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Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

codingwithjesse.com

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Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#341

Post by pmontra »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #336
godelski wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you literally never run into a problem that the average developer can not solve, but a expert can solve? In what time frame? > Even assuming that maybe the average developer could come to learn ... already knowing how to solve it on short notice being over 10x. 10x? I'm not convinced. 10x is a pretty big increase, as illustrated above. Clearly I understand the gap, I explicitly mentioned it. I mentioned a mont…

I believe in a 10x because it's everywhere. It doesn't mean more work it often means creativity. For example when I was an EE I worked at a company that had spent nearly 8 months, 50k on consultants, and easily 3 peoples full time for a lot of effort plus the testing side. I swapped that 800$ board out for essentially a lightbulb. Did identical work I'm proud of that EE work but code is identical. I would never call…

I probably had that kind of 10x moment yesterday. I spent 2.5 hours analysing a feature request and I eventually advised my customer to think very carefully about it: it might solve a problem but the implementation time is going to be long, even with an AI, because of actual development and the time we will spend in testing it. Furthermore the new infrastructure will have recurring costs higher than what it saves. My advice is not to proceed. 2.5 hours vs 25 or more. 10x.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#342

Post by [deleted] »

jmaw wrote: post #122
bunderbunder wrote: post #108

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 cha…

I've definitely shot my own foot off in the past by implementing things in a rockstar manner. In my case, it typically involves me over-abstracting something that really doesn't need it. Or building something for use-cases that never actually happen. So I have to try to keep YAGNI and KISS in mind whenever my mind wanders into over-abstraction territory.

[deleted]

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#343

Post by godelski »

yallpendantools wrote: post #335
Veserv wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they do. Have you literally never run into a problem that the average developer can not solve, but a expert can solve? That is infinity times more productive. Even assuming that maybe the average developer could come to learn how to solve the problem you can easily see the gap between taking months to learn how to solve a problem versus already knowing how to solve it on short notice being over 10x. Large p…

I think the myth/claim of a 10x developer is true but only relative to said rockstar engineer's immediate environment . Put simply, the 10x developer is a 10x because they've spent ~10x more time immersed in the problem domain than the average developer. What they do is more sleight-of-hand than Tony Stark engineering his way out of a terrorist cell. If 10x engineer takes a weekend to solve a problem that has stumped…

  > the 10x developer is a 10x because they've spent ~10x more time immersed in the problem domain than the average developer.
Your ratio is off. This doesn't grow linearly, it grows exponentially. It probably takes more than 10x the experience/time to get to 2x in performance.

  > If 10x engineer takes a weekend to solve a problem that has stumped the team for a month
This is very rare in the real world. There are also alternative explanations you're ignoring:

  1. Luck. Seriously, do not underestimate luck, it plays a major role in your life[0]
  2. Fresh eyes: You're not burdened with all the noise of the past engineering[1]
  3. Getting to leverage the existing work. You have a new prior, you know to not think through the problem like the rest of the team has been.
Those are two obvious explanations but there are more. The reality is that it is going to be some combination along with the experience that you suggested.

  > I didn't get exactly the coveted 10x wording out of him
I do not want to imply in the least that you shouldn't be proud of your accomplishments. You absolutely should! But is this "10x" or actually smaller? A few weeks late you said, so how long do you think it would have taken had you not been so skilled? 20 weeks? More? If it really would have taken 20 weeks then yes, you are a 10xer and call me wildly impressed.

But mind you, I'm also saying that being a "2xer" is wildly impressive. I'm even saying that being a 1.1xer is impressive (because it is!). So I'm really not trying to diminish your accomplishments. The feeling of pride you should have for your accomplishments shouldn't be diminished because you aren't calling yourself a "10xer". That's not what's being said here.

Plus, my whole point is about sustained output. 10x and even 100x certainly exist in short tasks. I mean I can certainly produce a hello world program in python 100x faster than someone that doesn't know how to program. But over longer periods of time this gets to be much harder. Again, I don't want to diminish your pride, the story you explained is not a short task.

[0] That isn't to say that skill doesn't matter, it very much does. But luck is pretty far up there. It is behind skill in importance, but there's not a single (or even 2) factor that controls your life.

[1] This isn't luck, you can control this too. Stuck on a problem? Walk away. Go for a walk. But come back.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#344

Post by bunderbunder »

fooster wrote: post #156
Lord_Zero wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the before times, you learned a lot and walked away with knowledge on the deps needed, connections, .env secrets, and cleaned it all up and documented it so the next dev would have an easier time doing it.

