Hot take, barring from special edge cases, I find using dumber models (like local Qwen 3.6) to be the best balance. Smart enough to do stuff but dumb enough where I don’t trust it and verify what it’s doing rather than letting it do the third whole code base refactoring of the day. Also forces me to know my code base and ask very descriptive tasks rather than go “something is wrong, fix it”.
Using AI to write better code more slowly
21–30 of 511 posts
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#22I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…
And then Anthropic has an outage and you what...have a coffee break until then? All that time babysitting the AIs just to be a little faster but probably with less knowledge/control over what they did?
I’ll deal with that problem when it happens
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#23Instead of using a skill and having the agent own the flow for this, I've been building an external orchestrator that handles the process. By default it uses pi agent core + pi ai (from the excellent pi coding agent) as a multi model runtime but also supports a Claude Agent SDK runtime. I can have an implementation and review process of an OpenSpec change run anywhere from 2 hours to 24+ hours going through review/fi…
Maybe we can come up with an spec for aligning asci diagrams. Can't really build anything with confidence when the attention to detail is lacking in these agentic systems https://imgur.com/a/r4fhOwy
What's that from? OpenSpec docs?
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#24One thing that's been interesting to me over the last few years is charting the edge of my coding laziness. As a coder, I'm lazy about boilerplate code -- I hate writing it, I hate maintaining it, etc. And so I design and architect (or used to) around that preference. Sometimes that's smart, sometimes that's not. But it was my preference, and I avoided something that was hard for me to do.
When LLMs started being somewhat useful for coding a few years ago, and I found they were in fact great at boilerplate, in fact pretty much only good at boilerplate ca 2023 or so, it got me thinking about all the accommodations we make in design and systems architecture that are sort of tacitly understanding who we're working with and their strengths and weaknesses.
The modern models have their own very different strengths and weaknesses compared to humans, and deploying them is a really interesting exercise of different architectural and engineering skills. I've enjoyed it, and hope I continue to.
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#25I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…
And then Anthropic has an outage and you what...have a coffee break until then? All that time babysitting the AIs just to be a little faster but probably with less knowledge/control over what they did?
I don’t think you’re quite getting what OP is describing. I work in a similar way… I am aware of all the code being written. If Claude had an outage I could write it myself. It would just take longer.
You say “all that time” babysitting AIs but in my experience it isn’t that much time, if anything the back and forth at the planning stages is more productive than when I’m doing it by myself because I’m being asked questions and having to think things through from different angles.
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#26I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…
And then Anthropic has an outage and you what...have a coffee break until then? All that time babysitting the AIs just to be a little faster but probably with less knowledge/control over what they did?
"All that time babysitting the AIs just to be a little faster" doesn't seem like an accurate/unbiased portrayal of what they said: "The v1 feature feels more like a v3 given the amount of iteration it already went through."
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#27Instead of using a skill and having the agent own the flow for this, I've been building an external orchestrator that handles the process. By default it uses pi agent core + pi ai (from the excellent pi coding agent) as a multi model runtime but also supports a Claude Agent SDK runtime. I can have an implementation and review process of an OpenSpec change run anywhere from 2 hours to 24+ hours going through review/fi…
Maybe we can come up with an spec for aligning asci diagrams. Can't really build anything with confidence when the attention to detail is lacking in these agentic systems https://imgur.com/a/r4fhOwy
It's interesting... Opus seems horrible at keeping text aligned. Markdown it is I suppose
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#28I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…
And then Anthropic has an outage and you what...have a coffee break until then? All that time babysitting the AIs just to be a little faster but probably with less knowledge/control over what they did?
And then solar radiation permanently knocks out the electrical grid and you what... have coffee break until society finds a new equilibrium?
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#29[dead]
Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly
#30This article doesn't address writing code with AI, just code review. My issue with agentic coding is that I make numerous micro-architectural decisions while programming. I almost never have a full spec up front and develop one as I consider what I am writing.
When using Claude Code or Codex, that is all gone. Claude Code is extremely eager to reach the end goal to the point that it feels like a fever dream to write code with it. In the end, I have low confidence about edge cases and fit into the project's architectural and design goals.
On top of that, I enjoy programming, reverse engineering, etc. and I feel that the LLMs, while able to solve some problems or deliver some features, take that fun away. I'm trying really hard to find a workflow with them that I'm confident in, but I fear that workflow is just chat, search, and being a rubber duck for my thoughts.