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We should be more tired than the model

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Re: We should be more tired than the model

#31

Post by coldtea »

mettamage wrote: post #8
sam-cop-vimes wrote: post #6

> We should be more tired than the model I understand the rationale behind this, but can't help feeling that this is a downward spiral. The software industry has always been a hard place to build and sustain a career because of the pace of change. With these tools, the pressure to increase output is going to grow, jobs are going to be axed - so software devs need to work harder to stay relevant. Weren't these tools s…

That’s only true if companies give some of the productivity gains back to the employee, but most companies don’t do that. They keep the profits purely for themselves. There are some exceptions.

In general without unions and workers saying "that's enough", any productivity savings never go back to workers.

But of course AI is also making union/worker pressure matter even less, since it's function is to cheapen the cost/leverage of workers.

So the only solution is fighting that at the political/legal/social level. Which I ain't see happening anytime soon.

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#33

Post by dweekly »

For human in the loop to be effective, the human needs to actually be performing some substantive action, giving real guidance and critique and pushback. If the human only ever accepts the default plans then not only is there no understanding but the agent should learn to stop asking. It is not learning anything from the human, after all.

One thing that I look at is pushback rate: what percentage of the agent's proposals are rejected or critiqued? If it's below 5% I have found I have gotten too credulous and I am no longer closely following. Danger! If it's above 50%, I have clearly not given the agents sufficient context to perform the task and need to update my harness and instructions.

Who watches the watchers? I can imagine a guard dog process that halts the session to yell at the human if it detects complacency: if the human is providing too few tokens per minute of new context relevant to the task.

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#34

Post by docheinestages »

simonw wrote: post #14

Something I've been trying recently for non-throwaway code is extensive refactoring, without typing any code myself but by closely directing the coding agent. Prompts like "move the code relating to SQL query analysis into a new file", "look for opportunities to use pytest parametrize to remove duplication in that test", "rename method X to Y". Early indications are that this is helping a lot with the problem where i…

I think the best approach is active code review as the agent does small batches. Or letting it come up with a solution, testing if it passes or fails the desired outcome, then creating a separate fresh project and asking it to rewrite in small parts, and have it explain to you what and why it's doing to achieve each part.

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#35

Post by thfuran »

simonw wrote: post #14

Something I've been trying recently for non-throwaway code is extensive refactoring, without typing any code myself but by closely directing the coding agent. Prompts like "move the code relating to SQL query analysis into a new file", "look for opportunities to use pytest parametrize to remove duplication in that test", "rename method X to Y". Early indications are that this is helping a lot with the problem where i…

>Prompts like "move the code relating to SQL query analysis into a new file", "look for opportunities to use pytest parametrize to remove duplication in that test", "rename method X to Y".

There’s a lot of overlap there with the sorts of things traditional automated refactoring tools can do approximately instantly, locally, and for free.

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#36

Post by yondys »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25

So many efforts out there to alter the usage of the tool to regain control, when it's clear to me that the tool is the problem? By which I mean, we should -- as software engineers -- be insisting on tools that put us in the driver's seat more. Instead we're letting the agent drive. (I'm as guilty as this as anybody). But really we're letting Dario, Sam, Boris, etc. drive. And it should be clear from their public pron…

That's an interesting idea, but if the tools are really the problem, is there an actual way that we can solve this? How?

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#37

Post by coldtea »

sixtyj wrote: post #23

OP’s approach is one in a thousand. Imho most of professional coders trade their time for oblivion. The problem is that you really don’t remember anything about the code. It is not your creation. It’s like a monkey in front of a slot machine, just pulling the lever and waiting to see if it hits the jackpot. At the end of the day, it remembers that it pulled the lever. And how many times it won :) Agentic-based coding…

>The problem is that you really don’t remember anything about the code. It is not your creation.

The next problem is few care about that, at any level: coders, managers, execs. Just want their feature churn.

The even worse problem (or maybe, a positive) is that most of that code and the products powered by it aren't needed either.

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#38

Post by coldtea »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25

So many efforts out there to alter the usage of the tool to regain control, when it's clear to me that the tool is the problem? By which I mean, we should -- as software engineers -- be insisting on tools that put us in the driver's seat more. Instead we're letting the agent drive. (I'm as guilty as this as anybody). But really we're letting Dario, Sam, Boris, etc. drive. And it should be clear from their public pron…

>By which I mean, we should -- as software engineers -- be insisting on tools that put us in the driver's seat more.

And the company says "fuck you then, I'll fire you, and keep fewer coders, willing to keep the AI dance".

The role of AI as a tech is to put you out of the drivers seat as much as possible. All the way to job elimination.

Solution?

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#39

Post by paulmooreparks »

I don't know. I find that I'm moving up a level and improving my product-management skills while delegating most of the code to the agents. I'm still very much hands-on with the design and requirements, and I'm asking questions like, "What's our security story for XYZ?", "Are we accounting for colour-blindness?", etc. Not being down in the code allows me to prairie-dog a bit more and see the landscape better.

Re: We should be more tired than the model

#40

Post by mattacular »

thfuran wrote: post #35
simonw wrote: post #14

Something I've been trying recently for non-throwaway code is extensive refactoring, without typing any code myself but by closely directing the coding agent. Prompts like "move the code relating to SQL query analysis into a new file", "look for opportunities to use pytest parametrize to remove duplication in that test", "rename method X to Y". Early indications are that this is helping a lot with the problem where i…

>Prompts like "move the code relating to SQL query analysis into a new file", "look for opportunities to use pytest parametrize to remove duplication in that test", "rename method X to Y". There’s a lot of overlap there with the sorts of things traditional automated refactoring tools can do approximately instantly, locally, and for free.

What are some traditional automated refactoring tools that can do stuff like those tasks from the example?
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