcoming that "suck" is where I feel progress and growth. If we decide to optimise that away...What the fuck am I doing here? No offence to managers, but if everybody is a manager, is anybody?

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

#98

Post by hansmayer »

zozbot234 wrote: post #89
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Spot on. When will the cretins understand, it's not about how much code you can generate.

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

#99

Post by hansmayer »

"We" should not do anything. The LLM industry should go and find solutions for the problems they created, themselves. Not offload it to others through sneaky influencer posts. And we should hold them responsible, should they not be able to address the problems they are creating.

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

#100

Post by hansmayer »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #96
readitalready wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No fixing the mess definitely does not take longer than writing it oneself. Your linter should identify all issues - including architectural and stylistic choices - and the AI agents will immediately repair them. It's about 1000x faster than a human code at repairing its own mess.

> Your linter should identify all issues - including architectural If a linter could deterministically identify bad architecture, you wouldn't need an LLM, your linters could just write your code for you. The vibe coding takes are just getting more and more empty-headed...

> If a linter could deterministically identify bad architecture, you wouldn't need an LLM,

a) that's not what a linter is built for, its a tool with very specific role

b) You must've never seen LLM expose secrets in plain text or use the most convoluted scenarios you can think of.

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