Yeah, that totally didn't happen the majority of the time.

I think it depends on how “before” we’re talking about.

I can remember a time when learning was valued and leaving the camp cleaner than you found it was considered a basic professional standard.

But I can also remember a time when Scrum became all the rage and next thing you know we’re all stuck on the sprinting treadmill, management is obsessing over “velocity”, and it’s generally an everyone-for-themself free-for-all to clear the absolute minimum criteria to get the ticket moved to the “done” column in a semi-desperate effort to keep up with your ever-growing backlog of tickets to which you’ve been over committed. Don’t worry about incomprehensible code or flaky designs; taking your time to do it right the first time looks bad on the KPI dashboard but rework does the opposite because you get to count the second (third, fourth, etc.) times the same task needs to be revisited towards your velocity metrics, too.

I’m not sure most developers younger than maybe 40 realize just how much worse our line of work has become over the past ~15 years.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#345

Post by godelski »

pmontra wrote: post #341
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe in a 10x because it's everywhere. It doesn't mean more work it often means creativity. For example when I was an EE I worked at a company that had spent nearly 8 months, 50k on consultants, and easily 3 peoples full time for a lot of effort plus the testing side. I swapped that 800$ board out for essentially a lightbulb. Did identical work I'm proud of that EE work but code is identical. I would never call…

I probably had that kind of 10x moment yesterday. I spent 2.5 hours analysing a feature request and I eventually advised my customer to think very carefully about it: it might solve a problem but the implementation time is going to be long, even with an AI, because of actual development and the time we will spend in testing it. Furthermore the new infrastructure will have recurring costs higher than what it saves. My…

  >  2.5 hours vs 25 or more. 10x.
My point is that these 10x moments aren't sustained. When we're talking about a "10xer" we're talking about someone over a longer period of time.

For "in the moment"s and short term projects, 10xers certainly exist. There's definitely things I can do in a week that would take juniors more than 10. But for bigger projects? Can I do in a month what a junior cannot in 10 months? Can I do in 6mo what a junior cannot do in 5 years? I'd really doubt the latter and the amount of things I can do in a month that a junior can't do in 10 are a whole lot smaller than what I can do in a week that they can't do in 10

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#347

Post by iceflinger »

beezlewax wrote: post #327
gizmo686 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craftsmanship is not dead in other industries in the same way it is being talked about for software. Sure, that cheap desk that arrived in a flat box and got assembled by me and a screwdriver was mass produced in a factory. But it's design had way more expert craftsmanship put into it than would ever be feasible for a bespoke product. High upfront design cost, then mass produced at a low marginal cost. That had been…

Do you honestly think an ikea desk has "more expert craftsmanship" than a hand crafted by a woodworker desk?

I'm not sure why this even needs to be the comparison?

Yes there is expert craftsmanship in the industrial scale design of ikea products, and yes there is expert craftsmanship in a bespoke, handmade wooden desk, but AI results in neither of these. It's cheap and disposable and tuned for putting up the appearance of something high quality without any of the actual intent that would be put behind either of the other two examples.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#348

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #340
beezlewax wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly think an ikea desk has "more expert craftsmanship" than a hand crafted by a woodworker desk?

Definitely. Expert craftsmanship in cost optimization, in shipping optimization, in production/factory design and optimization, in material sourcing, in durability testing, in design for mass market appeal, in marketing material, in documentation, et cetera.

[deleted]

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#349

Post by kaydub »

munksbeer wrote: post #324
kaydub wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what I'm going to link to in my professional life, it's all private repos. We have a large microservice architecture in AWS. We've made major changes and the LLMs have helped every step of the way. Migrated our whole auth system from being regional, resulting in customers being limited to specific regions or managing their multiple accounts across regions, to a global authentication with data residency built…

I enjoyed hearing about the stuff you've done. Would you mind talking about your experience making the 2 godot games? Which agent and model did you use? I've been wanting to dabble here and interested to hear stories.

I use any of the 3 big frontier models; claude, chatgpt, gemini

I only use the cli tools; claude code, codex, gemini cli (which is being phased out for antigravity cli soon)

I've generally had the best luck and enjoy working with claude the most, though that may be because that's the model we use at work (from aws bedrock, we pay per token and always have). Gemini and codex have flip flopped on 2nd place, though right now I'd lean Codex.

On my personal stuff I typically use codex or gemini because those two I have subscriptions, claude I still pay per token but through anthropic API like 90% of the time and 10% of the time through bedrock.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#350

Post by tomhow »

gyanchawdhary wrote: post #300
habinero wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bet. Link it lol.

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