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The hidden cost of AI coding

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#281

Post by Workaccount2 »

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 a classic engineer, so lots of experience with systems and breaking down problems, but probably Having LLMs like 2.5 now are total game changers. I can basically flow chart a program and have Gemini manifest it. I can break up the program into modules and keep spinning up new instances when context gets too full.

The program I am currently working on is up to ~5500 LOC, probably across 10ish 2.5 instances. It's basically an inventory and BOM management program that takes in bloated excel BOMs and inventory, and puts it in an SQLite database, and has a nice GUI. Absolutely insane how much faster SQLite is for databases than excel, lol.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#282

Post by smj-edison »

Nevermark wrote: post #119
smj-edison wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slave wages? Like the wages for a factory worker in 1918[1]? $1300 after adjusting for inflation. And that was gruelling work from dawn to dusk, being locked into a building, and nickel and dimed by factory managers. (See the triangle shirtwaist factory). The average Uber wage is $20/hour[2]. Say they use 2 gallons of gas (60 mph at 30 mpg) at $5/gallon. That comes out to $10/hour, which is not great, but they're not…

> Slave wages? Like the wages for a factory worker in 1918[1]? $1300 after adjusting for inflation. I think they were using “slave wages” as a non-literal relative term to the era. As you did. A hundred years before your example, the “slave wages” were actually slave wages. I think it’s fair to say a lot of gig workers, especially those with families, are having a very difficult time economically. I expect gig jobs l…

> I think it’s fair to say a lot of gig workers, especially those with families, are having a very difficult time economically.

Great point. I wonder if this has to do with the current housing crisis and cost of utilities... Food has never been more affordable, in fact free with food banks and soup kitchens. But (IMHO) onerous zoning has really slowed down development and driven up prices.

Another cost is it's pretty much impossible to do anything without a smartphone and internet. I suppose libraries have free internet, but being able to get to said library is another issue.

And like you said, contract work trades flexibility for benefits, and that gets exploited by these companies.

I guess it just sucks sometimes because these issues are super hairy (shut down Uber, great, now you've just put everyone out of a job). "For every complex problem there is a solution which is clear, simple, and wrong."

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#283

Post by williamcotton »

ang_cire wrote: post #226
melvinroest wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I think the analogy/ substitution falls apart in that singing is generally not very stable or lucrative (for 99.999% of singers), so it is pretty rare to find someone singing who hates it. Much less uncommon to find people working in IT who hate the specific work of their jobs. And I think we do tend to (rightfully) look down on e.g. singers who lip-sync concerts or use autotune to sing at pitches they otherwise can'…

> And I think we do tend to (rightfully) look down on e.g. singers who lip-sync concerts or use autotune to sing at pitches they otherwise can't, nevermind how we'd react if one used AI singing instead of themselves.

Autotune is de rigueur for popular music.

In general, I'm not sure that I agree with looking down on people.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#284

Post by utkarsh858 »

I always thought about the problem of AI taking jobs, that even if there are new jobs created to replace the older ones, it will come at a cost of decrease in satisfaction of overall populace.

The more people in general get disconnect from nature/physical world/reality. via layers of abstraction the more discontent they will become. These layers can be: 1) Automatics in agriculture. 2) Industries. 3) Electronics 4) Software 5) and now AI

Each higher layer depends on lower ones for its functioning without the need to worry about specifics and provides a framework for higher abstraction to work on.

The more we move up in hierarchy the more disconnected we become from the physical world.

To support this I observed that villagers in general are more jolly and content than city dwellers. In metropolis specially I saw that people are more rude, anxious and always agitated, while villagers are welcoming and peaceful.

Another good example is that of an artist finding it boring to guide AI even though he loves making paintings himself/herself.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#285

Post by CopyOnWrite »

Most comments here surprise me: I am using Githubs Copilot / ChatGPT 4.0 at work with a code base which is mostly implements a basic CRUD service... and outside of small/trivial example (where the generated code is mostly okay), prompting is more often than not a total waste of time. Now, I wonder if I am just totally unable to write/refine good prompts for the LLM (as it works for smaller samples, I hope I am not too far off) or what could explain the huge discrepancy of experience. (Just for the record: I would totally not mind if the LLM writes the code for the stuff I have to do at work.)

To clarify my questions: - Who here uses LLMs to generate code for bigger projects at work? (>= 20k lines of code) - If you use LLMs for bigger projects: Do you need to change your prompting strategy to get good results? - What programming languages are you using in your code bases? - Are there other people here who experience that LLMs are no help for non trivial problems?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#286

Post by scarface_74 »

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…

Your company doesn’t care about how you got to the end, they just care about did you get there and meet all of the functional and non functional requirements.

My entire management chain - manager, director and CTO - are all technical and my CTO was a senior dev at BigTech less then two years ago. But when I have a conversation with any of them, they mostly care about whether the project I’m working on/leading is done on time/within budget/meets requirements.

As long as those three goals are met, money appears in my account.

One of the most renown producers in hip hop - Dr. Dre - made a career in reusing old melodies. Are (were) his protégés - Easy-E, Tupac, Snoop, Eminem, 50 cent, Kendrick Lamar, etc - not real musicians?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#287

Post by skydhash »

ookblah wrote: post #253
ang_cire wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nee…

> it's a collosal waste of my time

> LLM can do it faster, better, and cost me near nothing.

And this is one the thing I'm skeptical about. The above use case is a symptom of all code and no design. It is a waste of time because you're putting yourself in a corner, architecture wise. Kinda like building on a crooked foundation.

I've never done refactoring where I'm writing a lot of code, it's mostly just copy-paste and rebuilding the connection between modules (functions, classes, files, packages,...). And if the previous connections were well understood and you have a clear plan for the new design, then it's a no-brainer to get there. Same when adapting code, I'm mostly deleting lines and renaming variables (regex is nice).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding things, but unless it's for small scripts or very common project types, I haven't seen the supposed productivity gain compared to traditional tooling.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#288

Post by douglasisshiny »

CopyOnWrite wrote: post #285

Most comments here surprise me: I am using Githubs Copilot / ChatGPT 4.0 at work with a code base which is mostly implements a basic CRUD service... and outside of small/trivial example (where the generated code is mostly okay), prompting is more often than not a total waste of time. Now, I wonder if I am just totally unable to write/refine good prompts for the LLM (as it works for smaller samples, I hope I am not to…

I'm in the same boat. I've largely stopped using these tools other than asking questions about a language that I'm less familiar with or a complex type in typescript for which it can be helpful (sometimes). Otherwise, I felt like I was just wasting my time and becoming lazier/worse as a developer. I do wonder whether LLMs have hit a wall and we're in a hype cycle.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#289

Post by mrtksn »

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…

The first time you write the code to accomplish something you get your highs.

IMHO there's no joy in doing the same thing multiple times. DRY doesn't help with that, you end up doing a lot of menial work to adapt or integrate previous code.

Most of the for-profit coding is very boring.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#290

Post by cesarb »

bradley13 wrote: post #228
z_open wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, this guy is likely to fail the course. The point is: he is already working in the field. I don't know his exact job, but if it involves programming, or even scripting, he is faking his way with AI, not understanding what he's doing. That is frightening.

> I don't know his exact job, but if it involves programming, or even scripting, he is faking his way with AI, not understanding what he's doing. That is frightening.

That could be considered malpractice. I know our profession currently doesn't have professional standards, but it's just a side effect of it being very new and not yet solidified; it won't be long until some duty of care becomes required, and we're already starting to see some movement in that direction, with things like the EU CRA.

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