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AI is a bad tool

bytecode.news

61–70 of 103 posts

Re: AI is a bad tool

#61
post #2

I can only imagine that people who say things like: > If you use AI for anything else, and in particularly if you use it to generate code, you're wasting your time. Have not used frontier models in at least a year. It is nearly inconceivable to me that I would ever go back to writing code by hand, in any context. Even if no new model was ever released, the combination of GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4 flash is more than suf…

How are you verifying all the code that's generated? Do you think that verifying properly would take you as much effort as the original implementation would've?

I guess I'm of two minds on it.

Sometimes, I will review every line, test the front-end in a staging environment, verify the backend contract, et cetera. Over time, though, I realized that many of these reviews just didn't result in any necessary changes. The current model (with guidance/claude.md/etc) was able to one-shot the task.

Not to overly personify, but imagine how you might treat a junior colleague. You start by reviewing everything they do with a microscope, later you review the broad-strokes, and eventually, for low-stakes or well-scoped tasks, you just play with the demo and the ticket and approve it.

Otherwise it's not materially different than a pre-AI world - you've got sample I/O, test cases, hand-review, look at the application on different screen sizes, contrive some edge cases, test against a spec if there is one - et cetera.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#62
post #16
post #2

I can only imagine that people who say things like: > If you use AI for anything else, and in particularly if you use it to generate code, you're wasting your time. Have not used frontier models in at least a year. It is nearly inconceivable to me that I would ever go back to writing code by hand, in any context. Even if no new model was ever released, the combination of GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4 flash is more than suf…

Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question. People used to enjoy it but lately all I see are people talking about they "no longer have to do it" I see both sides of the argument people endless have over this. I have been hesitant to take a solid position, first because I suck at coding and second because I dont really have a dog in this fight. The only context I have is my friend in…

Speaking only for myself, I _love_ coding. But I haven't done refactoring by applying a needle (with a steady hand) to a roll of magnetic tape in _YEARS_ /snark.

I love monkey-patching some python or js. But never have I ever suggested that anyone would should do it. Writing everything in Haskell sounds lovely but I wouldn't advise that either.

I honestly don't care what language I'm writing in. LLMs bring us back to the smalltalk days: your code is data and your data is code. LLMs bring a translation layer so that even if you're writing some high-level language, some DSL that exists only on some 1-off platform that no one else is aware of, _everybody_ has access to a self-bootstrapping codebase.

I feel more empowered to _code_ than ever: now, every single input carries semantic weight that gets carried through the "compiler." Every claim of determinism can much more easily be fuzz-tested and made more robust. "'sup, this broke, fix yo" and "Would you be so kind as to fix this error?" contain semantic context that actually affects the output of the generated code. That restores empowerment around code _authorship_ while still preserving the guarantees we want from the published artifact.

"Deep understanding" doesn't disappear when you gain the ability to be more expressive. "Deep understanding" disappears when people become incurious.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#63
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the honesty and I think I get it. The AI doing the code leap frogs you to a finished product which is the reward. I do worry about craftmanship in that scenario though.

The finished product alone does not have to be the reward. The reward can still be building a great tool, a great application, etc. With AI we can build it 100x faster, freeing us up to think deeper about our test coverage, our design, our scaling, our observability. There is no excuse for lazy execution using AI, that is, IMO, equivalent to shoddy software engineering. it's just faster and more accessible now. "AI s…

How can building an application feel like a reward when you're not the one who built it?

And before you post the obvious response, no, if you're truly "100x faster", you're not reading or even thinking about anything the AI is outputting. The time math doesn't add up.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#64
> Maybe being passionate about something you build, understanding it fully, owning it completely, and abstracting it properly

This is the actual job description. It doesn't matter whether AI is used for writing the literal code.

All that can really be said is that AI alone is inadequate for this job. None of this back and forth has ever really been about AI.

So, can we just cut the crap already and go back to the clarity we used to have on this? Bad leadership leads to bad outcomes. Bad leadership wants to use any tool at their disposal to micromanage and cut costs. Bad leadership is terrified of a younger and more capable workforce that will replace them. Bad leadership will do everything to deflect blame including calling you "out of touch" for not using AI enough or at all.

Not all workplaces are like this. I am actually glad AI has put a massive spotlight on these longstanding tensions.

