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We put a coding agent in a while loop

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Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#271

Post by torginus »

hirako2000 wrote: post #218
torginus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the entire concept of Vibe Coding existed for a grand total of 5 months, how do companies reach the level of saturation with vibe coding, that it's not only prevalent, but makes sense to specialize in helping them recover from it?

on the other juicing side, starting to see service companies like these popping up: https://perfect.codes/

I shudder at the thought of some novice vibe coder giving me thousands of lines of AI-generated flaming poop, and insist that it's almost correct, I just need to fix it here and there.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#272

Post by ozim »

thyristan wrote: post #256
ozim wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really see this as universal truth with corporate customers stalling process for up to 2 years or end users being reluctant to change. We were deploying new changes every 2 weeks and it was too fast. End users need training and communication, pushback was quite a thing. We also just pushed back aggressive timeline we had for migration to new tech. Much faster interface with shorter paths - but users went all…

Different situation. You already had a product that they were quite happy with, and that worked well for them. So they saw change as a problem, not a good thing. They weren't waiting for anything new, or anything to improve, they were happy on their couch and you made them move to redo the upholstery.

They were not happy otherwise we would not have new requirements.

Well maybe they were happy but software needs to be updated to new business processes their company was rolling out.

Managers wanted the changes ASAP - their employees not so much, but they had to learn that hard way.

Not so fun part was that we got the blame. Just like I got down vote :), not my first rodeo.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#273

Post by closeparen »

doug_durham wrote: post #74
bwestergard wrote: post #26

There are always two major results from any software development process: a change in the code and a change in cognition for the people who wrote the code (whether they did so directly or with an LLM). Python and Typescript are elaborate formal languages that emerged from a lengthy process of development involving thousands of people around the world over many years. They are non-trivially different, and it's neat th…

I wonder though. One of the superpowers of LLMs is code reading. I say the tools are better and reading than writing. It is very easy to get comprehensive documentation for any code base and get understanding by asking questions. At that point does it matter that there is a living developer who understands the code? If an arbitrary person with knowledge of the technology stack can get up to speed quickly is it import…

I'm not looking for documentation as an alternative to reading the code, but because I want to know elements of the programmer's state of mind that didn't make it into the code. Intentions, expectations, assumptions, alternatives considered and not taken, etc. The LLM's best guess at this is no better than mind (so far).

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#275

Post by slipnslider »

surajrmal wrote: post #242
VincentEvans wrote: post #12

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup. Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years. But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no lo…

Does anyone remember the websites that front page and dreamweaver used to generate from its wysiwyg editor? It was a nightmare to modify manually and convinced me to never rely on generated code.

I still remember that Frontpage exploit in which a simple google search would return websites that still had the default Frontpage password and thus you could login and modify the webpage.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#276

Post by viralpraxis »

pjc50 wrote: post #198
pelario wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I hate it; I don't like magic or black boxes. So, no compilers for you neither ? (To be fair: I'm not loving the whole vibe coding thing. But I'm trying to approach this wave with open mind, and looking for the good arguments in both side. This is not one of them)

Apart from various C UB fiascos, the compiler is neither a black box nor magic, and most of the worthwhile ones are even determinstic.

I’m sorry for an off-topic, are there any non-determenistic compilers you can name? I’d been wondering for a while if they actually exist

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#277

Post by closeparen »

lordnacho wrote: post #175
gf000 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, according to the recently linked Naur paper, the mental model for a codebase includes just as much what code wasn't written, as much what was - e.g. a decision to do this design over another, etc. This is not recoverable by AI without every meeting note and interaction between the devs/clients/etc.

Not for an old project, but if you've talked AI through building something, you've also told it "nah let's not change the interface" and similar decisions, which will sit in the context.

The transcript of LLM interactions that generated code changes are not normally checked in with the code. Perhaps they should be!

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#278

Post by BostonFern »

mnky9800n wrote: post #266
daveidol wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait is he an actual software engineer doing this as a side hustle? Or like a vibe coder guru that basically only works with AI tools?

He said he used to be a software dev. Then he started consulting on the side making websites, doing SEO, and he just started doing that fulltime. But then SEO died because of AI (according to him anyways). then he started vibe coding like a year or two ago and saw all these people posting in forums about how everything they made broke and they don't know what to do. So he started helping people for money and it turne…

I need to start hanging out in more lucrative forums, apparently.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#279

Post by sneilan1 »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #195
rogerrogerr wrote: post #45

Does anyone else get dull feelings of dread reading this kind of thing? How do you combat it?

Embrace it. It's not crypto. It will 100% be around for the foreseeable future. Maybe not in the form it currently exists and maybe not even at the scale it currently exists, but it's here to stay. As developers, we're just as biased as the CEO at the top trying to hawk this stuff but in the opposite manner.

Yes, thank you for being one of the few people to appreciate this experiment. Sure, maybe it's a little wonky right now but I'm glad someone took this risk and tried the "jesus take the wheel" move with Claude Code.

We, as human beings, keep trying this and eventually figure out how to get models to build more and more of the software stack for us and professionally!

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#280

Post by at-fates-hands »

mnky9800n wrote: post #266
daveidol wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait is he an actual software engineer doing this as a side hustle? Or like a vibe coder guru that basically only works with AI tools?

He said he used to be a software dev. Then he started consulting on the side making websites, doing SEO, and he just started doing that fulltime. But then SEO died because of AI (according to him anyways). then he started vibe coding like a year or two ago and saw all these people posting in forums about how everything they made broke and they don't know what to do. So he started helping people for money and it turne…

>> But then SEO died because of AI (according to him anyways).

Former web dev and I still do some SEO and for the most part, he's correct. I've posted on here multiple times over the last two to three years how easy it is now to manipulate search engines now.

Back in the day, when you needed content for SEO and needed it to be optimized, you had to find a content writer who knew how to do this, or write it yourself and hope that Google doesn't bury your site for stuffing your content with keywords.

Now? Any LLM can spin out optimized content in a few seconds. Any LLM can review your site, compare it to a competitor and tell you want you should do to rank better. All of the stuff SEO people used to do? You can do now in the span of a few mins with any LLM. This is lower hanging fruit than vibe coding and Google has yet to adjust their algorithm to deal with this.

A few years ago, I cranked out an entire services area page for a client. I had AI write all the content. Granted, it was pretty clunky and I had to clean some of it up, but it saved me hours of trying to write it myself. We're talking some 20-30 pages that I gradually posted over the course of several months. Within a days, every new page was ranking page 1 within the top ten results.

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