Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

max.gp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 125 posts

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#101

Post by cortesoft »

jrflo wrote: post #15
hootz wrote: post #3

But the question is, will this atrophy our ability to write and understand code? Is reviewing enough? Won't we inevitably get lazy and stop reading enough code? Reading always was a worse way to learn than doing. When we stop doing, we will have to triple our reading (if that's even enough), but will we do that or just trust the agents more and more?

I wonder if people thought something similar when moving from writing low level machine code by hand to high-level languages. No one looks at the actual machine instructions anymore! Will our ability to understand low level instructions atrophy?

They absolutely did: https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai...

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#102

Post by basch »

carlos-menezes wrote: post #93

This text is regurgitated on a daily basis. I skimmed through the text and could tell not only that but also that the author has given up on writing altogether. > I think harder about the real problems Are you /really/? If an LLM gives you an immediate, coherent answer, there's a risk you accept the framing too quickly instead of doing the harder work of questioning premises, testing alternatives and noticing what mi…

> If an LLM gives you an immediate, coherent answer, there's a risk you accept the framing too quickly instead of doing the harder work of questioning premises, testing alternatives and noticing what might be missing.

Arguably having a conversation with something so confident but random makes me more inclined to "verify before trust" instead of the usual "trust but verify." Im already very question premisy but interacting with ai 10x's that instinct. My skepticism level is higher because of temperature and seeing when I ask something multiple times I get dice roll answers.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#103

Post by soraminazuki »

snek_case wrote: post #48
jrflo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if people thought something similar when moving from writing low level machine code by hand to high-level languages. No one looks at the actual machine instructions anymore! Will our ability to understand low level instructions atrophy?

The difference is that LLMs are not compilers. You can't trust the output to be correct. They routinely make bad design choices. If you're prototyping some kind of throwaway MVP, you're just sketching something, it's probably fine not to review it. If you're trying to build a piece of software that's going to survive for years, why are you doing this? The tech is clearly not yet fully mature. Just yesterday, I was tr…

The comparison with compilers is absurd on its face, yet some keep pushing it as if repeating it enough times will make it true.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#104

Post by soraminazuki »

hootz wrote: post #3

But the question is, will this atrophy our ability to write and understand code? Is reviewing enough? Won't we inevitably get lazy and stop reading enough code? Reading always was a worse way to learn than doing. When we stop doing, we will have to triple our reading (if that's even enough), but will we do that or just trust the agents more and more?

Already happening. For many people, coding isn't the only thing they've abandoned. They've also traded science and engineering for LLM punditry. Rather than "focusing on solving problems," as they often claim, they spend their time chasing unscientific debates about which model or magic prompt "performs better." By unscientific, I mean there's nothing measurable, no reproducible methodology, and no way to validate their hypotheses. Or rather, their wild speculations that change every week.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#105

Post by hnthrow0287345 »

grebc wrote: post #98
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fast food might be the right approach if it's a business that prefers speed to maintainability, and they might move towards that with LLMs. I wish more developers would go with it instead of fight it. It's not like it's a personal failure you can't convince the business to slow down and prefer quality. The quality of the craft can live on in open source and personal projects.

Lol sure thing Sam!

More like developers who give quality away for free then are left wondering why businesses who make millions still end up squeezing the life out of them.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#106

Post by weakfish »

hootz wrote: post #28
jrflo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if people thought something similar when moving from writing low level machine code by hand to high-level languages. No one looks at the actual machine instructions anymore! Will our ability to understand low level instructions atrophy?

And they did atrophy! I only know assembly because I deliberately studied it and practiced it for reverse engineering. But in my view, no longer being able to understand high level code is a much, much bigger problem than not understanding assembly.

Especially because Markdown --> code is _non-deterministic_

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#107

Post by barrkel »

supermatt wrote: post #14

People bragging that they "dont touch code" and only "argue" with agents are reinventing the slowest possible IDE. Obviously the agents are great at producing large chunks of code, but they often make minor and sometimes trivial mistakes which need amending. Typing something like "in src/auth/session/token_manager.ts the refreshTokenExpiry variable should be refresh_token_expiry. update every reference and make sure…

See, I'd say something like:

In the latest commit, refreshTokenExpiry should be snake case. Fix and make a note to do that in $LANG.

Or otherwise scope the rule. The point is you don't need to be super verbose about it and you get to fix forward too, preventing the same issue reoccurring. You build knowledge and context that let you move faster.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#108

Post by infinet »

hootz wrote: post #3

But the question is, will this atrophy our ability to write and understand code? Is reviewing enough? Won't we inevitably get lazy and stop reading enough code? Reading always was a worse way to learn than doing. When we stop doing, we will have to triple our reading (if that's even enough), but will we do that or just trust the agents more and more?

There is a saying that many countries have offshored building hardware, aka manufacturing. Now they are offshoring software building to AI. Perhaps the silicon valley will grow a rust belt.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#109

Post by hootz »

weakfish wrote: post #106
hootz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they did atrophy! I only know assembly because I deliberately studied it and practiced it for reverse engineering. But in my view, no longer being able to understand high level code is a much, much bigger problem than not understanding assembly.

Especially because Markdown --> code is _non-deterministic_

Yeah. Actually, that's a cool thing to think about. Will it be possible in the future for an LLM to be deterministic enough to the point of becoming essentially a text to code compiler? Like, an entire class of LLMs that are meant to be deterministic to the point that even upgrades to the model wouldn't completely change the outputs (it could have some breaking changes).

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#110

Post by redlewel »

Only a few sentences in and its like reading linkedin... Obviously written using ai with little to no review.

In regards to the title/subject, if you completely stop thinking about code in terms of actual programming comprehension you are setting yourself up for failure. Unless you are a senior with 5+YOE and have an insane list of useful projects completed without using AI, you need to keep learning features of the language and writing code by hand or your skills with atrophy and you will become less effective over time.

Post reply on HN