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Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

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Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#111

Post by pluto_modadic »

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…

this seems like a strawman... of /course/ you'd use the IDE to do ref renames?? AI isn't for that...

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#112

Post by DerArzt »

soraminazuki wrote: post #103
snek_case wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is it absurd?

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#113

Post by snek_case »

soraminazuki wrote: post #103
snek_case wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The people who make that comparison are just showing how clueless they are IMO.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#114

Post by scotty79 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #71
scotty79 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think you can only be an engineer if you are holding the shovel yourself. Building software consists of many parts. I love each individually. I was always a bit dissatisfied about how they interact and how they block each other. I love puzzle solving, I love debugging, but I kinda hated building software because it depended on those elements and I'm not fond of context switching. I can love building softw…

Maybe engineer was the wrong word. Developer/programmer, where I'd say that yes, you need to wield the tools yourself rather than telling someone/thing else to

Agent is not someone. It is a tool. Just a one that you operate using natural language. You don't have to use software developer vocabulary, but it really helps if you want to achieve specific things regarding software development.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#115

Post by soraminazuki »

DerArzt wrote: post #112
soraminazuki wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is it absurd?

For the same reason others have explained here and elsewhere, with some writing entire articles on the topic. Compilers produce semantically equivalent translation of source code into target code. That's not at all what LLMs do. They produce unpredictable results from ambiguous specifications written by people who may or may not understand software engineering. Big difference.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#116

Post by brandensilva »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #19
aselimov3 wrote: post #8

I think the main issue with this approach is that your solution space eventually narrows. You go from formulating unique solutions to flagging things that look wrong and then just picking an alternative LLM generated one. I’ve noticed this recently as all my side project work is being done by hand. If I do ask an LLM another question about something small it will offer solutions but doesn’t offer the solution I think…

> Slowly your brain just gets trained to mid thinking like an LLM Regression to the mean. I am doing a lot of the code reviews on my team and I can see that LLMs have a hard time with OOP (or are perhaps specifically guided to avoid) and writes a lot of `private static` utility functions. A lot of duplicated small utilities that can end up becoming a maintenance nightmare should the behavior need to be normalized/fix…

Cleaning up tech debt is a must with AI for a lot of these orphaned utilities and anti patterns.

My hope is eventually open source models get far enough along we just train the models on company specific code needs.

Until then it is a lot of wack a mole with skills, hooks, system prompts, and interweaving deterministic needs.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#117

Post by classified »

scotty79 wrote: post #69
voidUpdate wrote: post #25

What's interesting to me is how many people have found out with the LLM boom that they don't want to be developers/engineers, they want to be managers, delegating all the work to another entity and checking in occasionally to see how the coding is coming along

You seem to think you can only be an engineer if you are holding the shovel yourself. Building software consists of many parts. I love each individually. I was always a bit dissatisfied about how they interact and how they block each other. I love puzzle solving, I love debugging, but I kinda hated building software because it depended on those elements and I'm not fond of context switching. I can love building softw…

It seems clear to me that micromanaging a machine will hit less resistance than with a person.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#118

Post by voidUpdate »

scotty79 wrote: post #114
voidUpdate wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe engineer was the wrong word. Developer/programmer, where I'd say that yes, you need to wield the tools yourself rather than telling someone/thing else to

Agent is not someone. It is a tool. Just a one that you operate using natural language. You don't have to use software developer vocabulary, but it really helps if you want to achieve specific things regarding software development.

Which is why I said someone/thing. Someone or Something, an LLM falling under Something, but other manager jobs use people, hence Someone

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#120

Post by sph »

chrisrickard wrote: post #63
voidUpdate wrote: post #25

What's interesting to me is how many people have found out with the LLM boom that they don't want to be developers/engineers, they want to be managers, delegating all the work to another entity and checking in occasionally to see how the coding is coming along

I’ve found it interesting too. It’s like I spent 20 years mastering painting in watercolour… nerding out on other painters, canvas options, even the backstory on some guy that makes a specific paint etc. And I don’t regret any of that. but now I’m just loving creating my art 100x faster. I thought I loved the craft (and I did) but more, I loved the product.

So, in your metaphor, you never were an artist. You were just a poser.

What I find cringeworthy is that it seems the entire industry is filled with posers and I didn’t learn this fact until now.

As mentioned previously, I just wish the ‘posers’ chose a new job title for themselves rather than coopting the name of software engineer, so there is an easy way to tell each other apart. But passing for someone one really isn’t is the modus operandi of the poser.

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