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Agentic Coding Is a Trap

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Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#281

Post by imtringued »

bhagyeshsp wrote: post #159
byzantinegene wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have 35 years of experience and have already built up the learning capability and general framework to acquire new knowledge. you know how to use agentic coding as a tool to supplement your work. the juniors who start today don't have that, they overrely on agentic coding and do not know what they don't know

Self-taught, "junior" here. Due to English-language limitation my most adult life, I struggled to code. Used visual coding etc. But of course, I can't make a living on drag-and-drop harness. Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta. The point is: when people use "juniors" as a fixed…

This is backwards. You were too lazy to learn English even though every hour spent programming also comes with an included English lesson?

Now AI lets you write code using libraries whose documentation you can't even read? How is this a win?

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#282

Post by bhagyeshsp »

imtringued wrote: post #281
bhagyeshsp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-taught, "junior" here. Due to English-language limitation my most adult life, I struggled to code. Used visual coding etc. But of course, I can't make a living on drag-and-drop harness. Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta. The point is: when people use "juniors" as a fixed…

This is backwards. You were too lazy to learn English even though every hour spent programming also comes with an included English lesson? Now AI lets you write code using libraries whose documentation you can't even read? How is this a win?

Pls get rid of your assumptions, then we can talk.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#283

Post by bhagyeshsp »

blks wrote: post #278
bhagyeshsp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-taught, "junior" here. Due to English-language limitation my most adult life, I struggled to code. Used visual coding etc. But of course, I can't make a living on drag-and-drop harness. Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta. The point is: when people use "juniors" as a fixed…

I didn’t speak English my early teenage years, and that haven’t stopped me from reading books about programming in my native language. I remember spending hours in bookshops, excited to pick up next book to devour and try out.

I don't believe in victimhood and so didn't want to go here, but since we are comparing notes:

English alphabets came into my education at the age of 10. I got my first computer at the age of 21. I began speaking broken English around the age of 23. Proper internet at the age of 25 or so.

Not to mention, my native language doesn't have programming books, even today.

Of course, an avid reader and Science nerd here. Curiosity and tinkering never stopped.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#285

Post by Saline9515 »

hunterpayne wrote: post #87
Saline9515 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that you will end up without a job if the trend continues. It's similar to many cases of technical innovation - you can still have a few workers who do handcrafted works, but most of them have to use the machines, that may produce work of inferior quality but at much higher speed. The market realigns, and unless you handwrite the highest possible quality at a quick pace, you won't be competitive with the…

"unless you handwrite the highest possible quality at a quick pace" That's exactly what I do. I know I am lucky to be gifted in this skillset. But that's not a good reason to excuse people destroying the market for everyone.

I mean, why wouldn't they? Software developers are very often automating things, in order to reduce the amount of workforce, or the skill needed for economic activities.

Would you refuse to work on a navigation app such as Waze, since it allows everyone to work with platforms as Uber and pushes traditional taxis out of the market?

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#286

Post by RHSeeger »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #51

Interestingly I’ve learned more about languages and systems and tools I use in the last few years working with agentic coding than I did in 35 years of artisanal programming. I am still vastly superior at making decisions about systems and techniques and approaches than the agentic tools, but they are like a really really well read intern who knows a great deal of detail about errata but have very little experience.…

> The claim you should know everything about everything you work on is an intensely naive one

This is a slight tangent from that, but I place a lot of value on the ability to offload some/most of the mental model to AI. I need to know less about everything (involved in this one task) when working on it, because a lot of the peripheral information can be handled by the AI. I find that _incredibly_ useful.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#287

Post by valunlabs »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #51

Interestingly I’ve learned more about languages and systems and tools I use in the last few years working with agentic coding than I did in 35 years of artisanal programming. I am still vastly superior at making decisions about systems and techniques and approaches than the agentic tools, but they are like a really really well read intern who knows a great deal of detail about errata but have very little experience.…

i agree with this. While refactoring the outdated code at my company, i realized that “you can’t know everything.” after the refactor, i can ask the LLM questions and get answers, but unfortunately, when integrating a new feature, it keeps treating it as a “new layer.”

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#288

Post by lelanthran »

sterlind wrote: post #160
bhagyeshsp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-taught, "junior" here. Due to English-language limitation my most adult life, I struggled to code. Used visual coding etc. But of course, I can't make a living on drag-and-drop harness. Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta. The point is: when people use "juniors" as a fixed…

accelerated what learning? learning to code? learning to engineer? learning to manage? learning to market?

>> Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta.

> accelerated what learning? learning to code? learning to engineer? learning to manage? learning to market?

I'm pretty certain that you think you're talking to an owner of a business but you're actually talking to an AI-techbro whose "software-hardware hybrid product" and "incorporated company" has exactly zero revenue after it was prompted into existence in the hope that it will make some money before other people realise they could prompt the same thing for less.

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#289

Post by lelanthran »

bhagyeshsp wrote: post #159
byzantinegene wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have 35 years of experience and have already built up the learning capability and general framework to acquire new knowledge. you know how to use agentic coding as a tool to supplement your work. the juniors who start today don't have that, they overrely on agentic coding and do not know what they don't know

Self-taught, "junior" here. Due to English-language limitation my most adult life, I struggled to code. Used visual coding etc. But of course, I can't make a living on drag-and-drop harness. Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning. Now I'm running my incorporated company, just launched one software-hardware hybrid product. Second one is a micro-SaaS in closed beta. The point is: when people use "juniors" as a fixed…

> I struggled to code

> ...

> Comes in GPT-3.5, accelerated my learning.

So now you can code? If I sat you in front of a computer with no internet and no GPU but your choice of IDE, you would actually be able to produce a product?

Re: Agentic Coding Is a Trap

#290

Post by munksbeer »

blks wrote: post #277
throwaway041207 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, by the time todays juniors would have 5-10 years of expected experience, the entire field will be something different altogether. Language choice distribution will collapse (if not change altogether), whole new modalities of monitoring and progressive delivery guardrails will come into play, essentially creating a 24/7 incremental rollout of pure agentic code, correctness will be determined by a mix of language…

Everything looks a nail for our hammer-shaped chat bot. I think you’re overly hyped if your actually believe this is going to be a reality in 5-10 years.

Up until about four months ago, the sentiment by so many programmers online (here, reddit, etc) was that LLMs were absolutely useless at coding. And yet, many of us were puzzled, because we were having success with them, at coding.

People were burying their heads.

Today, there are not many of those people left. Some, but not a lot. Because you can only deny reality for so long.

I don't know what the coding world is going to look like in 5-10 years, but everything has changed radically in the space of a year from maybe 10% of people using agents to code to probably 95% of people now. In about a YEAR.

I don't know, but my assumption is these things will get better to a point where they will be automating close to 100% of coding, and deploying, and verifying, etc. The old job we had will be completely changed well before 10 years. I still think us "engineers" will have a role to play, but I genuinely don't know what it will look like.

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