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Using AI to write better code more slowly

nolanlawson.com

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Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#231

Post by [deleted] »

habinero wrote: post #101
i_love_retros wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all sounds insane. If it requires so much back and forth with the AI why on earth wouldn't you just write the code yourself? At least then you build the mental model of the code and keep your brain healthy. Reading the comments in here about all the hoops people are having to jump through just to do the same thing they were doing a year ago without AI... and spending a fortune to do it! I think you've all got AI…

I honestly don't get it, either. Most of them just flat out can't code at all, but for the ones who can, the only explanation I got is it feels like productivity. I will say, it does help me get over procrastination lol. I get annoyed by the robot doing dumb shit and finish it myself.

[deleted]

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#232

Post by majorbugger »

delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #225

I think AI exists to make humans better, not to replace us (which it can’t anyway). I use LLM’s with new topics answer questions and tutor me (for instance with multivariable calculus -course this spring I asked Claude to create 10 practice exercises, which I then did and it reviewed. Harder ones it did with me step by step.) hopefully not needing them after awhile, when I gain proficinency. Automating humans away is…

You have very optimistic assumptions about AI. Of course AI will not "replace you" on its own, but some person in the company will decide it.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#233

Post by nickcw »

a_bonobo wrote: post #223
throwaway7783 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow the same process. I have a design in mind for the problem at hand, but I don't reveal it to Codex. I go back and forth a bit to see if its proposals are better than mine. I go back and forth on tradeoffs of various approaches. And then I ask it to compare its proposals with mine. I "win" most of the time but there are many times where it shows a me a better, or simpler approach, or makes me rethink the solut…

I really like this pattern and use it often, this 'not showing my cards'. The second I hint towards the LLM what I prefer it will become sycophantic and invent nonsense why my preferred solution is better. I'm sure there's an interesting study on how users 'leak' their preference unintentionally to the LLM; perhaps when users list their options, they often put their prefered option first; but not showing the cards on…

LLMs are very prone to priming in my experience. That is the human psychology name for what you are describing; whether it should be applied to LLMs I don't know, but it describes the phenomenon perfectly.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#234

Post by FacelessJim »

I’ve landed on a very similar usage in my last pet project. I’ve used the llm mainly as a glorified refactoring tool/LSP/rubber duck. I can define custom skills that act as specific passes over the codebase that are hard to do with traditional tools, I am using Julia, so I have a skill that is only about doing a semantic and type analysis pass to catch potential type instabilities. Or another that is just about documentation reporting. The workflow for me is always: talk the problem to death/get a report. Triage, decide what I can and should do on my own, what can be left to the llm as mundane boring refactoring tasks, what instead needs me to figure out the correct shape first and then ask the llm to propagate the new pattern in the codebase. Then act. A lot of the time I am implementing the llm suggestion by hand on my own to get a feel of how the codebase is shifting under my feet and stay on top of things. This indeed makes things more slow, but allows for an overall higher quality codebase. Especially the refactoring part.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#236

Post by janalsncm »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #211
justinlivi wrote: post #11

I find myself spending on average more time in LLM review/resolution loops than it would take for me to write the code by hand. Partially because once I'm in the flow I write very very quickly and the code pours out sometimes faster than I can write. But also because the LLM code on the first few tries is generally really really bad. What I find interesting though is that spending the time to personally review and di…

[flagged]

Or, if we consider the fact that an LLM’s performance depends on the task’s similarity to others in the training set, it could be that one person is doing a fairly novel task and another is doing something very well represented in online code.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#237

Post by germanptr »

bottlepalm wrote: post #4

I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…

I follow a similar approach and use multiple LLMs per task. The quality improvement is surprisingly large.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with adding an explicit reward function so the models optimize for measurable output quality.

This creates a generate, critique, revise loop where candidate answers compete for a higher score. It feels promising because it reduces the amount of handholding for every task. It is also more fun because part of the review process is embedded in the scoring function, which simplifies the review effort.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#239

Post by olafmol »

This is exactly the reason why I like to work with local models on a regular specced machine. The fact that the agent moves slower allows me to stay in the loop much better, compared to skimming through a huge amount of generated content and data and then going to the end really fast to make sense of it all, in the interest of time (and thus losing track and quality). The fact that I can run it locally makes it (much) cheaper too.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#240

Post by michaelsalim »

halfcat wrote: post #91
afavour wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re quite getting what OP is describing. I work in a similar way… I am aware of all the code being written. If Claude had an outage I could write it myself. It would just take longer. You say “all that time” babysitting AIs but in my experience it isn’t that much time, if anything the back and forth at the planning stages is more productive than when I’m doing it by myself because I’m being asked que…

How do you stay aware of all code being written? Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never understood how one understands from reading code. Yes you can understand what that code does, but not why it was done that way instead of a different way. In the end I only understand it deeply if I end up writing it. Chatting through it is helpful to me, but having AI crank out code loses all of that context pretty quickly. I’m not d…

I think it's just like reading a book. Will you get more context & understanding if you write the book? You most probably will. But that doesn't mean that you don't get anything just by reading it.

And if you already know the material explained by the book, yes i don't need to write it to understand it.

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