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Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

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Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#51

Post by simonw »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #34
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #18

Writing code with LLMs takes discipline and is difficult. You need to learn how to do it and how to get the best from it. Software engineering is dead, long live software engineering!

It really isn't that hard. The LLM needs a few iterations of self review, and you need to ask it for an architecture up front, but from there, it's mostly manual testing to make sure the LLM didn't fuck up. I don't think it'd take more than a few weeks for a high schooler to learn how to prompt well.

Your hypothetical high schooler would have to learn what architecture is, and then what self review is, and iteration, and manual testing... and what "code" and "software" is first.

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#52

Post by bunderbunder »

boplicity wrote: post #42
greenowl wrote: post #29

I committed to the fully agentic approach for a while. No code by hand! Setting aside the "capability" of the tools, I knew it was the wrong direction after a couple months or so in. I specifically remember during a large feature implementation running out of tokens for my 5 hour window or whatever, and I just couldn't continue on my own. Mostly due to laziness (I'll just wait till tomorrow when my limit resets!), bu…

There's definitely skill rot that happens -- but there are also new skills to learn. Dependency on tools is not a new problem, though, is it? Agents definitely run amok on code bases, create bloat, needless complexity, etc. However, they enable many people to do so much more than they could without them, at least in the moment, that they're not going to go away.

The problem I'm seeing is that most of that additional output is just increasing pressure on the real bottlenecks such as design, QA, operations, support, etc. Which is why we're seeing this dual phenomenon of programmer productivity increases at the same time as the productivity of the overall business crashes out.

At my last employer we were contending with real customer fatigue and attrition. The application was changing so rapidly that it was overwhelming both our ability to uphold quality standards, and customers' ability to keep up with the feature churn.

Or, to put it more succinctly: nobody actually wants all this slop.

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#53

Post by CookieCrisp »

redlewel wrote: post #33

How do people read these types of post with this AI flair, I couldn't read more than a couple sentences

I start with the first word, then move on to the second and so forth, letting the overall idea of what I am reading in my mind grow as I get further and further

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#54

Post by pranit1 »

jplusequalt wrote: post #36
hkchad wrote: post #15

I've been a software dev for 25 years. In the past year I've hand written maybe 10 lines of code. For the first 2-3 months i would read it, then I figured out how to really use AI/code gen and the amount created was more than I could read. I can work on 2-3 projects at once, or 2-3 parts of a larger project at once. More than that I can't keep task switching. The speed and complexity of what I'm able to create is 10x…

>For the first 2-3 months i would read it, then I figured out how to really use AI/code gen and the amount created was more than I could read You serve no purpose here. The AI will soon be able to prompt itself, and it will be better at system design than you. Good job at making yourself redundant.

I think you will always need a button pusher. whether it is the CEO, the product manager or the developer themselves. You will need some sort of overseer who will take accountability of the system that is generated by the AI.

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#55

Post by jbd123 »

boplicity wrote: post #42
greenowl wrote: post #29

I committed to the fully agentic approach for a while. No code by hand! Setting aside the "capability" of the tools, I knew it was the wrong direction after a couple months or so in. I specifically remember during a large feature implementation running out of tokens for my 5 hour window or whatever, and I just couldn't continue on my own. Mostly due to laziness (I'll just wait till tomorrow when my limit resets!), bu…

There's definitely skill rot that happens -- but there are also new skills to learn. Dependency on tools is not a new problem, though, is it? Agents definitely run amok on code bases, create bloat, needless complexity, etc. However, they enable many people to do so much more than they could without them, at least in the moment, that they're not going to go away.

Yeah, I am also feeling the rot and do not like it one bit. However, the world does not revolve around my feelings, so I have adapted and fully embraced it. That being said, I think AI took away 90% of the enjoyment I got from the job of Software Engineer. It isn't just the code writing, it was the space to go deep and immerse myself fully to solve a problem. I think there is still a need to problem solve at different levels, but with AI the velocity has increased so much - the space to focus on one thing for any amount of time has also been drastically reduced (this could be because I work for a company and may be company specific. I also do freelance dev, and find much more enjoyment there, but still not the same as pre AI).

