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The hidden cost of AI coding

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#171

Post by danielbln »

milesrout wrote: post #131
doix wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How if it hallucinate and gives you wrong code Then the code won't compile, or more likely your editor/IDE will say that it's invalid code. If you're using something like Cursor in agent mode, if invalid code is generated then it gets detected and the LLM keeps re-running until something is valid. > It is better to read documentations and tutorials first. I "trust" LLM's more than tutorials, there's so much garbage…

Plenty of incorrect code compiles. It is a very bad sign that people are making comments like "Then the code won't compile". As for my editor saying it is invalid..? That is just as untrustworthy as an LLM. >I "trust" LLM's more than tutorials, there's so much garbage out there. Yes, rubbish generated by AI. That is the rubbish out there. The stuff written by people is largely good.

Wait, are you saying you don't trust language servers embedded in IDEs to tell you about problems? How about syntax highlighting or linting?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#172

Post by moooo99 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #152
iamleppert wrote: post #3

There's nothing stopping you from coding if you enjoy it. It's not like they have taken away your keyboard. I have found that AI frees me up to focus on the parts of coding I'm actually interested in, which is maybe 5-10% of the project. The rest is boiler plate, cargo-culted, Dockerfile, build system and bash environment variable passing circle of hell that I really could care less about. I care about certain things…

> The rest is boiler plate, cargo-culted, Dockerfile, build system and bash environment variable passing I keep seeing people saying to use an LLM to write boilerplate, but like... do you not just copy that from another project where you already wrote it?

I keep seeing that suggestion as well and the only sensible way I see would be to use one off boilerplate, anything else does not make sense.

If you keep re-using boilerplate once in a while copying it from elsewhere is fine. If you re-use it all the time, just get a macro setup in your editor of choice. IMHO that is way more efficient than asking AI to produce somewhat consistent boilerplate

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#173

Post by jm547ster »

bgwalter wrote: post #145
arvinsim wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding Have we forgotten that we advanced in software by building on the work of others?

They are not building on the work of others, they are taking the laundered work of others.

I can guess your background (and probably age) from this comment

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#174

Post by danielbln »

tcfhgj wrote: post #138
apothegm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this. The AI takes care of the tedious line by line what’s-the-name-of-that-stdlib-function parts (and most of the tedious test-writing parts) and lets me focus on the interesting bits like what it is I want to build and how the pieces should fit together. And debugging, which I find satisfying. Sadly, I find it sorely lacking at dealing with build systems and that particular type of boilerplate, mostly becau…

Aren't stdlib functions the ones you know by heart after a while anyways?

Not everyone works in a single language and/or deep in some singular code base.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#175

Post by whstl »

moooo99 wrote: post #169
handzhiev wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's usually a few years old and already obsolete - the frameworks and the language have gone through a gazillion changes and what you did in 2021 suddenly no longer works at all.

I mean, the training data also has a cutoff date and changed beyond that are not reflected in the code suggestions. Also, I know that people love to joke on modern software and JS in particular. But if you take react code from 2020 and drop it into a new react codebase it still works. Even class based components work. Yes, if you jumped on the newest framework bandwagon every time stuff will break all the time, but A…

React is alright but the framework tooling around it changes a lot.

If you take a project from 2020 it's a bit of a pain to upgrade it.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#176

Post by rfoo »

ang_cire wrote: post #133

This comment section really shows the stark divide between people who love coding and thus hate AI, and people who hate coding and thus love AI. Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their coding, are probably the devs who are already outputting the worst code right now.

What if I prefer to have a clone of me doing my coding, and then I throw my clone under the bus and start to (angrily) hyperfocus explore and change every piece to be beautiful? Does this mean I love coding or I hate coding?

It's definitely a personality thing, but that's so much more productive for me, than convincing myself to do all the work from scratch after I had a design.

I guess this means I hate coding, and I only love the dopamine from designing and polishing my work instead of making things work. I'm not sure though, this feels like the opposite of hate coding.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#177

Post by bgwalter »

jm547ster wrote: post #173
bgwalter wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not building on the work of others, they are taking the laundered work of others.

I can guess your background (and probably age) from this comment

Finishing sentences with a full stop would put me above 30, yes.

EDIT: incidentally, Suchir Balaji was 26 when he held those views.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#178

Post by [deleted] »

dxroshan wrote: post #141
Spivak wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when it hallucinates it still solves most of the unknown unknowns which is good for getting you unblocked. It's probably close enough to get some terms to search for.

I don't think so.How can you be so sure it solves the 'unknown unknowns'?

[deleted]

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#179

Post by nottorp »

lrvick wrote: post #84

So long as your experience and skill allows you to produce work of higher quality than average for your industry, then you will always have a job which is to review that average quality work, and surgically correct it when it is wrong. This has always been true in every craft, and it remains true for programmers in a post LLL world. Most training data is open source code written by novice to average programmers publi…

> LLMS are heavily biased to replicate the naive, slow, insecure code largely uninformed by experience

The one time i pasted LLM code without reviewing it it belonged on accidentally quadratic.

It was obvious at first read, but probably not for a beginner. The accidental complexity was hidden behind API calls that weren't wrong, just grossly inefficient.

Problem might be, if you lose the "joy" and the "flow" you'll stop caring about things like that. And software is bloated enough already.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#180

Post by BigJono »

danielbln wrote: post #174
tcfhgj wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't stdlib functions the ones you know by heart after a while anyways?

Not everyone works in a single language and/or deep in some singular code base.

Gee do you think maybe that's why all our software sucks balls these days?
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