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I'm going back to writing code by hand

blog.k10s.dev

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Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#181

Post by chorsestudios »

jwpapi wrote: post #165

That’s the same story I had. The swindle goes like this, AI on a good codebase can build a lot of features, you think it’s faster it even seems safer and more accurate on times, especially in domains you don’t know everything about. This goes in for a while whilst the codebase gets bigger and exploration takes longer and failure rate increases. You don’t want it to be true and try harder so you only stop after it pra…

Were you auto-committing everything without reading the generated code? and if you read it but didn't understand it why not just ask for detailed comments for each output? Knowing that a larger codebase causes it to struggle means the output needs to be increasingly scrutinized as it becomes more complex.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#183

Post by dxdm »

jwpapi wrote: post #165

That’s the same story I had. The swindle goes like this, AI on a good codebase can build a lot of features, you think it’s faster it even seems safer and more accurate on times, especially in domains you don’t know everything about. This goes in for a while whilst the codebase gets bigger and exploration takes longer and failure rate increases. You don’t want it to be true and try harder so you only stop after it pra…

I find it interesting that this outcome is a surprise. I don't want this to sound smug, I'm genuinely curious what the initial expectations are and where they come from.

They seem to be different for LLMs, because would anyone be surprised if they handed summary feature descriptions to some random "developer" you've ever only met online, and got back an absolute dung pile of half-broken implementation?

For some reason, people seem to expect miracles from some machine that they would not expect of other humans, especially not ones with a proven penchant for rambling hallucinations every once in a while.

I'd like to know, ideally from people who've been there, why they think that is. Where does the trust come from?

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#184

Post by herrherrmann »

mjburgess wrote: post #174
jwpapi wrote: post #165

That’s the same story I had. The swindle goes like this, AI on a good codebase can build a lot of features, you think it’s faster it even seems safer and more accurate on times, especially in domains you don’t know everything about. This goes in for a while whilst the codebase gets bigger and exploration takes longer and failure rate increases. You don’t want it to be true and try harder so you only stop after it pra…

I think this is true, but i imagine there's a workflow solution to this which isnt to drop AI. Eg., treating AI code generated as immediately legacy, with tight encapsulation boundaries, well-defined interfaces etc. And integrating in a more manual workflow. There's a range from single-shot prompts to inline code generation, that will make more sense depending on the problem and where in the code base it is. Single-s…

That workflow just sounds exhausting to me. Would I always need to consider how much of a blast radius my AI-generated code might have? Sounds like there’s so much extra management going into these micro decisions that it ultimately defeats the purpose of generating code altogether.

I could see value in using it during the prototyping phase, but wouldn’t like to work like you described for a serious project for end users.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#185

Post by ktzar »

yason wrote: post #177

We're still in the early ages and must discern hard what AI is good for, what it can maybe do, what it could potentially do and what it just can't do, and move those threshold marks very conservatively. AI is also cheap enough that it's worth shots of experiments. As long as you don't really rely on AI it's easy to test the capabilities of this new conversational autocomplete, and the random gains it offers can be ma…

I don't think we're in the early ages... LLMs technology has essentially stagnated since GPT3.5, we just have bigger models that can handle more context. We're trying to cope for the lack of progress of the actual technology by coming up with contraptions of multiple models stuck together, Mixture-of-Experts, Reviewer models, PM models...

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#186

Post by wccrawford »

IanCal wrote: post #131
baddash wrote: post #76

I've set a few rules for working with coding agents: 1. If I use a coding agent to generate code, it should be something I am absolutely confident I can code correctly myself given the time (gun to my head test). 2. If it isn't, I can't move on until I completely understand what it is that has been generated, such that I would be able to recreate it myself. 3. I can create debt (I believe this is being called Cogniti…

This is fine if it’s more enjoyable for you, that’s what’s important in personal projects most of the time. But we don’t follow the same things for dependencies, work of colleagues, external services, all the layers down to the silicon when trying to work. Why is AI suddenly different? We just have to do this by risk and reward. What’s the downside if it’s wrong, and how likely is an error to be found in testing and…

AI is different because it's a tool, and the user of the tool is responsible for the work performed.

An outsourced developer isn't a "tool". They're a human being, and responsible for their actions. They're being paid, and they either act responsibly or they get replaced.

A vibe coder is a human using a tool. The human is responsible for code quality, and if it's not good enough, they need to keep using the tool to make it better. That means understanding the tool's output.

If an artist used Photoshop to create a billboard ad that was ugly, they don't get to blame Photoshop. They have to keep using the tool until their output is good.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#187

Post by anal_reactor »

mjburgess wrote: post #174
jwpapi wrote: post #165

That’s the same story I had. The swindle goes like this, AI on a good codebase can build a lot of features, you think it’s faster it even seems safer and more accurate on times, especially in domains you don’t know everything about. This goes in for a while whilst the codebase gets bigger and exploration takes longer and failure rate increases. You don’t want it to be true and try harder so you only stop after it pra…

I think this is true, but i imagine there's a workflow solution to this which isnt to drop AI. Eg., treating AI code generated as immediately legacy, with tight encapsulation boundaries, well-defined interfaces etc. And integrating in a more manual workflow. There's a range from single-shot prompts to inline code generation, that will make more sense depending on the problem and where in the code base it is. Single-s…

> treating AI code generated as immediately legacy, with tight encapsulation boundaries, well-defined interfaces etc.

This is good advice regardless whether you're using AI or not, yet in real life "let's have well-defined boundaries and interfaces" always loses against "let's keep having meetings for years and then ducttape whatever works once the situation gets urgent".

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#188

Post by jcgrillo »

seer wrote: post #156
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think there's 2 kinds of developer. Those who think the code is the hard part, and those that don't. The developers that thing coding is hard are the ones that absolutely love AI coding. It's changed their world because things they used to find hard are now easy. Those that think coding is easy don't have such an easy time because coding to them is all about the abstractions, the maintainability and extensibil…

But isn’t AI doing the same thing to project management as to coding? PMs can now cross reference and organize tickets with just a few keystrokes. Organisational knowledge, business knowledge, design systems and patterns, etc all of it is encoded in LLM consumable artefacts. For PMs it is the same switch - instead of having to do it by hand you direct lower level employees to handle the details and inconsistencies an…

Such a person is just pushing a giant pile of cleanup work onto their colleagues. Unless they actually checked, the "cross references" are probably wrong in places or just entirely made up. Lower level employees by definition don't have the experience to correct the more subtle inconsistencies, so you've basically just constructed a high pass filter that lets only the worst failures through. Moreover, you're absolutely guaranteed to lose the respect of those lower level employees--forcing someone else to clean up your sloppy work is just cruel, and people resent being treated cruelly.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#190

Post by Fokamul »

I also code by hand.

But in my main work, reverse engineering, LLMs are godsend, for years now.

You can basically bruteforce binary obfuscation thanks to them. And thanks to eager chinese LLM providers, basically for free.

But I always use LLM only for boring work and rest is for me to do manually, or with scripts of course, but made by me. Because I want to learn.

Yes, there are a lot people using LLMs for full RE automation since they're selling exploits for profit. No problem with me.

I see funny future for huge corporations like Adobe, etc.

Imagine prompt, "Hey Claude, re-implement Adobe Photoshop with clean-room design" One agent will open decompiler, outputs complete low level technical details how is everything implemented.

Second agent implements new Photoshop based on that.

They will be mad and I like this.

You will own nothing, and you will be happy, corpos.

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