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#56

Post by zem »

rich_sasha wrote: post #35

I feel a really odd dissonance with all these accounts. I have access to top models via Cursor at work. Every time I think to myself, here’s a tedious but well defined task, with clear success criteria, where you can achieve a lot with persistent iterations. I’ll give it to Claude to do. First, it takes me ages to describe the task properly. All these clear success criteria, well, instead of writing code from a clear…

I've found a more productive workflow is to ask claude how it would do the task, go back and forth with it a bit until you both agree on the steps, then have it work through them. i also emphasise the need to have every step in its own commit, then go back and read through the stack suggesting code improvements and refactoring, letting the AI do the tedious work of fixing conflicts and restacking. I'm usually pretty happy with the process and the end result.

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#57

Post by springtimesun »

I’m m just starting to get results on a local/cloud agent pipeline I’ve been building. I don’t think I will ever code again. Plan, review, read, architect, test, yes. Code though simply doesn’t make sense when I’m getting these results at this velocity.

Every few months it feels like I have moved further up the chain. Now I don’t even look at a PR until it’s been coded and gone through at least 2 AI reviews (always different families). Code is truly cheap. I can have the pipeline produce an entire feature as a thought experiment just to see if the shape is the right fit for the codebase. People like to throw the slop term around a lot. It feels like the opposite of slop through. I can have things written and rewritten as many times as it takes until I’m happy with them.

The weakness I see in this is there at the end. The agents never want to throw things away. They just want to keep adding and adding. I think this is my real value in the chain. That intuition built up over years that says this isn’t right yet or that little tingle in your brain that you’ve laid a landline that you are going to step on in 6 months.

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#58

Post by mermadicsolutio »

rich_sasha wrote: post #35

I feel a really odd dissonance with all these accounts. I have access to top models via Cursor at work. Every time I think to myself, here’s a tedious but well defined task, with clear success criteria, where you can achieve a lot with persistent iterations. I’ll give it to Claude to do. First, it takes me ages to describe the task properly. All these clear success criteria, well, instead of writing code from a clear…

This is similar to my experience when cursor first came out. But now it's even trickier because LLM actually writes working code that pass the test. The issue is when i dig in deeper, there's often small security or design issues that will cause problem down the road when the app gets more traffic.

These issues are usually in really tedious places that I didn't bother to describe what to do to the agent

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#59

Post by mermadicsolutio »

zem wrote: post #56
rich_sasha wrote: post #35

I feel a really odd dissonance with all these accounts. I have access to top models via Cursor at work. Every time I think to myself, here’s a tedious but well defined task, with clear success criteria, where you can achieve a lot with persistent iterations. I’ll give it to Claude to do. First, it takes me ages to describe the task properly. All these clear success criteria, well, instead of writing code from a clear…

I've found a more productive workflow is to ask claude how it would do the task, go back and forth with it a bit until you both agree on the steps, then have it work through them. i also emphasise the need to have every step in its own commit, then go back and read through the stack suggesting code improvements and refactoring, letting the AI do the tedious work of fixing conflicts and restacking. I'm usually pretty…

Yea it honestly feels like a typical meeting with colleagues, without company politics

Re: Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

#60

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

simonw wrote: post #51
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't that hard. The LLM needs a few iterations of self review, and you need to ask it for an architecture up front, but from there, it's mostly manual testing to make sure the LLM didn't fuck up. I don't think it'd take more than a few weeks for a high schooler to learn how to prompt well.

Your hypothetical high schooler would have to learn what architecture is, and then what self review is, and iteration, and manual testing... and what "code" and "software" is first.

If it takes them more than a few weeks to figure out "Review your own output with a clean context. Check it for bugs, performance, and places where it doesn't do what the user wants", I don't know what to say. And where are you finding high schoolers that don't know what software is?

Note, people don't typically need to understand the architecture documents that the LLMs generate, and will certainly be filling in the rest of the gaps as new models come out. The function of design docs is to make the LLM ask clarifying questions and fill in the constraints.

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