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Write less code, be more responsible

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Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#21

Post by sublinear »

koolba wrote: post #17
20k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t really understand the, “more, better, faster,” cachet to be honest. Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time. It’s usually the thinking that takes most of the time and if that goes away well… I dunno, that’s weird. I will understand it even less. This is what I've always found confusing as well about this push for AI. The act of typing isn't the hard part - its unde…

> The act of typing isn't the hard part - its understanding what's going on, and why you're doing it. Using AI to generate code is only faster if you try and skip that step - which leads to an inevitable disaster It’s more than just typing though. A simple example remembering the exact incantation of CSS classes to style something that you can easily describe in plain English. Yes, you could look them up or maybe eve…

This is not correct. CSS is the style rules for all rendering situations of that HTML, not just your single requirement that it "looks about right" in your narrow set of test cases.

Nobody writing production CSS for a serious web page can avoid rewriting it. Nobody is memorizing anything. It's deeply intertwined with the requirements as they change. You will eventually be forced to review every line of it carefully as each new test is added or when the HTML is changed. No AI is doing that level of testing or has the training data to provide those answers.

It sounds like you're better off not using a web page at all if this bothers you. This isn't a deficiency of CSS. It's the main feature. It's designed to provide tools that can cover all cases.

If you only have one rendering case, you want an image. If you want to skip the code, you can just not write code. Create a mockup of images and hand it off to your web devs.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#22

Post by CivBase »

koolba wrote: post #17
20k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t really understand the, “more, better, faster,” cachet to be honest. Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time. It’s usually the thinking that takes most of the time and if that goes away well… I dunno, that’s weird. I will understand it even less. This is what I've always found confusing as well about this push for AI. The act of typing isn't the hard part - its unde…

> The act of typing isn't the hard part - its understanding what's going on, and why you're doing it. Using AI to generate code is only faster if you try and skip that step - which leads to an inevitable disaster It’s more than just typing though. A simple example remembering the exact incantation of CSS classes to style something that you can easily describe in plain English. Yes, you could look them up or maybe eve…

> But there’s no way you can make wholesale changes to a layout faster than a machine.

You lost me here. I can make changes very quickly once I understand both the problem and the solution I want to go with. Modifying text is quite easy. I spend very little time doing it as a developer.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#23

Post by [deleted] »

bdangubic wrote: post #13
ahefner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how much time per week does an SWE actually spend writing code?

another one, this is 2nd most frequent thing people write here, not sure how to even approach answering :) so I’ll do what I was thought in first grade to never do and answer a question with a question - how much time per week does a brick layer spend laying bricks? they are looking at these new “robots” laying bricks automatically and talking on BrickLayerNews “man, the brick laying has not been a bottleneck for a l…

[deleted]

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#25

Post by sublinear »

jordwest wrote: post #5
bdangubic wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time. I see this on HN just so much and I am not sure what this is, almost seems like a political slogan that followers keep repeating. I had to do some rough math in my head but in the last 5 years I have been involved with hiring roughly 40 SWEs. Every single one of them was hired because writing the code was THE bottleneck (the only o…

I've worked in two different types of environments - one where what you said is absolutely true (most of my jobs), and another where it's not true and the quote holds up. The difference, I think is: - Code factories where everything is moving fast - there's no time to think about how to simplify a problem, just gotta get it done. These companies tended to hire their way out of slowness, which led to more code, more c…

I think your mind might be blown when you discover a third type of environment. It's neither a small shop of yak-shaving idealists, nor a desperate code factory.

The third environment is a large business maintaining services long term. These services do not change in fundamental ways for well over a decade and they make a shit ton of money, yet the requirements never stop changing in subtle ways for the clients. Bugs pop up constantly, but there's more than enough time to fix them the right way as outlined by their contract where expectations have been corrected over the years. There's no choice to do it any other way. The requirements and deadlines are firm. Reliability is the priority.

