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I'm going back to coding by hand

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I'm going back to coding by hand

#51

Post by trencedamp »

spottedmarley wrote: post #15

The debate bothers me. Why anyone feels they need to only code one way or the other is strange. I do both. Actually, there are three options: By hand, hands off, and AI assistance while you code by hand. I'll do any of the three depending on what Im building or how I feel. Why does it have to be a hard line "Im not using AI anymore" or "I have to use AI for everything"?

Well it's actually not, if you read my post you'd see that I use AI at work for everything, and I'm going back to hand coding for one of my more important side projects. I still use LLMs for less important work

Re: I'm going back to coding by hand

#53

Post by dunefox »

dosisking wrote: post #29
dunefox wrote: post #26

I'm not. I just don't want to implement code for reading files, setting up and population databases, logs, etc. manually anymore. I want to automate boilerplate, the occasional frontend code, etc. and focus on the parts that are interesting for me. This way I can get things done that I wouldn't otherwise.

I hope I never have to use your software

I'm very certain you have used lots of software, either directly or indirectly, that has ai parts in it. The truth is, that it's quite reliable if done correctly. As if 'human written' software is somehow flawless.

Re: I'm going back to coding by hand

#54

Post by aatd86 »

Towaway69 wrote: post #41
nisegami wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I build the base manually and then I can iterate with AI faster once the fundamentals are solid. I've had tremendous success with this approach as well.

Why do we need humans in the loop, what exactly can’t be replaced by an AI in your workflow? It sounds like having another AI telling the first AI not to “drift” away from the fundamentals would do the trick? Does this activity require some kind of super human abilities that can’t be done by an AI? What exactly is it that gives satisfaction? Bossing around a junior developer or reviewing code generated by said junior…

AI still does not do pattern matching the same way my brain works. I still see things that can be improved where the AI just go with what is most common. If I nudge it, it realizes it. If I don't, I get basic software.

Just as I speak, it is reworking a UI compositor design, after I told it to use the reactive framework I have built for damage restoration, because in the end, this is a reactive problem. The implications, it drew on its own. But I had to nudge it.

Re: I'm going back to coding by hand

#55

Post by sfn42 »

eudamoniac wrote: post #46
sfn42 wrote: post #13

It's a common complaint that people lose control of their codebase using LLMs. It always strikes me as odd, because this is a choice you make when you use the tool. You don't have to just give it a task, let it do whatever it wants, then accept the result. You can tell it how to do things. You can read the changes. You can ask it to do things differently. You choose to relinquish all control and then complain that yo…

I agree and I keep control, but I'm pretty sure AI is not faster than no-AI when I keep control. By the time I know what changes I want and how and instruct it how to do that and it thinks and I review the output, I could have written it.

For me it's insanely much faster. Maybe 5-10x depending on the task.

One thing I do is try to keep prompting. I do take time to look at the code and think if I need it, but when I'm unsure of what to do I use the LLM to help me work through it. Here is a problem, I'm not sure whether to do x or y or something else, what do you think?

It will reason around the issue and generally come up with some good suggestions. If I'm not happy I'll just talk to it further, explain what I don't like etc until we get to something I'm happy with.

I try to avoid being super specific and spending tons of time on prompts, rather I give it a vague description of what I want and ask it to plan the change, then I review the plan which will usually be pretty close, explain what I want different and when I'm happy I tell it to do it.

I do think it helps a lot that I've already put in a lot of work to build a clean and consistent application, for many problems there is already a ready-made solution. The core architecture is already there so mostly it just expands on it.

Re: I'm going back to coding by hand

#56

Post by tp3358 »

dosisking wrote: post #29
dunefox wrote: post #26

I'm not. I just don't want to implement code for reading files, setting up and population databases, logs, etc. manually anymore. I want to automate boilerplate, the occasional frontend code, etc. and focus on the parts that are interesting for me. This way I can get things done that I wouldn't otherwise.

I hope I never have to use your software

But you'll use the mediocre software written by hundreds of mediocre devs, and a team that doesn't fully understand the whole codebase due it's ever-inflated technical debt?

I get the angst of AI coding, but it is funny that people think hand written code at scale is somehow not susceptible to all of the problems of code gen. A lot of it isn't artful - it's factory generated slop.

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