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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

#421

Post by insane_dreamer »

perarneng wrote: post #256
pron wrote: post #192

Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it. The problem is that the mitigations offered in the article also don't work for long. When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it’s small, like the selection of a data structure. You can tell the agent what the…

If you know how to write good code you can force AI to write good code with various techniques. It's 100% doable. You just need to figure out the problems AI has and find solutions to make it easier for it. Ex: extremely small contexts Modularize to modules with clear boundaries and only allow the AI to work within those boundaries. Make modules pure from IO so they are easily testable. Hide modules behind interfaces…

> You are in charge.

Sure. That's how I work with AI, and the way I believe that AI is meant to be use -- as a companion tool.

But it's a lot of work. It saves me time for certain tasks, but not others. I haven't measured my productivity gains, but they're at most 2x.

But that's not "vibe coding" (which was the point of the article) or the (false) promise of "10x productivity" and "code that writes itself" that companies are being told is going to reduce their engineering headcount tenfold.

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

#422

Post by abustamam »

gylterud wrote: post #283
forgotaccount3 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need to micro-manage it. It is significantly easier to micro-manage an AI than a suite of junior developers. The AI doesn't replace a principal engineer, it's replacing junior and weaker senior developers who need stories broken down extremely concisely to be able to get anything done. The time it takes to break down a story such that a junior through weak senior developers can pick it up and execute it well wo…

Juniors learn. Some juniors are potential good seniors. Over time they will internalise good architecture and be able to make good judgments on their own. Micromanaging LLMs is like having Dory from Finding Nemo as your colleague. You find ways to communicate, but there is no learning going on.

LLMs can learn, just not the same way that juniors do. When an LLM does something wrong you can always update it's rules or skills to not make that mistake again. Or you can utilize a subagent whose sole purpose is to review code to prevent that mistake. Lots of ways you can improve LLMs over time.

Of course if you don't provide that feedback loop, no learning happens. I guess the same could be said of a junior, though.

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

#423

Post by abustamam »

topaz0 wrote: post #266
sevenzero wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically avoid any most abstractions or third party dependencies. Yea it could be neat, but I still need a lot of custom logic here and there. Same reason I avoid stuff like GraphQL. A little update: upon viewing the page on phone, for me the "comitter" field in the demo is going out of bounds... Really not speaking for their product.

Sounds like you're just fine depending on an extremely imprecise abstraction (natural language) and an extremely opaque third party (anthropic).

I think you're missing the point of the commenter. A third party library is a new dependency. Since there's new vulnerabilities almost every week in the npm ecosystem, if you can do something without a third party, it's probably better.

With LLM driven code you can generate code once, and then if anything is shitty about it you can always manually update it yourself without the need of an LLM. It's a dependency of convenience, not an app-dependency.

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

#424

Post by baddash »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #413
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little simplistic and lacking in nuance. > To get beyond being a hack, you need to understand the entire stack, including the code that you didn't write, including both libraries, frameworks and the OS, and including the hardware, the networking layers, and so forth. I think maybe you overestimate your own knowledge here. It's one thing to understand general principles and design or to understand a contextua…

Well I mean I've built an internet search engine from scratch[1] and I'm making a living off this successfully enough to have completely left the wagie existence for the foreseeable future, so I think I at least kinda walk the talk. I'm far from the best at anything and make no claims toward knowing everything, but I do think I have reasonable breadth in my experience and work, and I don't think I could have built so…

dude... I need to break free from the wagie existence too. any advice? besides the points you've made already :P

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

#425

Post by cynicalpeace »

brightball wrote: post #374
raincole wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "people" in your hypothetical story have been wrong the whole time. The correct attitude is: When AI can complete lines, you still have to read and understand the code. When AI can complete whole functions, you still have to read and understand the code. When AI can complete features and tickets, you still have to read and understand the code.

I heard a talk from a VP at NVIDIA a couple of months ago and he echoed this. Essentially their policy is "you are still fully responsible for the code you ship, whether AI helps with it or not"

Culpability is and always will be the limiting factor in AI adoption.

As humans, we need another human to blame when things go wrong.

Especially in situations that are catastrophic when things go wrong.

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

#426

Post by baddash »

cassianoleal wrote: post #133
dathanb82 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also heard it being called “comprehension debt,” which I like a little more because I think it’s more precise: the specific debt being accrued is exactly a lack of comprehension of the code.

I think it’s both in fact. Comprehension debt just sounds like there are things you don’t (yet) understand. Cognition debt means your lack of understanding compounds and the cognition “space” required to clear it increases accordingly. An increasing comprehension debt that can be paid off one bit at a time within reasonable cognition space takes linear time to clear. Cognition debt takes exponential time to clear the…

Woah, didn't expect a cognition debt researcher to be in the comment section

jk :D your points make a lot of sense though!

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

#427

Post by nijave »

IdiotSavage wrote: post #260
perarneng wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know how to write good code you can force AI to write good code with various techniques. It's 100% doable. You just need to figure out the problems AI has and find solutions to make it easier for it. Ex: extremely small contexts Modularize to modules with clear boundaries and only allow the AI to work within those boundaries. Make modules pure from IO so they are easily testable. Hide modules behind interfaces…

So, basically you need to micro-manage it. Where are your 10x gains now? And is it fun to work like that?

Honestly, I think so. I do a mix of infrastructure and programming so don't tend to have any frameworks memorized. Using AI is much quicker than constantly referencing the docs.

I can also switch between codebase with different frameworks and languages and make changes without spending all day reading docs.

It's also pretty good at tracing code and that's fairly straight forward to verify the results manually. It can build a flow diagram in 10-30 minutes (depending on what tool calls need allowed and how many prompts it needs) versus me taking a couple hours to do the same.

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

#428

Post by marginalia_nu »

baddash wrote: post #424
marginalia_nu wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I mean I've built an internet search engine from scratch[1] and I'm making a living off this successfully enough to have completely left the wagie existence for the foreseeable future, so I think I at least kinda walk the talk. I'm far from the best at anything and make no claims toward knowing everything, but I do think I have reasonable breadth in my experience and work, and I don't think I could have built so…

dude... I need to break free from the wagie existence too. any advice? besides the points you've made already :P

Build something people want.

Tired point, but it really is true. People will throw money at you if you do.

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

#429

Post by simon84 »

Rapzid wrote: post #393
simon84 wrote: post #153

Personally, i've taken a serious step back from 'unsupervised' vibe-coding. When the codebase is clean and you want some additional fix or small feature, Claude is quite good at mimicking your style and does a pretty good job. When asking for a new major feature, despite hard guidelines and context (that eat half your context window), then it quickly ships bloat. The foundations are not very well organized and this i…

And it can quickly start spiraling out of control. The bloated implementations keep adding more and more context it needs for the next change. Discovery results start getting worse, implementations get worse, and bloat continues to increase.

Actually it was sort of fun to see that the AI started writing comments to itself by gradually explaining what it was trying to do and ways it failed to do it.

Then it spent more time appending comments to its own comments rather than writing code ^^

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

#430

Post by theunmanagedboy »

The cognitive debt caused by AI autocompletion and Agent stuff is real. I'm feeling it right now. I started a project on my own, writing every line of code but then out of timeline pressure I started using Claude Code. The atrophy it has caused to go and edit the code is real. I'd rather rely on the slot machine than my own experience. SAD!
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