Aging is happening faster than AI. It's far more likely there will be a time soon when all these software devs will no longer code because they're management (or burned out and changed careers). It's more important to start thinking about your integrity now before your lack of it gets you fired in the future anyway. I don't blame young people for being so naive, but this is a blindspot. Get a grip now.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#65
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love coding and I always have - arguably moreso now, if you can still call it coding. For me, it is not about the syntax nor the mechanics of typing though. My enjoyment comes from thinking about problems and breaking them down, or thinking about what architecture would best serve them. I guess I'm meant to be a systems design guy, so I'm lucky that AI-coding fits this well (AI models have limited context windows,…

> arguably moreso now, if you can still call it coding I pretty strongly think it doesn't resemble coding even a little

Yes - I think that's fair. I'm happy to concede the term coding - I still enjoy the process of telling my computer to build something I've envisioned. It's now much faster, and I get to do more of the big-picture thinking and ideation, which I thoroughly enjoy.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#66
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love coding and I always have - arguably moreso now, if you can still call it coding. For me, it is not about the syntax nor the mechanics of typing though. My enjoyment comes from thinking about problems and breaking them down, or thinking about what architecture would best serve them. I guess I'm meant to be a systems design guy, so I'm lucky that AI-coding fits this well (AI models have limited context windows,…

> arguably moreso now, if you can still call it coding I pretty strongly think it doesn't resemble coding even a little

Depends on the writer.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#67
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy building things. I do not enjoy the act typing out code by hand. > Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question To follow this debate through, to maximize coding enjoyment, shouldn't we be avoiding compilers? They take away a lot of the code we need to write. Frameworks as well?

Compilers don't take away the code we need to write; they translate it into a different formal language that emphasizes and de-emphasizes various aspects of its meaning. LLMs are categorically a different thing. Instead of soundly translating between formal languages, they adjust how you interact with the formal language. The enjoyment people get from coding has absolutely nothing to do with the pure volume of code t…

> LLMs are categorically a different thing. Instead of soundly translating between formal languages, they adjust how you interact with the formal language.

Yeah, equating LLMs with compilers is sloppy thinking (though, I'm sure some sloppy thinkers will defend to death). It's an over-eager pattern match, not everything that takes input and produces output is the same kind of thing.

I bet in our new AI utopia, we'll get more sloppy thinking. All kinds of people will be talking about how they used to think, but now they "no longer have to do it."

Re: AI is a bad tool

#68
post #3

I'd welcome someone pointing out where I'm wrong in my critique of this critique.. "The reason AI is a bad tool is that generally speaking, it is completely opaque." "The real question is, who can verify that what the AI built is good and true?" Well, you? The developer? The person responsible for using the tool, no? Isn't this article just saying, "using a tool blindly and not checking the result" is bad? Which, of…

I think this is correct. When I was coming up in software engineering, it was fairly accepted that the "bus factor" of a project should only increase. Any kind of vibe coding makes that bus factor exactly one... and if a service goes down, you're stuck.

I can prompt a fix or a new feature, have it coded in a couple of minutes, and I have enough domain knowledge to look at a diff and understand what's happening pretty quickly. It is ABSOLUTELY faster. And if Claude goes down, I could easily keep working.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#69
post #46
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question. People used to enjoy it but lately all I see are people talking about they "no longer have to do it" I see both sides of the argument people endless have over this. I have been hesitant to take a solid position, first because I suck at coding and second because I dont really have a dog in this fight. The only context I have is my friend in…

I don’t know but to me it seems a bunch of people should learn proper typing. There is no way in world that AI is faster in solving/writing problems than you are when you can maneuver your idea/vim properly and have proper domain knowledge and mental model of your codebase. I think it’s genuinely 10x as fast. Just on execution and then if you write it you keep mental model, decide details and you don’t lose context.…

Obviously I'm just one guy, but I maintain what I said w/ typing happily at 120+wpm. I think I could break 150 if I switched to colemak or dvorak, which I've been considering.

I don't think my job was ever to type fast, nor do I make any claim that I'm ontologically better than someone writing code by hand - but for what I need to do, I'm way faster now.

You might think he's an AI shill, but I was pretty compelled by simonw's post and idea - "your job is to deliver code that works" [1]. I think I can deliver more code that I can prove to work, faster now. The productivity is nice, but as I've said on other parts of the thread, it's also just fun to spend more time thinking, less time hitting the semicolon on my keyboard?

[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/

Edit: should have used [1] in the first place instead of an asterisk.

Re: AI is a bad tool

#70
Condescending, ignorant, and the author doesn't know what he is talking about.

I'll not explain why, and that would be as deep as the author explanation of his coping.

Why those articles get to hacker news?

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