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Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

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Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#21

Post by crazygringo »

csbrooks wrote: post #9

Is "vibe coding" synonymous with using AI code-generation tools now? I thought vibe coding meant very little direct interaction with the code, mostly telling the LLM what you want and iterating using the LLM. Which is fun and worth trying, but probably not a valid professional tool.

I think what happened is that a lot of people started dismissing all LLM code creation as "vibe coding" because those people were anti-LLM, and so the term itself became an easy umbrella pejorative.

And then, more people saw these critics using "vibe coding" to refer to all LLM code creation, and naturally understood it to mean exactly that. Which means the recent articles we've seen about how good vibe coding starts with a requirements file, then tests that fail, then tests that pass, etc.

Like so many terms that started out being used pejoratively, vibe coding got reclaimed. And it just sounds cool.

Also because we don't really have any other good memorable term for describing code built entirely with LLM's from the ground up, separate from mere autocomplete AI or using LLM's to work on established codebases.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#22

Post by flashgordon »

csbrooks wrote: post #9

Is "vibe coding" synonymous with using AI code-generation tools now? I thought vibe coding meant very little direct interaction with the code, mostly telling the LLM what you want and iterating using the LLM. Which is fun and worth trying, but probably not a valid professional tool.

I think there is actually a pressure to show thst you are using AI (stories of ceos firing employees who supposedly did not "embrace" ai). So people are over attributing to AI. Though originally VC was meant to be infinite monkey style button smashing, people are attributing to VC just to avoid the cross hairs.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#23

Post by binarymax »

crowbahr wrote: post #4
binarymax wrote: post #2

I guess I’m an older developer. But I’ve come full circle and have gone back to hand coding after a couple years of fighting LLMs. I’m tired of coaxing their style and fixing their bugs - some of which are just really dumb and some are devious. Artisanal hand craft for me!

The article is saying older devs vibe code: I think you misunderstood

I didn’t misunderstand. I tried to vibe code, and now I don’t. Not sure how you misinterpreted that.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#24

Post by jasonjmcghee »

globnomulous wrote: post #13
daft_pink wrote: post #3

Developers are lazy. Anything that makes development faster or easier is going to be welcomed by a good developer. If you find it is quicker not to use it then you might hate it, but I think it is probably better in some cases and worse in other cases.

> Anything that makes development faster or easier is going to be welcomed by a good developer. I strongly disagree. Struggling with a problem creates expertise. Struggle is slow, and it's hard. Good developers welcome it.

Indeed. This is my biggest fear for engineers as a whole. LLMs can be a great productivity boost in the very short term, but can so easily be abused. If you build a product with it, suddenly everyone is an engineering manager and no one is an expert on it. And growth as an engineer is stunted. It reminds me of abusing energy drinks or grinding to the point of burnout... But worse.

I think we'll find a middle ground though. I just think it hasn't happened yet. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#25

Post by bluefirebrand »

calibas wrote: post #20
9rx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming they're like me, the planning is mostly done by a human, while the coding is largely done by the AI I've largely settled on the opposite. AI has become very good at planning what to do and explaining it in plain English, but its command of programming languages still leaves a lot to be desired.

It's good at checking plans, and helping with plans, but I've seen it make really really bad choices. I don't think it can replace a human architect.

It can't replace a human anything, yet, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone from trying unfortunately:(

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#26

Post by drooby »

csbrooks wrote: post #9

Is "vibe coding" synonymous with using AI code-generation tools now? I thought vibe coding meant very little direct interaction with the code, mostly telling the LLM what you want and iterating using the LLM. Which is fun and worth trying, but probably not a valid professional tool.

I have "vibe coded" a few internal tools now that are very low risk in terms of negative business impact but nonetheless valuable for our team's efficiency.

E.g one tool packages a debug build of an iOS simulator app with various metadata and uploads it to a specified location.

Another tool spits out my team's github velocity metrics.

These were relatively small scripting apps, that yes, I code reviewed and checked for security issues.

I don't see why this wouldn't be a valid professional tool? It's working well, saves me time, is fun, and safe (assuming proper code review, and LLM tool usage).

With these little scripts it creates it's actually pretty quick to validate their safety and efficacy. They're like validating NP problems.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#27

Post by jmull »

Apparently vibe coding now just means ai assisted coding beyond immediate code completion?

For me, success with LLM-assisted coding comes when I have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish and can express it clearly in a prompt. The relevant key business and technical concerns come into play, including complexities like balancing somewhat conflicting shorter and longer term concerns.

Juniors are probably all going to have to be learning this kind of stuff at an accelerated rate now (we don't need em cranking out REST endpoints or whatever anymore), but at this point this takes a senior perspective and senior skills.

Anyone can get an LLM and agentic tool to crank out code now. But you really need to have them crank out code to do something useful.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#28

Post by dboreham »

LarryMade2 wrote: post #19

I tried it - didn't like it. Had an LLM work on a backup script since I don't use Bash very often. Took a bunch of learning the quirks of bash to get the code working properly. While I'll say it got me started, it wasn't a snap of the fingers and a quick debug to get something done. Took me quite a while to figure out why something worked but really it didn't (LLM using command line commands where Bash doesn't interp…

Can I ask which agent/model you used? I'm similarly irritated with shell script coding, but find I have to make scripts fairly often. My experience using various models but latterly Claude Code has been quite different -- it churned out pretty much what I was looking for. Also old, fwiw. I'm older than all shells.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#29

Post by dboreham »

manoDev wrote: post #14

“AI” is great for coding in the small, it’s like having a powerful semantic code editor, or pairing with a junior developer who can lookup some info online quickly. The hardest part of the job was never typing or figuring out some API bullshit anyway. But trying to use it like “please write this entire feature for me” (what vibe coding is supposed to mean) is the wrong way to handle the tool IMO. It turns into a spec…

Yes, but in my experience actually no. At least not with the bleeding edge models today. I've been able to get LLMs to write whole features to the point that I'm quite surprised at the result. Perhaps I'm talking to it right (the new "holding it right"?). I tend to begin asking for an empty application with the characteristics I want (CLI, has subcommands, ...) then I ask it to add a simple feature. Get that working then ask it to enhance functionality progressively, testing as we go. Then when functionality is working I ask for a refactor (often it puts 1500 loc in one file, for example), doc, improve help text, and so on. Basically the same way you'd manage a human.

I've also been close to astonished at the capability LLMs have to draw conclusions from very large complex codebases. For example I wanted to understand the details of a distributed replication mechanism in a project that is enormous. Pre-LLM I'd spent a couple of days crawling through the code using grep and perhaps IDE tools, making notes on paper. I'd probably have to run the code or instrument it with logging then look at the results in a test deployment. But I've found I can ask the LLM to take a look at the p2p code and tell me how it works. Then ask it how the peer set is managed. I can ask it if all reachable peers are known at all nodes. It's almost better than me at this, and it's what I've done for a living for 30 years. Certainly it's very good for very low cost and effort. While it's chugging I can think about higher order things.

I say all this as a massive AI skeptic dating back to the 1980s.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#30

Post by biglyburrito »

asveikau wrote: post #11
dfxm12 wrote: post #8

around a third of senior developers with more than a decade of experience are using AI code-generation tools such as Copilot, Claude, and Gemini to produce over half of their finished software, compared to 13 percent for those devs who've only been on the job for up to two years. A third? I would expect at least a majority based on the headline and tone of the article... Isn't this saying 66% are down on vibe coding?

I guess the article was vibe coded.

"This one developer was down with the vibe coding."
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