These are the stable businesses of the broader working world and they're probably what will remain after AI has driven the tech industry into the ground.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#26

Post by apsurd »

bdangubic wrote: post #13
ahefner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how much time per week does an SWE actually spend writing code?

another one, this is 2nd most frequent thing people write here, not sure how to even approach answering :) so I’ll do what I was thought in first grade to never do and answer a question with a question - how much time per week does a brick layer spend laying bricks? they are looking at these new “robots” laying bricks automatically and talking on BrickLayerNews “man, the brick laying has not been a bottleneck for a l…

i think this is it. you're a bricklayer. No, the bottleneck for erecting buildings is not bricklaying.

Without taking all the time to write a dissertation to try to convince you, because why; how about we just start with even zoning laws and demographic analysis preclude the laying of the bricks.

is it so unreasonable to think it is not about the laying of the bricks?

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#27

Post by ufish235 »

sublinear wrote: post #21
koolba wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The act of typing isn't the hard part - its understanding what's going on, and why you're doing it. Using AI to generate code is only faster if you try and skip that step - which leads to an inevitable disaster It’s more than just typing though. A simple example remembering the exact incantation of CSS classes to style something that you can easily describe in plain English. Yes, you could look them up or maybe eve…

This is not correct. CSS is the style rules for all rendering situations of that HTML, not just your single requirement that it "looks about right" in your narrow set of test cases. Nobody writing production CSS for a serious web page can avoid rewriting it. Nobody is memorizing anything. It's deeply intertwined with the requirements as they change. You will eventually be forced to review every line of it carefully a…

So AI is good for CSS? That’s fine, I always hated CSS.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#28

Post by jordwest »

sublinear wrote: post #25
jordwest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in two different types of environments - one where what you said is absolutely true (most of my jobs), and another where it's not true and the quote holds up. The difference, I think is: - Code factories where everything is moving fast - there's no time to think about how to simplify a problem, just gotta get it done. These companies tended to hire their way out of slowness, which led to more code, more c…

I think your mind might be blown when you discover a third type of environment. It's neither a small shop of yak-shaving idealists, nor a desperate code factory. The third environment is a large business maintaining services long term. These services do not change in fundamental ways for well over a decade and they make a shit ton of money, yet the requirements never stop changing in subtle ways for the clients. Bugs…

The second environment I was describing fits what you’re describing more than “yak shaving idealists”.

We were working on control systems for large industry that had to work reliably and with minimum intervention. A lot of these systems were being renewed but the plant was often 30+ years old. We were also dealing with quite limited hardware.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#29

Post by colechristensen »

agentultra wrote: post #2

I’m working as a single solo developer of a tiny video game. I’m writing it in C with raylib. No coding assistants, no agents, not even a language server. I only work on it for a few hours during the week. And it’s progressing at a reasonable pace that I’m happy with. I got cross-compilation from Linux to Windows going early on in a couple of hours. Wasn’t that hard. I’ve had to rework parts of the code as I’ve progr…

>Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time.

Then we're doing different things.

I didn't like GitHub so I wrote my own. 60k lines of code later... yes writing code was the bottleneck which has been eliminated. The bottleneck is now design, review, and quality assessments that can't be done trivially.

This isn't even the project I wanted to be doing, the tools that were available were holding me back so I wrote my own. It also consumes a few hours a week.

If you think writing code isn't the bottleneck then you aren't thinking big enough. If you don't WANT to think big enough, that's fine, I also do things for the joy of doing them.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#30

Post by bitexploder »

agentultra wrote: post #2

I’m working as a single solo developer of a tiny video game. I’m writing it in C with raylib. No coding assistants, no agents, not even a language server. I only work on it for a few hours during the week. And it’s progressing at a reasonable pace that I’m happy with. I got cross-compilation from Linux to Windows going early on in a couple of hours. Wasn’t that hard. I’ve had to rework parts of the code as I’ve progr…

You can use LLM to write less code too. Just takes more intention. Which is kind of the whole point.
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