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Using AI to write better code more slowly

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Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#161

Post by herrherrmann »

nicman23 wrote: post #157
bad_username wrote: post #149

We may be in the last Golden age of AI, where experienced professionals still exist who can code manually, and AI already exists who can code automatically, and when the former use the latter skillfully, wonders happen. This magical intersection may not exist iin the future, or become very rare.

people said the same with any innovation

Did they? Genuine question, because I do wonder if people in some industries in the past were ever anxious about these specific things (especially skill attrition).

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#162

Post by josephg »

dozerly wrote: post #151
bad_username wrote: post #149

We may be in the last Golden age of AI, where experienced professionals still exist who can code manually, and AI already exists who can code automatically, and when the former use the latter skillfully, wonders happen. This magical intersection may not exist iin the future, or become very rare.

I think as long as it continues to be tangibly better these people will still exist and the intersection will continue to be valuable enough to survive.

> as long as it continues to be tangibly better these people will still exist

Sure. But how long will that last? LLMs are getting better at programming much faster than I am.

Imagine a plot with time on the X axis and LLM skill on the Y axis. The line goes up and to the right. On the left is GPT3, or GPT3.5 with the very first glimmers of programming ability just a few short years ago. In the middle is Opus 4.7 now.

Where's the intersection point, where AI skill is higher than that of humans? Less than 10 years. I'd guess less than 5 years.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#163

Post by ant6n »

nicman23 wrote: post #157
bad_username wrote: post #149

We may be in the last Golden age of AI, where experienced professionals still exist who can code manually, and AI already exists who can code automatically, and when the former use the latter skillfully, wonders happen. This magical intersection may not exist iin the future, or become very rare.

people said the same with any innovation

There at a lot of crafts that don’t have real deep experts anymore because the work was 90% automated.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#164

Post by cube00 »

jerezzprime wrote: post #79
rootnod3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then Anthropic has an outage and you what...have a coffee break until then? All that time babysitting the AIs just to be a little faster but probably with less knowledge/control over what they did?

Yes get a coffee. Being able to execute 5 things at once is amazing, but it's a recipe for burnout. We have to be more careful and explicit about how we spend our time, and that means more explicit time away. If this thing makes you 10x more effective (I truly believe it can), you can afford to spend 20% less time behind the desk and more time doing whatever it is that actually makes you happy. Hopefully your manager…

> Hopefully your manager understands that calculus.

The majority of jobs are still paid on a 40 hour per week basis. Disappearing for a day each week (20%) won't fly when you're full time.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#166

Post by pineapple_opus »

> This is the opposite of the “10x productivity” slop-cannon style of development that most people imagine when they think of vibe coding, but I find it very satisfying.

I can relate to this. When I spend time on writing unit test , even the one which takes 1% of code coverage, it will be honestly wholesome moment for me to ship it confidently.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#167

Post by darkwater »

jfim wrote: post #143
bottlepalm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. AI is bumping everyone up to manager level, and having dealt with long PR feedback cycles with humans for years - I don't mind the promotion. Also shipping a v3 is so much nicer than shipping a v1 and dealing the all the corner cases in production. Before AI, myself and everyone else I knew was drowning in tech debt. And now with AI we are treading water.

It's bumping to manager level, except without the 1:1s, quarterly/yearly planning, headcount and budget reviews, org/reorg discussions, performance calibration, and OKR planning. No complaints about the last review cycle or about the upcoming one.

Totally! But you know what? There are many, oh so many developers that are not ready, don't like and probably are not even cut for this kind of position.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#168

Post by batshit_beaver »

democracy wrote: post #69
i_love_retros wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all sounds insane. If it requires so much back and forth with the AI why on earth wouldn't you just write the code yourself? At least then you build the mental model of the code and keep your brain healthy. Reading the comments in here about all the hoops people are having to jump through just to do the same thing they were doing a year ago without AI... and spending a fortune to do it! I think you've all got AI…

You can be right but quite often it helps keeping focus on the forrest rather then getting lost in the trees - at least for me. Boilerplate steals a lot of attention, focus and can just be mentally exhausting.

Can someone explain these complaints about boilerplate to me? What are y’all doing where boilerplate is the majority of your code? Am I the only one mostly writing concise business logic where most lines are important in one way or another?

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#169

Post by redeye100 »

zik wrote: post #38
justinlivi wrote: post #11

I find myself spending on average more time in LLM review/resolution loops than it would take for me to write the code by hand. Partially because once I'm in the flow I write very very quickly and the code pours out sometimes faster than I can write. But also because the LLM code on the first few tries is generally really really bad. What I find interesting though is that spending the time to personally review and di…

If your AI is writing bad code then you need to change your AI. No current high-end AI should be producing bad code.

This sounds like a subjective assessment. I counter with the opinion that most LLMs write technically correct, but bad code. When I read it, it makes me want to gag or poke my eyes out. I spend a lot of time wondering about what kind of person would write it like that, then I realize it’s an LLM

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#170

Post by hackermanai »

throwaway7783 wrote: post #141
aomix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking the problem to death with the AI before implementation is a nice zone for me. I feel productive, get good results out of the AI, and still largely understand the code. That’s the part of the AI revolution that I feel has made me a better engineer because I argue about design and architecture all day with a robot.

I follow the same process. I have a design in mind for the problem at hand, but I don't reveal it to Codex. I go back and forth a bit to see if its proposals are better than mine. I go back and forth on tradeoffs of various approaches. And then I ask it to compare its proposals with mine. I "win" most of the time but there are many times where it shows a me a better, or simpler approach, or makes me rethink the solut…

I think this approach is more common than the hype for actual work. I do something similar, many back and forth, then settle on something often with now known tradeoffs, written by hand to spot issues as a final guard/ keep consistent naming etc.
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