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I’m spending months coding the old way

miguelconner.substack.com

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Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#101

Post by AstroBen »

delbronski wrote: post #46

So we’ve already grown nostalgic for the old days… skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then… but it’s been 6 hours and I can’t figure out why this does not work anymore. So you read some docs but they are poorly written. So you find something on G…

> skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then

This is exactly how you learn to create better abstractions and write clear code that future you will understand.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#103

Post by noosphr »

bhelkey wrote: post #96
JuniperMesos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't someone consult some kind of external resource for help, after struggling with a specific coding problem for 20 minutes? Why is 6 hours the right amount of time to timebox this to?

There wasn't always an external resource to go to for help. Especially for legacy pieces of software, it was easy to become the person with most context on the team.

This is reaching "you won't always have a calculator" levels of cope.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#105

Post by Jtarii »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #81
LeCompteSftware wrote: post #21

This is ominous and very depressing given what we've recently learned / reconfirmed about LLMs sapping our ability to persist through difficult problems: > There were 2 or 3 bugs that stumped me, and after 20 min or so of debugging I asked Claude for some advice. But most of the debugging was by hand! Twenty whole minutes. Us old-timers (I am 39) are chortling. I am not trying to knock the author specifically. But he…

Why shouldn't someone consult some kind of external resource for help, after struggling with a specific coding problem for 20 minutes? Why is 6 hours the right amount of time to timebox this to?

It entirely depends on what your goals are.

If you want to solve the problem quickly then just use the resources you have, if you want to become someone who can solve problems quickly then you need to spend hundreds of hours banging your head against a wall.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#106

Post by [deleted] »

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

[deleted]

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#107

Post by flawn »

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

Is this course online available? Sounds like great fun.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#108

Post by [deleted] »

chasd00 wrote: post #98
Trasmatta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES. I don't know how many multi WEEK sessions of debugging I've been through in my career. Frustrating, but so many valuable lessons learned in the process. LLMs are absolutely causing us to lose something very important.

Geez you guys need to spend some time in orgs where your paycheck is depends on getting the bugs fixed and deployed. If your direct deposit happens whether you deliver or not then you’re missing the most valuable career lesson of all.

[deleted]

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#109

Post by flawn »

phaser wrote: post #36

Here’s how i do it: I create a lot of stuff using AI to the max, but I also spend the necessary of time on reviewing that the AI is producing code that passes my cognitive load standards. this involves some tokens spent on grooming code and documenting well. Most of this is effortless thanks to an AGENTS.md based on this: https://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-load/blob/main/READM... but i have a good sense of catch…

Thanks for sharing. I have thought about approaches by deliberately leaving tasks to me while the agent does something to keep my brain active & prevent atrophy. Maybe I should work on a Claude Code skill/hook for that :)

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#110

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

grebc wrote: post #91
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I’m as old timer as old timer can get - started programming as a hobby in 1986 in assembly on an Apple //e in 65C02 assembly language. But just today a bug was reported by a customer (we are still in testing not a production bug). I implemented this project myself from an empty git repo and an empty AWS account including 3 weeks of pre implementation discovery. I reproduced the issue and through the problem at C…

It’s always the journey that matters. If you’re experienced as you are, you’re not learning the same way a junior assigned this might learn from it.

So the project I mentioned while I did write every single line of app code and IAC, made every architectural decision, etc., I did come on an off the project over the course of a year and I couldn’t even remember some of the decisions I made.

I also used Codex and asked questions about how the codebase worked to refresh my own memory. Why wouldn’t a junior developer do the same?

I mentioned that I had Codex describe in detail how it debugged it. It walked through each query it did, the lines of code it looked at and the IAC. It jogged my memory about code I wrote a year ago and after being on other projects

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