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AI is making me dumb

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Re: AI is making me dumb

#281

Post by ActorNightly »

embedding-shape wrote: post #47
Rooster61 wrote: post #11

I can't relate that much to this. Every time I use AI to write code, I'm constantly fighting a feeling on the back of my neck that I need to look over everything it has done and supplement/alter it with my own code. That ick feeling counteracts the dopamine hit of having a working app after a few minutes of vibe coding, and I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. That said, I have experience. I could absolu…

> after a few minutes of vibe coding Don't vibe-code, it's a joke someone coined in the moment, that somehow the industry decided shouldn't be a joke, and some people think it's a feasible way of developing stuff, it's not. Find a better way of working together with agent, where you get the review what's important to be reviewed by a human, and "outsource" the rest, and you'll end up with code and a design that works…

Vibe coding is fine. Its just the next step.

Python for example is vibe coding compared to C. You pip install some library and just use it. Wanna modify a class instance variable and not use the proper accessor function? Sure, go right ahead.

The big thing about vibe coding is, as ironic as it sounds, prompt engineering. You can have tons of slop, but if it works, it works. The key defining factor is what constitutes as working. Namely, defining input output contracts, and automatic checks.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#282

Post by godelski »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
Rooster61 wrote: post #11

I can't relate that much to this. Every time I use AI to write code, I'm constantly fighting a feeling on the back of my neck that I need to look over everything it has done and supplement/alter it with my own code. That ick feeling counteracts the dopamine hit of having a working app after a few minutes of vibe coding, and I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. That said, I have experience. I could absolu…

In my experience, Claude only knows how to spew code. Every problem you want it to solve, it translates into "more code" rather than "less code". You have to very closely code review everything it does, otherwise your codebase is going to just grow and grow, and asymptotically approach 100% debt. I code review everything that Claude produces, and I'd estimate about 90-95% of the time, my reaction is WOW it works but…

  > let's take 3 hours to handhold you through simplifying it until nothing more can be removed.
This is why I'm unconvinced that AI code makes me faster. Sure, I could produce a million lines an hour but are we running a sprint or a marathon? I don't know about you but I can't sprint a marathon.

I think much of the world of software has become incredibly myopic. I get it, it's a lot harder to win a war than it is to win a battle but just usually taking the easy way out is just deferring the costs to your future. Problem is that those costs accrue interest... Personally? I'm lazy and a cheapskate.

When did programmers stop becoming lazy and start becoming lazy? More importantly, why?

Re: AI is making me dumb

#283

Post by mholm »

davebren wrote: post #250
DParida08 wrote: post #208

The day AI platforms suffer a massive and prolonged outage, it’ll trigger absolute panic and chaos. In many ways we are sacrificing a part of our creativity and independent thinking, but the reality is there’s hardly any alternative now. In a world moving this fast, choosing not to adapt often means getting left behind.

Please stop pushing the "getting left behind" fear. Prompting is not a skill, there is nowhere it's going that it can leave anyone behind. The "skill" of prompting is 100% dependent on one's skill programming, and in a day the skilled programmer will be able to surpass the guy that's been vibecoding for a decade.

I've seen a lot of people hop into prompting with no trouble, and people who have been using it for years that get bad results. Ultimately, prompting skill is just downstream of technical communication skill. It's probably a good way to practice, if you pay close attention to what you forgot to specify, and what the model got wrong.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#284

Post by godelski »

notarobot123 wrote: post #171
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Claude only knows how to spew code. Every problem you want it to solve, it translates into "more code" rather than "less code". You have to very closely code review everything it does, otherwise your codebase is going to just grow and grow, and asymptotically approach 100% debt. I code review everything that Claude produces, and I'd estimate about 90-95% of the time, my reaction is WOW it works but…

At this point, it's worth asking whether lots of relatively straightforward verbose code is actually significantly worse than the least code necessary for the problem. Obviously, architecture matters. What might matter less is verbosity. The reason we aimed for minimal "accidental complexity" up to now was directly related to the cost/pain of changing and maintaining that code. Hasn't the economics of maintenance and…

  > it's worth asking whether lots of relatively straightforward verbose code is actually significantly worse than the least code necessary for the problem.
The question is wrong because reality isn't binary. "We've" never aimed for minimal, except maybe in the very early days or some real edge cases

If you're writing the minimal code you're either writing something very compact/simple[0], or you're wasting too much time and not balancing things.

If you're rewriting everything then you're wasting too much time and introducing too much complexity[1].

You can't write good code by slapping together a bunch of libraries but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use libraries either.

[0] "simple" is an overloaded term. If you're upset by me saying "simple", I'm using the other definition

[1] sed -i [0] "s/simple/complex/g"

Re: AI is making me dumb

#285

Post by nostrebored »

fragmede wrote: post #232
pixelready wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pruning code is to software engineers what cancelling plans is to introverts :) I think I need to work up a Claude skill named marie-kondo, so that when it breathlessly presents its triumphant solution, I can go “yes, but does it spark joy?” And have it go into an aggressive refactor loop with me.

