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Using AI to write better code more slowly

nolanlawson.com

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Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#221

Post by baq »

jfim wrote: post #143
bottlepalm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. AI is bumping everyone up to manager level, and having dealt with long PR feedback cycles with humans for years - I don't mind the promotion. Also shipping a v3 is so much nicer than shipping a v1 and dealing the all the corner cases in production. Before AI, myself and everyone else I knew was drowning in tech debt. And now with AI we are treading water.

It's bumping to manager level, except without the 1:1s, quarterly/yearly planning, headcount and budget reviews, org/reorg discussions, performance calibration, and OKR planning. No complaints about the last review cycle or about the upcoming one.

All the ceremony must be replaced with process optimization, skill extraction, harness development and new model evals.

Still better than dealing with people, but only just.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#222

Post by knuckleheads »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #213
knuckleheads wrote: post #209

Very much agreed. Something specific that has helped me a lot (beyond just automatic formatting, linting and testing) was putting a hard fail on any file with more than 1500 lines or so, with an allowlist for specific files with specific reasons for their length. I realized the agents were squirreling away code without wanting to do any sort of refactor. Every time one of these rat's nests has turned up, the codebase…

200 is my preferred limit, and I think you can find that in a few highly regarded books on coding.

Matters of taste. I don't mind bigger files where it makes sense, and sometimes for the nature of the domain, it is nice to have more things in one file. As well, they write so many comments that 200 lines doesn't feel right to me.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#223

Post by a_bonobo »

throwaway7783 wrote: post #141
aomix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking the problem to death with the AI before implementation is a nice zone for me. I feel productive, get good results out of the AI, and still largely understand the code. That’s the part of the AI revolution that I feel has made me a better engineer because I argue about design and architecture all day with a robot.

I follow the same process. I have a design in mind for the problem at hand, but I don't reveal it to Codex. I go back and forth a bit to see if its proposals are better than mine. I go back and forth on tradeoffs of various approaches. And then I ask it to compare its proposals with mine. I "win" most of the time but there are many times where it shows a me a better, or simpler approach, or makes me rethink the solut…

I really like this pattern and use it often, this 'not showing my cards'. The second I hint towards the LLM what I prefer it will become sycophantic and invent nonsense why my preferred solution is better.

I'm sure there's an interesting study on how users 'leak' their preference unintentionally to the LLM; perhaps when users list their options, they often put their prefered option first; but not showing the cards on my hand has been very useful when thinking through a problem with LLMs.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#224

Post by ultimaweapon »

ianm218 wrote: post #53
ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #45

Just dont use it lol, it does nothing you cant do by yourself. You're nerfing parts of your brain by relying on it.

There is things you really can't do by yourself. I've been working on porting some large codebases to Rust lately to experiment with fixing memory safety bugs. There is just no way you can write 100k LOC in a week of production code with tons of tests etc. Even "10X" engineers just can't type that fast.

What language you are trying to port from?

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#225

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

I think AI exists to make humans better, not to replace us (which it can’t anyway). I use LLM’s with new topics answer questions and tutor me (for instance with multivariable calculus -course this spring I asked Claude to create 10 practice exercises, which I then did and it reviewed. Harder ones it did with me step by step.) hopefully not needing them after awhile, when I gain proficinency. Automating humans away is not going to work. There’s a reason why we are the apex predator and ruled this planet for million years.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#226

Post by tags2k »

bottlepalm wrote: post #186
Animats wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much are you spending a day for the tokens to do that? Ingest big project, comment on it gets expensive. I'm not sure how expensive.

$200/month split between Claude Code Max and Codex Pro. Given how many hours a month I spend programming, my hourly rate, the amount of time saved, and the productivity/quality boost - I would pay a whole lot more if I had to.

You are definitely going to have to. I see these massive skills as soon-to-be artefacts of the past, they will be unwieldy in the non-subsidised world. I won't pretend to know what replaces them.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#227

Post by hansmayer »

> But if you’re the kind of developer who uses agents to write multi-hundred-line PRs that you barely understand yourself, I’d invite you to slow down a bit and try this other, slower style of “vibe coding.” Ask an agent how your PR works and how it might fail. Have it write Markdown docs with Mermaid charts if necessary. Use Matt Pocock’s /grill-me skill until you understand the entire PR front-to-back.

Man so much work to retrofit something that obviously, simply, plainly - just does not work. How about just writing the code yourself? You can even consult AI on the libraries or whatever, but how about just building that model in your head YOURSELF and not loading up on AI slop and trying to memorise that crap. The names of the functions will ring different in your memory once you spend some time thinking over whether you picked the right and clear name vs. just going with whatever statistical median the slop machine picked for you.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#228

Post by abustamam »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #225

I think AI exists to make humans better, not to replace us (which it can’t anyway). I use LLM’s with new topics answer questions and tutor me (for instance with multivariable calculus -course this spring I asked Claude to create 10 practice exercises, which I then did and it reviewed. Harder ones it did with me step by step.) hopefully not needing them after awhile, when I gain proficinency. Automating humans away is…

> which it can’t anyway

I agree, but it doesn't change the reality that AI is the stated reason for many layoffs.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#229

Post by bob1029 »

I think using speed to describe the rate of progress in software development is where the frustration comes from. Software isn't a velocity thing. It's a space thing. It's memory. Information in some media. You can transfer a billion bits in less than a second. The time domain is largely irrelevant in business terms.

Having taste and the ability to author high quality prompts is still the most important thing. It was always the most important thing if you think abstractly about how all of this works.

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