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AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

charitydotwtf.substack.com

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Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#51

Post by jasonlotito »

budsniffer952 wrote: post #38
ryandvm wrote: post #24

It is now significantly harder to figure out who understands the systems and is using AI effectively and who doesn't know shit and is just slinging LLM copypasta around. Before 2025, the underperformers/coasters were at least relatively identifiable by the paucity of their contributions. Now all of the sudden every single engineer is filing PRs, code reviews, technical design documents, and every other artifact under…

So, in other words, all the "awesome engineers" can't really tell good code from bad unless it's really obvious? Why should we listen to you about AI code being crap, then? Maybe, in the end, you don't really know. Maybe AI is better at it than you?

No. Your AI tool that summarized the comment did you dirty. The key here was this:

> perfect formatting and at least superficial plausibility

Basically, a library full of books that have nice covers is going to take time to see that all those books are just filled with ipsum lorem. Before, they coudln't stand up a fake library.

The issue comes down to time and effort.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#52

Post by LtWorf »

glouwbug wrote: post #16
e12e wrote: post #7

Great article. I'm not sure the author is correct - but I think something is happening to the adage: > A sufficiently detailed specification is runnable code. In a way I think LLMs will enable the dream of 4gl and "sufficiently smart compilers"[c]. LLMs aren't smart, but they are capable. Especially capable of translation and transformation. I can certainly see them help move the abstraction horizon at which we work…

This is what Anthropic did with agents and $20k to write a C compiler that survived gcc’s torture suite. But the LLM knew: 1. What a C compiler was 2. What a C compiler looked like 3. What the C compiler had to do at runtime to pass gcc’s torture suite through some sort of collaborative iteration (compile, run, did it get stuck at some torture suite test or fail?) Remove 1 and 2, or replace it with imperfect business…

It was also trained on gcc and clang.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#53

Post by LtWorf »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #41
esafak wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplification is still good. I remember one senior that only removed code when he joined the company I was at until he became a manager!

Ok, I like the idea and support that seniors value simplicity ... but how the hell do you stay employed for even a month (let alone until "manager time") without writing any code?

You don't just delete stuff… it's more that your pull requests remove more lines than they add. But I'm sure the person you're replying to is exaggerating, or they got promoted because of completely unrelated reasons.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#54

Post by trjordan »

mooreds wrote: post #30
trjordan wrote: post #27

> Those are not code problems. They are evaluation problems. > Code becomes precious when it is the only place knowledge lives. Reading AI code all day is _agonizing_. Just, a horrible way to live, and it melts people's brains at the moment you need them to be the most capable. Manual programming has this really productive and gratifying feedback loop, where you read the code, write the code, and fix it until it comp…

Are there any products out there that are capturing the prompts/sessions? I imagine you could do it in an adhoc way, asking Claude to write up a summary of the session as part of the commit message. But is there anything else that's more structured/higher level?

We're working on it, thought it's all early. I'd love feedback: https://tern.sh

First product compares the code to the prompts and highlights places the agent made decisions you weren't involved in: https://tern.sh/docs/tours/

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#55

Post by 4lx87 »

strix_varius wrote: post #42
ryandvm wrote: post #24

It is now significantly harder to figure out who understands the systems and is using AI effectively and who doesn't know shit and is just slinging LLM copypasta around. Before 2025, the underperformers/coasters were at least relatively identifiable by the paucity of their contributions. Now all of the sudden every single engineer is filing PRs, code reviews, technical design documents, and every other artifact under…

I'm sure this is gated by where you work (especially by how technically savvy your manager is), but the most effective contributors at my job tend to be the ones with near-zero (or sub-zero!) net LoC. LLMs are prolific and they love to add shit. Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts.