Sounded like fun so had Claude do one up here: https://github.com/fragmede/marie-kondo-ai-skill

Hypothetical future callers, "for extensibility" abstractions, single-use helpers, ceremonial try/except blocks, and options dicts with one key all get culled.

—

But this is never the problem. Claude WILL NOT abstract and WILL NOT use your abstractions. It finds them all “ceremonial” and the idea that you could add something that might seem indirect that actually dramatically reduces the problem space is almost impossible to convey.

You can watch this in action for any API whose design you’re familiar with in a domain you understand well. If you attempt to design the same API with Claude, your will invariably get a mess of flat, insane types and no reuse. I’m talking an array of tuples of maps of set to map type insanity.

What has been helping is a mandatory pass of “Claudisms”, but even then it can only find the problem and never the solution.

It is so frustrating.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#286

Post by strken »

binary0010 wrote: post #275
notarobot123 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, it's worth asking whether lots of relatively straightforward verbose code is actually significantly worse than the least code necessary for the problem. Obviously, architecture matters. What might matter less is verbosity. The reason we aimed for minimal "accidental complexity" up to now was directly related to the cost/pain of changing and maintaining that code. Hasn't the economics of maintenance and…

I don't think people are talking about the least code possible, just not incredibly verbose and inefficient like what you get by default from llms. For example I have a game I've been working on for a few years, I do stuff like "implement this simple psuedo physics system to make the bot follow the character like so...etc" After some planning and back and forth. It returns mostly working code a little odd on some edg…

With SaaS apps, I've found you either have to hand write a framework for it to use, or put an even greater amount of effort into double-checking and correcting it. Then you can point it at bugs and features, get it to write tests for you, and so on. If the code's too wordy, who cares? Keep the blast radius to self-contained modules and the AI can't mess up too badly. Whenever you abstract something or the work is critical, you need to go back to hand writing everything.

Abstractions are like the structural elements of a house, security is like plumbing or electrical, but individual features are like carpet and paint. When it's working on the superficial stuff, who cares what it gets wrong? Just go rip up the carpet and do it again if you have to.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#287

Post by suzzer99 »

scubbo wrote: post #249
suzzer99 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question any dev who doesn't get aroused by deleting code. I just removed an entire graphql endpoint - 500 lines of front and back-end code. I may need to be hosed down.

`$JOB` recently introduced the `#red-diffs` Slack channel. I just submitted ` +4 / -28,742`. Pretty proud.

It's so beautiful.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#288

Post by yarn_ »

godelski wrote: post #282
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Claude only knows how to spew code. Every problem you want it to solve, it translates into "more code" rather than "less code". You have to very closely code review everything it does, otherwise your codebase is going to just grow and grow, and asymptotically approach 100% debt. I code review everything that Claude produces, and I'd estimate about 90-95% of the time, my reaction is WOW it works but…

> let's take 3 hours to handhold you through simplifying it until nothing more can be removed. This is why I'm unconvinced that AI code makes me faster. Sure, I could produce a million lines an hour but are we running a sprint or a marathon? I don't know about you but I can't sprint a marathon. I think much of the world of software has become incredibly myopic. I get it, it's a lot harder to win a war than it is to w…

> I think much of the world of software has become incredibly myopic. > usually taking the easy way out is just deferring the costs to your future. Problem is that those costs accrue interest.

This sums up my thoughts perfectly lately, that is a great way to put it all.

Programmers have never been any good at measuring or estimating their own productivity, there is no reason to assume that has changed (one could argue theres ample reason to assume the opposite).

Part of the problem as well is that there is some unseen/unnamable "spaghettiness"/"sloppiness"/"whatever" factor, that scales very very poorly. At the beginning it can seem fine, especially when you have some constant speed multiplier like an LLM spitting out code - but the larger exponent of the function that results from this factor being "worse" will eventually outpace that constant multiplier. You will only see it once its too late, or will never see it all because of our myopia as you say.

Re: AI is making me dumb

#289

Post by Jimidesuu »

I think it's all about the perspective on AI as well, cause in my case, whenever I use AI, I tend to look for more ways of improving what was delivered by AI. Most of the time I just write a draft of the context of what I want to see then feed it to AI and check whether it didn't sound right and tbh,

That approach is making me either lazy/efficient cause I use it to my work

Re: AI is making me dumb

#290

Post by bigstrat2003 »

denkmoon wrote: post #274
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Claude only knows how to spew code. Every problem you want it to solve, it translates into "more code" rather than "less code". You have to very closely code review everything it does, otherwise your codebase is going to just grow and grow, and asymptotically approach 100% debt. I code review everything that Claude produces, and I'd estimate about 90-95% of the time, my reaction is WOW it works but…

>asymptotically approach 100% debt What to do if you're just one dev in an org of 50? Who are all pushing more and more code every PR? I'm gonna have to leave aren't I :(

Pretty much, unfortunately. I was recently told at my job that I need to stop being so critical of AI, and encouraged to at least pretend to use it. Never mind that I've pointed out that my disuse is not because of being stuck in my ways, but because it slows me down rather than speeds me up. I guess management wants AI use no matter whether it pays off. It's clear that my options are to embrace the clanker, or find a new job.
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