The role of developer skills in agentic coding • Hacker News Board

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#181

Post by bradlys » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 7:56 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #114

I don't get it, at all. Why are experienced developers so enthusiastic about chaining themselves to such an obviously crappy and unfulfilling experience? I like writing code and figuring stuff out, that's why I chose a career in software development in the first place.

> I like writing code and figuring stuff out, that's why I chose a career in software development in the first place.

That's not why I got into software development. I got into it to make money. I think most people in Silicon Valley these days are the same mentality. How else could you tolerate the level of abuse you experience in the workplace and how little time you get to really dig on that particular aspect of the job?

This is a website that is catered to YC/Silicon Valley. My perspective is going to be common here.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#182

Post by kubanczyk » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 8:24 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #3

Here is how I use it: As a writing assistant that lives in my IDE, and as a very very cool and sophisticated rubber duck that can answer me. Something I do quite a lot is throwing back and forth a discussion over a particular piece of code, usually provided with little to no context (because that's my task to worry about), hammering it until we get that functionality correct, then presenting it with broader context t…

This doesn't parse for me:

> a discussion over a particular piece of code [...] hammering it until we get that functionality correct

Care to provide an example of sorts?

> then presenting it with broader context to fit it in

So after you have a function you might convert it to a method of a class. Stuff like that?

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#183

Post by dudeinhawaii » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

This article does not line up with my experiences at all. Sometimes I wonder if it's something to do with prompting or model selection.

I recently built out a project where I was able to design 30+ modules and only had 4 generation errors. These were decent size modules of 700-5000 lines each. I would classify the generation errors as related to missing specification -- i.e., no you may not take an approach where you import another language runtime into memory to hack a solution.

Sure, in the past, AI would lead me on goose chases, produce bad code, or otherwise fail. AI in 2025 though? No. AI has solved many quirky or complex headscratchers, async and distributed runtime bugs, etc.

My error rate with Claude-3.7-sonnet and OpenAI's O3-mini has dropped to nearly zero.

I think part of this is how you transfer your expert knowledge into the AI's "mindspace".

I tend to prompt a paragraph which represents my requirements and constraints. Use this programming language. Cache in this way. Encrypt in this way. Prefer standard library. Use this or that algorithm. Search for the latest way to use this API and use it. Have this API surface. Etc. I'm not particularly verbose either.

The thinking models tend to unravel that into a checklist, which they then run through and write a module for. "Ok, the user wants me to create a module that has these 10 features with these constraints and using these libraries."

Maybe that's a matter of 25yrs of coding and being able to understand and describe the problem and all of its limits and constraints quickly but I find that I get one-shot success nearly every time.

I'm not only laying out the specification, but I also have the overall spec in my mind and limit the AI to building modules to my specifications (apis/etc) rather than trying to shove all of this into context. Maybe that is the issue that some people have. Trying to shove everything (prior versions of the same code, etc) into one session.

I always start brand new sessions for every core task or refactoring. "Let's add caching to this class that expires at X interval and is configurable from Y file and dependency injected to the constructor". So perhaps I'm unintentionally optimizing for AI but this fairly easy to do and has probably led to a 5-10x increase in code I'm pushing.

Huge caveat here though, I mostly operate on service/backend/core lib/api code which is far less convoluted than web front-ends.

It's kind of sad that front-end dev will require 100x context tokens due to intermingling of responsibilities, complex frameworks, etc. I don't envy people doing front-end dev work with AI.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#184

Post by kubanczyk » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 8:37 PM UTC

elric wrote: post #162

I'm already seeing developers spending more time communicating with their AI than with their team. I don't think that's a good evolution. Many of us aren't the best communicators, but it's a skill we typically polish as we become more senior. I worry about what will happen to junior devs who spend more time talking to/pairing with AI tham their human coworkers.

> junior devs

Are there any? Honest question.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#185

Post by 6thbit » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

abenga wrote: post #176

6thbit wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point in your career you realize every line of code you write is not just an asset—it's also a liability that needs to be maintained, debugged, and understood by others. The excitement around AI coding tools isn't about chaining yourself to a crappy experience — it's about having support to offload cognitive overhead, reduce boilerplate, and help spot potential missteps early. Sure, the current gen AI isn't q…

I really don't understand how replacing writing N lines of code by reading N lines of code reduces mental load. Reading and understanding code is generally harder than writing equivalent code.

You'd still have to review code if you asked another human to write it.

