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The hidden cost of AI coding

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#211

Post by melvinroest »

clbrmbr wrote: post #204

I have actually had some really great flow evenings lately, the likes of which I have not enjoyed in many years, precisely because of AI-assisted coding. The trick is to break the task down in to components that are of moderate complexity so that the AI can handle them (Gemini 2.5 Pro one-shots), and keep your mind on the high-level design which today's AI cannot coordinate. What helps me is to think of it like I'm a…

This is the way. I feel like a kid too again. It's way more fun actually. As a kid I got too frustrated for not being able to install my WAMP stack.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#212

Post by melvinroest »

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.

I replaced "code" for "singing" to make a point.

> This comment section really shows the stark divide between people who love singing and thus hate AI-assisted singing, and people who hate singing and thus love AI-assisted singing.

> Honestly, I suspect the people who would prefer to have someone or something else do their singing, are probably the singers who are already outputting the worst singing right now.

The point is: just because you love something, doesn't mean you're good at it. It is of course positively correlated with it. I am in fact a better singer because I love to sing compared to if I never practiced. But I am not a good singer, I am mediocre at best (I chose this example for a reason, I love singing as well as coding! :-D)

And while it is easier to become good at coding than at singing - for professional purposes at least - I believe that the effect still holds.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#214

Post by pdimitar »

only-one1701 wrote: post #34
simonw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "verify it rigorously (which if you cannot do, you should absolutely never touch an LLM!)" 100% this.

I like writing code more than reading it, personally.

We all do. But more often than not we have to learn to do surgical incisions in order to do our task for the day. It's what truly distinguishes a professional.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#215

Post by ang_cire »

pdimitar wrote: post #17

I don't know man, maybe prompt most of your work, eyeball it and verify it rigorously (which if you cannot do, you should absolutely never touch an LLM!), run a script to commit and push after 3 hours and then... work on whatever code makes you happy without using an LLM? Let's stop pretending or denying it: most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could. Still, prompting LLMs…

> most of us would delegate our work code to somebody else or something else if we could.

I saw your objections to other comments on the basis of them seemingly not having a disdainful attitude towards coding they do for work, specifically.

I absolutely do have tasks, coding included, that I don't want to do, and find no joy in. If I can have my manager assign the task to someone else, great! But using an LLM isn't that, so I'm still on the hook for ensuring all the most boring parts of that task (bugfixing, reworks, integration, tests, etc) get done.

My experience with LLMs is that they simply shift the division of time away from coding, and towards all the other bits.

And it can't possibly just be about prompting. How many hundreds of lines of prompting would you need to get an LLM to understand your coding conventions, security baselines, documentation reqs, logging, tests, allowed libraries, OSS license restrictions (i.e. disallowed libraries), etc? Or are you just refactoring for all that afterwards?

Maybe you work somewhere that doesn't require that level of rigor, but that doesn't strike me as a good thing to be entrenching in the industry by increasing coders' reliance on LLMs.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#216

Post by pdimitar »

codr7 wrote: post #41
jimbob45 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The act of coding preserves your skills for that all-important verification step. No coding and the whole system falls apart.

Exactly, how are you supposed to verify anything when you don't have any skills left beyond prompting.

You don't. That's why you don't use an LLM most of the time. I was talking about cases where either the tasks were too boring or required an expertise that I didn't have at the time.

Thought it was obvious.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#217

Post by pdimitar »

williamstein wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "verify it rigorously (which if you cannot do, you should absolutely never touch an LLM!)" 100% this.

Totally. And yet rigorous proof is very difficult. Having done some mathematics involving nontrivial proofs, I respect even more how difficult rigor is.

Ah, I absolutely don't verify code in the mathematical sense of the word. More like utilize strong static typing (or hints / linters in weaker typed languages) and write a lot of tests.

Nothing is truly 100% safe or free of bugs. What I meant with my comment up-thread was that I have enough experience to have a fairly quick and critical eye of code, and that has saved my skin many times.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#218

Post by cushychicken »

clbrmbr wrote: post #204

I have actually had some really great flow evenings lately, the likes of which I have not enjoyed in many years, precisely because of AI-assisted coding. The trick is to break the task down in to components that are of moderate complexity so that the AI can handle them (Gemini 2.5 Pro one-shots), and keep your mind on the high-level design which today's AI cannot coordinate. What helps me is to think of it like I'm a…

I’m right there with you on this.

Thanks for the comment. You articulated how I feel about this situation very well.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#219

Post by skydhash »

ookblah wrote: post #196
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.

yeah i definitely enjoy the craft and love of writing boilerplate or manually correcting simple errors or looking up functions /s. i hate how it's even divided into "two camps", it's more like a big venn diagram.

Who write boilerplate this day? I just lift the code from the examples in the docs (especially css frameworks). And I love looking at functions docs, because after doing it a few times, you develop an holistic understanding of the library and your speed increases. Kinda like learning a foreign language. You can use an app to translate everything, or asks for the correct word when the needs arises. The latter is a bit frustrating at the beginning, but that’s the only way to become fluent.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#220

Post by z_open »

bradley13 wrote: post #124

The author is already an experienced programmer. Let me toss in an anecdote about the next generation of programmers. Vibe coding: also called playing pinball with the AI, hoping something useful comes out. I taught a lecture in my first-semester programming course yesterday. This is in a program for older students, mostly working while going back to school. Each time, a few students are selected to present their cod…

Does your course not have exams or in-lab assignments? Should sort itself out. Honestly, I'm all for homework fading away as professors can't figure out how to prevent people from using AI. It used to be the case that certain kids could get away with not doing much because they were popular enough to get people to let them copy their assignments (at least for certain subjects). Eventually the system will realize they can't detect AI and everything has to be in-person.
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