Earlier quoted context omitted.
so spam?
[flagged]
They weren't saying your _post_ was spam. They're saying you build tools for spammers.
Because that's what they'll be used for.
Agentic Engineering Patterns
161–170 of 341 posts
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#162I wish there was a little more color in the Testing and QA section. While I agree with this: > A comprehensive test suite is by far the most effective way to keep those features working. there is no mention at all about LLMs' tendency to write tautological tests--tests that pass because they are defined to pass. Or, tests that are not at all relevant or useful, and are ultimately noise in the codebase wasting cycles…
Yes. And, a bad test -- that passes because it's defined to pass -- is _much worse_ than no test at all. It makes you think an edge case is "covered" with a meaningful check.
Worse: once you have one "bad apple" in your pile of tests, it decreases trust in the _whole batch of tests_. Each time a test passes, you have to think if it's a bad test...
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#163We're going to do it again, aren't we? We're going to take something simple and sensible ("write tests first", "small composable modules", etc.), give it a fancy complicated name ("Behavior-Constrained Implementation Lifecycle pattern", "Boundary-Scoped Processing Constructs pattern", etc.), and create an entire industry of consultants and experts selling books and enterprise coaching around it, each swearing they ha…
[deleted]
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#164We're going to do it again, aren't we? We're going to take something simple and sensible ("write tests first", "small composable modules", etc.), give it a fancy complicated name ("Behavior-Constrained Implementation Lifecycle pattern", "Boundary-Scoped Processing Constructs pattern", etc.), and create an entire industry of consultants and experts selling books and enterprise coaching around it, each swearing they ha…
Common business-oriented language (COBOL) is a high-level, English-like, compiled programming language.
COBOL's promise was that it was human-like text, so we wouldn't need programmers anymore.
The problem is that the average person doesn't know how what their actual problems are in sufficient detail to get a working solution. When you get down to breaking down that problem... you become a programmer.
The main lesson of COBOL is that it isn't the computer interface/language that necessitates a programmer.
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#165I wish there was a little more color in the Testing and QA section. While I agree with this: > A comprehensive test suite is by far the most effective way to keep those features working. there is no mention at all about LLMs' tendency to write tautological tests--tests that pass because they are defined to pass. Or, tests that are not at all relevant or useful, and are ultimately noise in the codebase wasting cycles…
> we as humans can guide the LLM toward a rigorous test suite, rather than one that has a lot of "coverage" but doesn't actually provide sound guarantees about behavior.
I have a hard enough time getting humans to write tests like this…
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
When was the last time you tried? I think trying agents to do larger tasks was always very hit or miss, up to about the end of last year. In the past couple of months I have found them to have gotten a lot better (and I'm not the only one). My experience with what coding assistants are good for shifted from: smart autocomplete -> targeted changes/additions -> full engineering
> My experience with what coding assistants are good for shifted from: > smart autocomplete -> targeted changes/additions -> full engineering Define "full engineering". Because if you say "full engineering" I would expect the agent to get some expected product output details as input and produce all by itself the right implementation for the context (i.e. company) it lives in.
I agree that "full engineering" was a bit broad. I should probably have said something like "agent-only coding"?
I.e. the point where the agent writes all the code and you just verify.
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#167I wish there was a little more color in the Testing and QA section. While I agree with this: > A comprehensive test suite is by far the most effective way to keep those features working. there is no mention at all about LLMs' tendency to write tautological tests--tests that pass because they are defined to pass. Or, tests that are not at all relevant or useful, and are ultimately noise in the codebase wasting cycles…
This seems it should be very easy to validate. Force the AI to make minimal changes to the code under test, which makes a single (or as few as possible) test fail as a result. If it can't make a test fail at all, it should be useless.
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#168Simon, if you're reading this, I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on how to effectively conduct code reviews in a world where "code is cheap".
One of the biggest struggles I have on my team is coworkers straight up vibing parts of the code and not understanding or guiding the architecture of subsystems. Or at least, not writing code in a way that is meant to be understood by others.
Then when I go through the code and provide extensive feedback (mostly architectural and highlighting odd inconsistencies with the code additions) I'm met with much pushback because "it works, why change it"? Not to mention the sheer size of prs ballooning in recent months.
The end result is me being the bottleneck because I can't keep up with the "pace" of code being generated, and feeling a lot of discomfort and pressure to lower my standards.
I've thought about using a code review agent to review and act as me in proxy, but not being able to control the exact output worries me. And I don't like the lack of human touch it provides. Maybe someone has advice on a humane way to handle this problem.
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#169We're going to do it again, aren't we? We're going to take something simple and sensible ("write tests first", "small composable modules", etc.), give it a fancy complicated name ("Behavior-Constrained Implementation Lifecycle pattern", "Boundary-Scoped Processing Constructs pattern", etc.), and create an entire industry of consultants and experts selling books and enterprise coaching around it, each swearing they ha…
I'm confused. Are you criticising the article, or simply expressing concern for what may happen? The context suggests the former, but your criticisms bear no relation to the linked content. If anything, your edict to "write tests first" is even more succinctly expressed as "Red/green TDD".
But it is related, isn't it? I wrote "...each swearing they have the secret sauce and the right incantations...". Now compare it to ""Use red/green TDD" is a pleasingly succinct way to get better results out of a coding agent."
Doesn't it sound like the "right incantation"? That's the point of LLMs, they can understand (*) intent. You'd get the same result saying "do tdd" or "do the stuff everyone says they do but they don't, with the failing test first, don't remember the name, but you know what I'm saying innit?"
I'm perhaps uncharitable, and this article just happens to take the collateral damage, but I'm starting to see the same corruption that turned "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective" into "Mandatory retro exactly once every fortnight, on a board with precisely three columns".
Re: Agentic Engineering Patterns
#170We're going to do it again, aren't we? We're going to take something simple and sensible ("write tests first", "small composable modules", etc.), give it a fancy complicated name ("Behavior-Constrained Implementation Lifecycle pattern", "Boundary-Scoped Processing Constructs pattern", etc.), and create an entire industry of consultants and experts selling books and enterprise coaching around it, each swearing they ha…
Common business-oriented language (COBOL) is a high-level, English-like, compiled programming language. COBOL's promise was that it was human-like text, so we wouldn't need programmers anymore. The problem is that the average person doesn't know how what their actual problems are in sufficient detail to get a working solution. When you get down to breaking down that problem... you become a programmer. The main lesson…
> The problem is that the average person doesn't know how what their actual problems are in sufficient detail to get a working solution. When you get down to breaking down that problem... you become a programmer.
Agreed. I've spent the last few years building an EMR at an actual agency and the idea that users know what they want and can articulate it to a degree that won't require ANY technical decisions is pure fantasy in my experience.