Code writers have changed, but the conceptual mistakes remain the same.
I'm going back to writing code by hand
271–280 of 656 posts
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#272That’s the same story I had. The swindle goes like this, AI on a good codebase can build a lot of features, you think it’s faster it even seems safer and more accurate on times, especially in domains you don’t know everything about. This goes in for a while whilst the codebase gets bigger and exploration takes longer and failure rate increases. You don’t want it to be true and try harder so you only stop after it pra…
Obviously this is all my fault and others might have a better jugdement when using it. I’m just sharing my experience compared to the promises you easily might believe reading X/HN/Anthropic.
I still have a lot of usage for AI: Exploration, Double-checking me, teaching me. But writing code became very tough for me to accept. Nex-edit autocompletes mainly
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you have discovered the job of managers! There has always been a lot of hate for managers. Wonder if the robots hate us just as much? (I often feel a weird guilt when I tell an agent to do something I know I am going to throw away but will serve as an interesting exploration...I know if I did that to a human they would be pissed...)
IMO the hate has always been for clueless managers, especially clueless yet demanding managers. Managing an LLM for coding is different, try being clueless and demanding and see how far you get.
So you think "good" management translates? I actually think it very much does. Clear expectations, providing right context and "the why", quick and clear feedback loops, intervening early when they are going off track, not micromanaging too much so they can actually accomplish more. It's all very similar.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#274I always find these kinds of posts interesting, to compare the velocity that people seem to get with Ai, vs what I get by just coding by hand Coincidentally I've been working on a project for about 7 months now: its a 3d MMO. Currently its playable, and people are having fun with it - it has decent (but needs work) graphics, and you can cram a few hundred people into the server easily currently. The architecture is p…
> There seems to be a strong bias where using AI feels like you're making a lot of progress very quickly, but compared to manual coding it often seems to be significantly slower in practice. This metric highly depends on who uses the AI to do what, where strong emphasis is on "who" and "what". In my line of work (software developer) the biggest time sinks are meetings where people need to align proposed solutions wit…
the venn diagram of people who say "AI produces useless results I have to 100% throw away" and people who say "I've never successfully delegated parts of large software development to junior programmers" is a circle
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#275When it was Copilot tab-completing lines, people would say, "yea, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the whole functions".
Then when it was completing functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the logic around the functions"
Then when it was completing the logic around the functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the features"
Now it's completing features and people say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the architecture"
I don't know if architecture is a solvable problem for these models, but it is interesting watching the expectations moving over time.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#276Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it. The problem is that the mitigations offered in the article also don't work for long. When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it’s small, like the selection of a data structure. You can tell the agent what the…
If you know how to write good code you can force AI to write good code with various techniques. It's 100% doable. You just need to figure out the problems AI has and find solutions to make it easier for it. Ex: extremely small contexts Modularize to modules with clear boundaries and only allow the AI to work within those boundaries. Make modules pure from IO so they are easily testable. Hide modules behind interfaces…
> You are in charge.
No, if you have to do all of the stuff you have listed to kind-of-make-it-work...You are not in charge.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you know how to write good code you can force AI to write good code with various techniques. It's 100% doable. You just need to figure out the problems AI has and find solutions to make it easier for it. Ex: extremely small contexts Modularize to modules with clear boundaries and only allow the AI to work within those boundaries. Make modules pure from IO so they are easily testable. Hide modules behind interfaces…
So, basically you need to micro-manage it. Where are your 10x gains now? And is it fun to work like that?
This is actually what I do. I'm extremely picky about the code and force the LLM to rewrite it 1000x times until it is basically exactly what I want. You might be wondering what is the point when it would be faster for me to just write the code myself?
I have ADHD and for whatever reason telling the LLM what to do instead of doing it myself bypasses the task avoidance patterns and/or focus problems I tend to suffer from. I do not find it fun, but I am thankful for it.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#278When it was Copilot tab-completing lines, people would say, "yea, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the whole functions". Then when it was completing functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the logic around the functions" Then when it was completing the logic around the functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're th…
> Now it's completing features
It's completing shit. Even if it does not implement some lazy stuff with empty catch blocks (i.e. happy path from programming 101 tutorials), it will either expose your secrets in a sensible place or do some other stupidity.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#279Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it. The problem is that the mitigations offered in the article also don't work for long. When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it’s small, like the selection of a data structure. You can tell the agent what the…
I read all the code I generate with Cursor and some of it smells a bit weird but is easily fixable and most of it is as good as what I would write or better.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#280[flagged]