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AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

joshwcomeau.com

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Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#21

Post by dylan604 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #6

I had an Iron Man moment last week where I was “vibe coding” a UI design with component tests live on the other screen. Iterating by asking it to move things, reduce emphasis of an element, exploring layout options, etc. The loop was near realtime and felt amazing. The code it generated was awful. The kind of garbage that people who don’t know any better would ship: it looked right and it worked. But it was instantly…

> But I had an effortless time converging on a design that I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own (I’m not a designer).

I'm not a designer either, but I've been around designers long enough to recognize when something is bad but just not know what is needed to make it better/good. I've taken time to find sites that are designed well and then recreated them by hand coding the html/css to the point that I consider myself pretty decent at css now. I don't need libraries or frameworks. My css/html is so much lighter than what's found in those frameworks as well. I still would not call myself a designer, but pages look like they were designed by a mediocre designer rather than an engineer :shrug:

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#23

Post by akersten »

Waterluvian wrote: post #6

I had an Iron Man moment last week where I was “vibe coding” a UI design with component tests live on the other screen. Iterating by asking it to move things, reduce emphasis of an element, exploring layout options, etc. The loop was near realtime and felt amazing. The code it generated was awful. The kind of garbage that people who don’t know any better would ship: it looked right and it worked. But it was instantly…

> The code it generated was awful. The kind of garbage that people who don’t know any better would ship: it looked right and it worked. But it was instantly a maintenance dead end.

In the Tailwind thread the other day I was explicitly told that the intended experience of many frameworks is "write-only code" so maybe this is just the way of the future that we have to learn to embrace. Don't worry how it's all hooked up, if it works it works and if it stops working tell the AI to fix it.

It's kind of liberating I guess. I'm not sure if I've reached AI nirvana on accepting this yet, but I do think that moment is close.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#25

Post by Waterluvian »

snarf21 wrote: post #16
Waterluvian wrote: post #6

I had an Iron Man moment last week where I was “vibe coding” a UI design with component tests live on the other screen. Iterating by asking it to move things, reduce emphasis of an element, exploring layout options, etc. The loop was near realtime and felt amazing. The code it generated was awful. The kind of garbage that people who don’t know any better would ship: it looked right and it worked. But it was instantly…

I feel the same but the question I struggle most with is this: "Does it matter when the people who are going to come along and maintain this are just going to use AI to fix or adjust this maintenance nightmare?"

At that point the code becomes a compile target, and then you need a new source of truth.

Which I think is perfectly worthy of exploration. Some people want to check in the prompts. Or even better, check in a plan.md or evenest betterest: some set of very well-defined specifications.

I'm not sure what the answer will be. Probably some mix of things. But today it is absolutely imperative that the code I write for the case I wrote it in is good quality and can be maintained by more than just me.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#26

Post by flyinglizard »

snarf21 wrote: post #16
Waterluvian wrote: post #6

I had an Iron Man moment last week where I was “vibe coding” a UI design with component tests live on the other screen. Iterating by asking it to move things, reduce emphasis of an element, exploring layout options, etc. The loop was near realtime and felt amazing. The code it generated was awful. The kind of garbage that people who don’t know any better would ship: it looked right and it worked. But it was instantly…

I feel the same but the question I struggle most with is this: "Does it matter when the people who are going to come along and maintain this are just going to use AI to fix or adjust this maintenance nightmare?"

The problem is that technical debt is compounding. Bad LLM architectural and implementation decisions just blend in to the background and you build layer upon layer of a mess. At some point it becomes difficult and expensive (token wise) to maintain this code, even for an agent.

I mitigate this by few things: 1. Checkpoints every few days to thoroughly review and flag issues. Asking the LLM to impersonate (Linus Torvalds is my favorite) yields different results. 2. Frequent refactors. LLMs don't get discouraged from throwing things out like humans do. So I ask for a refactor when enough stuff accumulates. 3. Use verbose, typed languages. C# on the backend, TypeScript on the frontend.

Does it produce quality code? Locally yes, architecturally I don't know - it works so far, I guess. Anyway, my alternative is not to make this software I'm writing better but not making it at all for the lack of time, so even if it's subpar it still brings business value.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#27

Post by mehagar »

snarf21 wrote: post #16
Waterluvian wrote: post #6

I had an Iron Man moment last week where I was “vibe coding” a UI design with component tests live on the other screen. Iterating by asking it to move things, reduce emphasis of an element, exploring layout options, etc. The loop was near realtime and felt amazing. The code it generated was awful. The kind of garbage that people who don’t know any better would ship: it looked right and it worked. But it was instantly…

I feel the same but the question I struggle most with is this: "Does it matter when the people who are going to come along and maintain this are just going to use AI to fix or adjust this maintenance nightmare?"

Same. Messy code makes it harder for us to understand and thus maintain the code (which is why people often refer to code as a liability), but is that the case for AI tools as well? If not, it seems like clean code may not matter as much anymore.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#28

Post by muldvarp »

The fact that AI currently requires some human supervision to produce valuable results is not a good predictor that it will stay this way sadly. LLMs were basically unable to reason two years ago. They are now better at many reasoning tasks than most people. If there is even a remote chance that LLMs will make your job obsolete I would pivot as fast as I could. This includes first and foremost software engineering.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#29

Post by pelasaco »

reconnecting wrote: post #4

> I think AI tools are more like Iron Man's suit. There's an interesting repository with 63600 stars on GitHub (1). The developer of the repository is No 1 at the GitHub's trending contributors list (2). However, it seems like the application isn't what it's described to be (3), and the developers, on their end, are unable to clearly answer whether this is real or not, as it's just messy LLM output. Proof that the su…

the whole thing is creepy. The ruvnet, has multiple projects.. its just AI. A lot of AI. It floods GH infra.. Kind of easy to understand why GH struggles.

Re: AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills

#30

Post by datakan »

Back in the late 90's when the internet was really just becoming a thing with most people, a friend said something that's stuck with me all these years. "We're losing our moderate speech."

Everything these days is either the greatest thing ever or the worst thing ever. All the stuff in the middle has vanished. Very few it seems acknowledge AI as being a useful tool. It's either "We're all being replaced" or "The technology is all slop" and everyone talks over each other like it's the Super Bowl and their teams are battling it out.

It would be nice if we could just look to the opportunities this tech offers and focus on that.

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