That's why minimizing the generated code is important as well as working on smaller parts at once to avoid what the author refers as "too much up-front work" -- It is also easier mentally when you can iterate on this whole process in seconds rather than days in a pull request review.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#186

Post by aprilthird2021 » Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 11:57 PM UTC

yamazakiwi wrote: post #180

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is normal, but the reply was also a normal reply because, as you said it's a product with rough edges advertised as if it's completely functional. And the comment I replied to, criticizing the other reply, was not fair because he's only giving a normal reply, imo

I don't believe it is a normal reply on HN, or at least it shouldn't be. We all know that this technology isn't magic. In tech spaces there are more people telling you it isn't magic than it is. The reminder does nothing. The contextual advice on how to tackle those issues does. Why even bother with that conversation, you can just take the advice or ignore it until the technology improves since you've already made up…

> We all know that this technology isn't magic.

I didn't say it's magic. I said what it is advertised as.

> The reminder does nothing. The contextual advice on how to tackle those issues does.

No, the contextual advice doesn't help because it doesn't tackle the issue because the issue is "It doesn't work as advertised". We are in a thread of an article whose main thesis is "We’re still far away from AI writing code autonomously for non-trivial tasks." Giving advice that doesn't achieve autonomous writing code for non-trivial tasks doesn't help achieve that goal.

And if you want to talk about replies that do nothing. Calling the guy a Luddite for saying that the tip doesn't help him use the agent as an autonomous coder, is a huge nothing.

> since you've already made up your mind about the limit you or others should be willing to go.

Please read the article and understand what the conversation is about. We are talking about the limits that the article outlined, and the poster is saying how he also hit those limits.

> If it doesn't meet the standard of what you believe is advertised than say that.

The article says this. The commenter must have assumed people here read the articles.

> why invalidate the person providing the context into how to utilize those tools in their current state better?

Because that context is a deflection from the main point of the comment and conversation. It's like in a thread of mechanics talking about how an automatic tire balancer doesn't work well, and someone comes in saying "Well you could balance the tires manually!" How helpful is that?

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#187

Post by meowface » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 12:20 AM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #169

meowface wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because on net it often saves tons and tons of time and effort if you know how to use it. Luddism is a strange philosophy for a software engineer.

> Luddism is a strange philosophy for a software engineer. Luddism and critically evaluating the net benefit and cost of a piece of tech, are 2 very different things. And the latter is not strange for a SWE at all, in fact I'd say it's an essential skill.

I'm referring to this part:

>I like writing code and figuring stuff out

This is an alien mentality to me.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#188

Post by dimitri-vs » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 12:51 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #68

ikerino wrote: post #12

I use Cursor for most of my development these days. This article aligns pretty closely with my experiences. A few additional observations: 1. Anecdotally, AI agents feel stuck somewhere circa ~2021. If I install newer packages, Claude will revert to outdated packages/implementations that were popular four years ago. This is incredibly frustrating to watch and correct for. Providing explicit instructions for which pac…

#1 has an easy fix. Clone the dependency you want to use in the directory of your code. Instruct it to go into the directory and look at that code in order to complete task X: "I've got a new directory xyz, in it contains a library to do feature abc. I'll need to include it here to do A to function B and so on" The weird version mixing bug will disappear. If it's closed source, then just do the documentation. You nee…

Just so you know, none of what you said sounds easy and I'm a fairly technical person that uses Cursor and other AI tools all day.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#189

Post by Smar » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

_puk wrote: post #165

_1tem wrote: post #48

Developer skill is obviously still essential — you can’t steer if you couldn’t drive. But what about developer energy? Before AI I could only code about 2 hours per day (actual time spent writing code) but with Claude Code I can easily code for 5 hours straight without breaking a sweat. It feels like riding an e-bike instead of a bicycle. AI genuinely feels like Steve Jobs analogy of a bicycle for the mind — it doesn…

Love the ebike analogy! You're right though, you need to be able to steer, but you don't necessarily need to be able to map read. Case in point, I recently stood up my first project in supabase, cursor happily created the tables, secure RLS rules etc in a fraction of the time it would take me. To stop it getting spaghetti I had to add a rule "I'm developing a first version - add everything to an SQL file that tears d…

I wonder how much more common vulnerabilities will be in coming years...

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#190

Post by codr7 » Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 2:06 AM UTC

quest88 wrote: post #134

codr7 wrote: post #114

I don't get it, at all. Why are experienced developers so enthusiastic about chaining themselves to such an obviously crappy and unfulfilling experience? I like writing code and figuring stuff out, that's why I chose a career in software development in the first place.

I don't enjoy the keypresses of building useful features. I like identifying what needs to be changed, and how, in abstract terms. These tools quickly help me verify those changes are right. If I need to call the VideoService to fetch some data, I don't want to spend time writing that and the tests that come with it. I'd rather outsource that part.

I don't object to abstracting, at all; or reducing labor in general.

But this method of getting there makes me feel like I'm degraded to being the assistant and the machine is pulling my strings; and as a result I become dumber the more I do it, more dependent on crap tech.