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AI can code, but it can't build software

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Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#121

Post by asabla »

jumploops wrote: post #19

I've been forcing myself to "pure vibe-code" on a few projects, where I don't read a single line of code (even the diffs in codex/claude code). Candidly, it's awful. There are countless situations where it would be faster for me to edit the file directly (CSS, I'm looking at you!). With that said, I've been surprised at how far the coding agents are able to go[0], and a lot less surprised about where I need to step i…

> The last thing I'll mention is that Claude Code (Sonnet 4.5) is still very token-happy, in that it eagerly goes above and beyond when not always necessary. Codex (gpt-5-codex) on the other hand, does exactly what you ask, almost to a fault.

I very much share your experience. As for the time being I like the experience with codex over claude, just because I find my self in a position where I know much sooner when to step in and just doing it manually.

With claude I find my self in a typing exercise much more often, I could probably get better of knowing when to stop ofc.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#122

Post by kakacik »

simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

Not happening anytime soon. Those product management types are more expensive than devs in most places, you would be literally a) increasing cost per hour worked; and b) stiffling the use of (pricey) management skills of such manager to do lower pay job.

I have no doubt some broken places end up in similar mode but en masse it doesnt make any financial sense.

Also when SHTF and you can't avoid going into deep debug with strong management pressure and oversight, it will become glaringly obvious which approach can maintain things running. And SHTF always happens, its only a function of time.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#123

Post by NicoJuicy »

simonw wrote: post #92
NicoJuicy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are severe edge cases. Here are some of the last days. Eg. Just updating bootstrap to angular bootstrap. It didn't transfer how I placed the dropdowns ( basically using dropdown-end). So everything was out of view in desktop and mobile. It forgot the transloco I used everywhere and just used default English ( happens a lot). Suggested code that fixed 1 bug ( expression property recursion), but now linq to SQL w…

Do you have any automated tests for that project? I'm bringing to suspect a lot of my great experiences with coding agents come from the fact that they can run tests to confirm they haven't broken anything.

Too little.

Things moved as fast as possible to migrate from .net framework to .net core 8, angular 8 to 18 and bootstrap 4.5 to 5.x

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#124

Post by solumunus »

prmph wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

> LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Just this past weekend, I've designed and written code (in Typescript) that I don't think LLMs can even come close to writing in years. I have a subscription to a frontier LLM, but lately I find myself using like 25% of the time. At a certain level the software architecture problems I'm solving, drawing upon decades of understanding about maintainable, performant, and verif…

That amazing code you’ve written is a tiny proportion of code that’s needed to provide business value. Most of the code delivering business value to customers day in, day out is quite simple and can easily be LLM driven.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#125

Post by solumunus »

simonw wrote: post #92
NicoJuicy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are severe edge cases. Here are some of the last days. Eg. Just updating bootstrap to angular bootstrap. It didn't transfer how I placed the dropdowns ( basically using dropdown-end). So everything was out of view in desktop and mobile. It forgot the transloco I used everywhere and just used default English ( happens a lot). Suggested code that fixed 1 bug ( expression property recursion), but now linq to SQL w…

Do you have any automated tests for that project? I'm bringing to suspect a lot of my great experiences with coding agents come from the fact that they can run tests to confirm they haven't broken anything.

The test loop is integral.

It’s kind of annoying hearing all this skepticism from people putting in the least effort into optimally using the tool. There is a learning curve. Every month I’ve gotten better results than the last because I’m constantly context building and refining, understanding how, what and when to prompt.

It’s like hearing someone say database suck but they haven’t bothered to learn about or use indexes or foreign keys.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#126

Post by herbst »

CjHuber wrote: post #44
prmph wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Just this past weekend, I've designed and written code (in Typescript) that I don't think LLMs can even come close to writing in years. I have a subscription to a frontier LLM, but lately I find myself using like 25% of the time. At a certain level the software architecture problems I'm solving, drawing upon decades of understanding about maintainable, performant, and verif…

Can you maybe give an example you’ve encountered of an algorithm or a data structure that LLMs cannot handle well? In my experience implementing algorithms from a good comprehensive description and keeping track of data models is where they shine the most.

Claude added a self re-calling timeout to my Typescript game loop to track time. Manually by adding 1000ms every time it's called.

I removed it and it later just added it again.

It's this small weird things where it can mess up a lot of code.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#127

Post by cadamsdotcom »

manwe150 wrote: post #64
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have it write tests and give it the ability to iterate & validate its implementation without you in the loop? Anything less is setting it up for failure...

Yes, but it got 99% of those then got stuck on why the others made no sense to it

It’s important to understand the tests it’s written yourself.

If you’d like some help I’d be glad to, just drop me an email.

My email’s in my profile.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#128

Post by torginus »

latentsea wrote: post #96
prmph wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Just this past weekend, I've designed and written code (in Typescript) that I don't think LLMs can even come close to writing in years. I have a subscription to a frontier LLM, but lately I find myself using like 25% of the time. At a certain level the software architecture problems I'm solving, drawing upon decades of understanding about maintainable, performant, and verif…

I think C# is really going to shine in the LLM coding era. You can write Roslyn Analyzers to fail the build on arbitrary conditions after inspecting the AST. LLMs are great at helping you write these too. If you get a solid architecture well defined you can then use these as guardrails to constrain development to only happen in the manner you intend. You can then get LLMs to implement features and guarantee the code…

I do quite a bit of coding in C#, and have a lot of experience, and personally I haven't found LLMs to be that great a help at writing C#.

First, LLMs are great at learning new tech stacks, but good ol' ASP.NET has been pretty much stable since forever. Second, I think Rider/Resharper is the greatest piece of autocomplete tech ever made, seriously nothing ever comes, close, which means I'd rather do a refactor using them than do something similar by prompting the AI and hoping for the best. Also probably my experience makes me far less accepting of LLMisms, but that might just be on me.

Lastly, AI seems to be focused around its own set of tooling, like Cursor, which is fine for TS but is far worse than Rider for things like C#. I know I could kludge things together, but still.

As for Roslyn...

I have some experience writing codegen/analyzers at my company and it feels like typical a Microsoft tech product, like WPF or Powershell.

Brilliant idea (that's a market first as well) combined with really solid technical fundamentals, but plain confusing and overcomplicated UX, that makes it a chore to use. Seriously the amount of scaffolding you need to make even for a simple analyzer is just nuts

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#129

Post by lan321 »

FromTheFirstIn wrote: post #91
jcelerier wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people saying LLMs can code are hard for me to understand. They are good for simple bash scripts and complex refactoring and drafting basic code idioms and that's about it that's like, 90% of the code people are writing

But not 90% of the work people do. It’s solved a task, not a problem.

It's what takes time though. When you need to make a wrapper for some API for example LLMs are incredible. You give it a template, the payload format and the possible methods and it just spits out a 500-1000 line class in 15 seconds. Do it for 20 classes, that's work for a week 'done' in 30 mins. Realistically 2 days since you still have to fix and test a lot but still..

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#130

Post by simonw »

belZaah wrote: post #118
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

Yeah, no. Had Claude 4.5 generate a mock implementation of an OpenAPI spec. Trivial interaction, just a post of a json object. And Claude invented new fields to check for and failed to check for required ones. It is helpful in reducing the number of keys I have to press and the amount of documentation-diving I need to do. But saying that’s writing code is like saying StackOverflow is writing code along with autocompl…

What did Claude do when you replied and said "don't add new fields, and make sure you check the required ones"?
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