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Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

codingwithjesse.com

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Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#101

Post by nateb2022 »

Hasz wrote: post #91

I think this is fine? Code used to be very expensive to generate, now it is cheap. Building glue logic between well-defined, well-documented APIs has never been easier or faster. There is a time and place for throwaway code that quickly automates a task. It is fast food to fine dining -- not everything needs to be a Michelin star experience. However, as always, AI usage is a matter of taste. Including your style rule…

I think an important caveat is that LLMs are prone to writing unnecessary code, i.e. there's almost a superfluity to it, that at the same time makes it less straightforward and more prone to unnecessary side effects, which it does catch and handle, but that again expands code further.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#102

Post by esafak »

0-bad-sectors wrote: post #74

I heard this kind of rockstar stories a lot from my friends but I never encountered one in real life. I worked in small and big companies and no one with allowed to use any obscure language or tooling. I count myself lucky.

You need a CTO to lay down the golden path.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#103

Post by nuggetdm »

piva00 wrote: post #15
eithed wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please write a manual on how to cleanup after AI rockstar managers who think they can code. Why are you allowing AI rockstar managers to (I assume) push without code review? Why are you cleaning up the fallout? It's not AI issue, it's people issue

It's the mandate from top-down. Of course it's a people issue, the problem is that the people creating this issue are exactly the ones paying us. My manager got the mandate she needs to start coding, she doesn't want that, no one in our team wants that, she's a great manager exactly where she is right now. Nonetheless, we are helping her to code to show something for the higher-ups so she can keep her job, we really…

[dead]

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#104

Post by rnxrx »

I don’t think the analogy between rock star developers and LLMs bears out here. Like any other tool, AI abides by the basic reality of garbage in/garbage out. If you don’t make sure the LLM has sufficient context then you get what you get. Same point with vague prompts.

AI tools are producing code on behalf of a developer. If that developer is fine putting their name on code that they don’t understand, applied to a code base they also don’t fully understand then you have a very human problem. The technology just magnifies this.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#105

Post by theK »

skydhash wrote: post #83
rzmmm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prototyping is widely underappreciated. People think it's waste to throw away stuff but it's more costly to build upon shoddy foundations

You can prototype UX with a tools like balsamiq or taking photos of paper sketches with paper-to-app application. No need for code to share an idea. Especially from business to engineering or vice-versa. Product Managers coding is like Developers writing marketing pitches.

Why not? I've seen both sides working out remarkably well. It is much more of a mindset thing than anything else.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#106

Post by pjm331 »

conductr wrote: post #100
maerF0x0 wrote: post #35

I've met a handful of people across my life that i'd call truly brilliant. Like, holy heck how in the world is this person this smart? Two things I've noted about really smart people are (usually mutually exclusively) 1) Sometimes they do not realize how smart they are, because it's simple to them, or because they know the subject they assume everyone else, say with a computer science degree, knows and recalls and un…

> Imagine walking through life and everything is clear, obvious, easy to process and having to watch humanity make stupid choices over and over and over again when the answers have been long known... I don’t claim to be book smart or have a high IQ or whatever but I feel this way about small things that I feel are common sense. It’s maddening to me to watch people fumble around. Or do X when obviously it will result…

i feel fairly certain everyone has some set of activities or tasks they feel this way about

my wife and i have two non-overlapping sets haha you can imagine how that plays out

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#107

Post by functionmouse »

Havoc wrote: post #62
maerF0x0 wrote: post #35

I've met a handful of people across my life that i'd call truly brilliant. Like, holy heck how in the world is this person this smart? Two things I've noted about really smart people are (usually mutually exclusively) 1) Sometimes they do not realize how smart they are, because it's simple to them, or because they know the subject they assume everyone else, say with a computer science degree, knows and recalls and un…

And then you’ve got a third problem - that well north of 50% believe themselves to be in that last sentence of yours

It seems that way sometimes but maybe we're just biased as we tend to hang out among intelligentsia

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#108

Post by bunderbunder »

The first few sections hit me. I think that I used to be a “rockstar”, until I realized it wasn’t a good thing. Perhaps I could get things done 10x faster than my colleagues. But at some point I realized it wasn’t because I was 10x more productive than a normal person; it was that I worked in a way that made the normal people around me 1/10 as productive.

Since then I’ve slowed down. It’s been an overall positive change for my life. Being a team player unfortunately won’t give you the same kind of upward mobility in this crazy industry, but it’s done amazing things for my mental health.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#109

Post by magicalhippo »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #54

Oh, yeah. I'm reconciling with the fact, that, if I let AI write a bunch of code, I have to depend on that AI to maintain it. I just spent the last week, hunting down memory issues in the app I'm writing. I had a lot of help from an LLM. It rewrote most of the view controller that implements the map screen. That view controller is now 4,000 lines long (but half of that is comments), but it works extremely well. It to…

So far my take has been that there is code that isn't very important, in the sense that if it works it works, it won't be modified or extended much if at all, and it's easy to verify that it works as expected. This type of code I'm happy with letting the AI go wild on.

Then there's important code, like business logic, security related stuff and such. For that I'll happily use AI to brainstorm ideas and avenues, do code reviews where I'm prepared for it to be wrong and help with library suggestions etc, but where I want to write the code myself so I understand what's going on.

We'll see how it changes, been a wild ride so far.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#110

Post by andai »

blanched wrote: post #88
thegrimmest wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's lonely being an outlier, especially in a trait that's so fundamental to how you see the world. Despite best effort, it's hard to relate to most people, and they especially find it hard to relate to you. The delta of lived experience is quite wide, often insurmountable.

I feel like this could be said about most human traits, on both ends of those traits’ axis. I’m not sure if that makes it insightful or obvious :).

>on both ends of those traits’ axis.

I somehow suffer from both simultaneously!

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