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The hidden cost of AI coding

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#251

Post by m2024 »

ang_cire wrote: post #183
aprxi wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cant one enjoy both? After all, coding with AI in practice is still coding, just with a far higher intensity.

It is absolutely possible to enjoy both- I have used LLMs to generate code for ideas about alternate paths to take when I write my code- but prompt generation is not coding, and there are WAY too many people who claim to be coding when they have in fact done nothing of the sort. > a far higher intensity I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The code that I've gotten is riddled with mistakes and fabrications. If…

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#252

Post by bredren »

ookblah wrote: post #195
TrackerFF wrote: post #185

Some people love programming, for the sake of programming itself. They love the CS theory, they love the tooling, they love most everything about it. Other people see all that as an means to an end - and find no joy from the technical aspect of creating something. They're more interested in the end result / product, rather than the process itself. I think that if you're in group A, it can be difficult to understand g…

i mean how far are you willing to take that argument? every decade has just been a new abstraction, imagine people flipping switches or in raw assembly talking about how they don't "understand" you now with your no effort. or even those who don't "understand" why you use your autocomplete and fancy IDE, preferring a simple text editor. i say this as someone who cut my teeth on this stuff growing up and seeing the evo…

It is not just gatekeeping. It is a stubborn refusal to see that one could be programming something much more sophisticated if they could use these iteration loops efficiently.

Many of these folks would do well to walk over to the intersection of Market, Bush, and Battery Streets in San Francisco and gaze up at the Mechanics Monument.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#253

Post by ookblah »

ang_cire wrote: post #231
skydhash wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seriously, I see this claim thrown around as though everyone writes the same starting template 50 times a week. Like, if you've got a piece of "boilerplate" code you're constantly rewriting... Save It! Put it in a repo or a snippet somewhere that you can just copy-paste when you need it. You don't need a multi-million dollar LLM to give you slightly different boilerplate snippets when you already have a text editor o…

i think everyone here has extremely different ideas of what AI coding actually is and it's frustrating because basically everyone is strawmanning (myself included probably), as if using it means i'm not looking at documentation or not understanding what is goin on at all times.

it's not about having the LLM write some "starter pack" toy scaffold. i means when i implement functionality across different classes and need to package that up and adapt, i can just tell the LLM how to approach it and it can produce entire sections of code that would literally just be adaptations of certain things. or to refactor certain pieces that would just be me re-arranging shit.

maybe that's not "boilerplate", but to me it's a collosal waste of my time that could be spent trying to solve a new problem. you can't package that up into a "code snippet" and it's not worth the time carefully crafting templates. LLM can do it faster, better, and cost me near nothing.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#254

Post by nairadithya »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #192
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 like solving problems but I hate coding. Wasting 20 minutes because you forgot a semicolon or something is not fun. AI let's me focus on the problem and not bother with the tedious coding bit.

This doesn't even make sense, forgetting a semicolon is immediately caught by the compiler. What positive benefits does AI provide here?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#256

Post by sega_sai »

As a scientist, I actually greatly enjoy the AI assisted coding because it can help with the boring/tedious side of coding. I.e. I occasionally have some new ideas/algorithms to try, and previously I did not have enough time to explore them out, because there was just too much boring code to be written. Now this part is essentially solved, and I can more easily focus on key algorithms/new ideas.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#257

Post by NotBoolean »

ramesh31 wrote: post #245

>"...the one thing that currently worries me most about using AI for software development: lack of joy." I struggled with this at first too. But it just becomes another kind of joy. Think of it like jogging versus riding a motorcycle. Jogging is fun, people enjoy it, and they always will. But flying down a canyon road at 90MPH and racing through twists and turns is... way more fun. Once you've learned how to do it. B…

That’s an interesting analogy but I do disagree with it.

I would say that programming without an AI is like riding a motorcycle. You’re in complete control and it’s down to your skill to get you we’re your going.

While using AI is like taking a train. You got to plan the route but you’re just along for the ride.

Which I think lines up to the article. If you want to get somewhere easily and fast, take a train. But that does take away the joy of the journey.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#258

Post by _heimdall »

yapyap wrote: post #246
TrackerFF wrote: post #185

Some people love programming, for the sake of programming itself. They love the CS theory, they love the tooling, they love most everything about it. Other people see all that as an means to an end - and find no joy from the technical aspect of creating something. They're more interested in the end result / product, rather than the process itself. I think that if you're in group A, it can be difficult to understand g…

> On the other hand, I know people that want to jump straight to the end result. They have some melody or idea in their head, and they just want to generate some song that revolves around that idea. I don't really look down on those people, even though the snobs might argue that they're not "real musicians". I don't understand them, but that's not really something I have to understand either. So if someone generates…

Where do you draw that line though?

If you're talking about a person using an LLM, or some other ML system, to help generate their music then the LLM is really just a tool for that person.

I can't run 80 mph but I can drive a car that fast, its my tool to get the job done. Should I not be allowed to do that professionally if I'm not actually the one achieving that speed or carrying capacity?

Personally my concerns with LLMs are more related to the unintended consequences and all the unknowns in play given that we don't really know how they work and aren't spending much effort solving interoperability. If they only ever end up being a tool, that seems a lot more in line with previous technological advancements.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#259

Post by pdimitar »

codr7 wrote: post #38
only-one1701 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this "prompting is an art" stuff a lot. I gave Claude a list of 10 objects and asked it to make an adjustment to all of them. It gave me 9 back. When I asked it to try again it gave me 10 but one didn't work. What's "prompt engineering" there, telling it to try again until it gets it right? I'd rather just do it right the first time.

We used to make fun of and look down on coders who mindlessly copy paste and mash the compile button until the code runs, for good reasons.

Did you skip the "rigorously verify the LLM code" part of my comment on purpose, just to show contempt?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#260

Post by pdimitar »

only-one1701 wrote: post #61
tmpz22 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prompt engineering is just trying that task on a variety of models and prompt variations until you can better understand the syntax needed to get the desired outcome, if the desired outcome can be gotten. Honestly you’re trying to prove AI is ineffective by telling us it didn’t work with your ineffective protocol. That is not a strong argument.

What should I have done there? Tell it to make sure that it gives me all 10 objects I give it back? Tell it to not put brackets in the wrong place? This is a real question --- what would you have done?

You should have dropped the LLM, of course. They are not replacing us the programmers anytime soon. If they can be used as an enabler / booster, cool, if not, back to business as usual. You can only win here. You can't lose.
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