The most effective contributors at your job remove more code than they add? That doesn't sound effective that sounds like digging ditches to fill them. Every line of code removed is a line that was previously added.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#56

Post by trjordan »

philbo wrote: post #33
trjordan wrote: post #27

> Those are not code problems. They are evaluation problems. > Code becomes precious when it is the only place knowledge lives. Reading AI code all day is _agonizing_. Just, a horrible way to live, and it melts people's brains at the moment you need them to be the most capable. Manual programming has this really productive and gratifying feedback loop, where you read the code, write the code, and fix it until it comp…

If a coworker dumped a 5k-line code review on you, you'd tell them to come back when it's broken down into smaller, reviewable chunks. Large dumps of code are basically unreviewable by humans, but it seems like a lot of people have forgotten about that when it comes to LLMs.

I think it's worse than that. At least if I dumped 5k LoC on somebody in 2021, you knew I spent the time to write it, so it's "fair" to ask you to read it. But I didn't write it in 2026, so you shouldn't read it.

I think it's less about "break it down" and more about "let's communicate at the same altitude."

I wrote a (bait-titled) post about it: https://tern.sh/blog/stop-reading-prs/

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#57

Post by fifilura »

4lx87 wrote: post #55
strix_varius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this is gated by where you work (especially by how technically savvy your manager is), but the most effective contributors at my job tend to be the ones with near-zero (or sub-zero!) net LoC. LLMs are prolific and they love to add shit. Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts.

The most effective contributors at your job remove more code than they add? That doesn't sound effective that sounds like digging ditches to fill them. Every line of code removed is a line that was previously added.

I definitely agree with the GP, and the point is that most often someone else (or an LLM) added all those LOC that are removed to make the system sensible.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#58

Post by georgemcbay »

4lx87 wrote: post #55
strix_varius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this is gated by where you work (especially by how technically savvy your manager is), but the most effective contributors at my job tend to be the ones with near-zero (or sub-zero!) net LoC. LLMs are prolific and they love to add shit. Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts.

The most effective contributors at your job remove more code than they add? That doesn't sound effective that sounds like digging ditches to fill them. Every line of code removed is a line that was previously added.

> That doesn't sound effective that sounds like digging ditches to fill them. Every line of code removed is a line that was previously added.

Because they were added doesn't mean they were needed and even if the same person added and then removed them, it doesn't mean they are digging ditches to fill them.

The idea that "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time" also applies to code, and sometimes later you are blessed with more time than you had when implementing something under deadline pressure.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#59

Post by pydry »

strix_varius wrote: post #42
ryandvm wrote: post #24

It is now significantly harder to figure out who understands the systems and is using AI effectively and who doesn't know shit and is just slinging LLM copypasta around. Before 2025, the underperformers/coasters were at least relatively identifiable by the paucity of their contributions. Now all of the sudden every single engineer is filing PRs, code reviews, technical design documents, and every other artifact under…

I'm sure this is gated by where you work (especially by how technically savvy your manager is), but the most effective contributors at my job tend to be the ones with near-zero (or sub-zero!) net LoC. LLMs are prolific and they love to add shit. Truly capable engineers are able to achieve more business outcomes with less code / fewer moving parts.

if you're trying to use sloc as a proxy for productivity in any way, shape or form you've already lost the game.

i tend to find that the most productive teams make better decisions and work fewer hours. the quality of decisions is such a huge force multiplier that it renders actual hours worked almost an irrelevant variable.

Re: AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less

#60

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ezoe wrote: post #19

I have a doubt that one of Three Virtues of a Programmer, laziness is still considered a virtue on AI coding era. Now that AI coding speed and performance outperformed most of human. But AI still need human to be commanded. Yes, you can let AI agent manage sub-agents but still, human is at the top of manager who order AI what should be written. So human must command and final say on when it's done. Is laziness still…

As defined by Larry Wall: "Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it."

That is still an enormous virtue in the AI era. It is completely the opposite of what many AI-using programmers are doing, which is being lazy in the conventional sense, minimizing their individual energy expenditure at the price of increasing the overall energy expenditure.

Being big-picture lazy is a virtue. Being individually lazy is a vice.

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