Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using AI to write better code more slowly

nolanlawson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 511 posts

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#281

Post by Applejinx »

halfcat wrote: post #91
afavour wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you’re quite getting what OP is describing. I work in a similar way… I am aware of all the code being written. If Claude had an outage I could write it myself. It would just take longer. You say “all that time” babysitting AIs but in my experience it isn’t that much time, if anything the back and forth at the planning stages is more productive than when I’m doing it by myself because I’m being asked que…

How do you stay aware of all code being written? Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never understood how one understands from reading code. Yes you can understand what that code does, but not why it was done that way instead of a different way. In the end I only understand it deeply if I end up writing it. Chatting through it is helpful to me, but having AI crank out code loses all of that context pretty quickly. I’m not d…

People get into being amazing at code by being interested in what it does rather than what it is. It's a whole area that I can see but can't get to, where it's all about DRY and elegance and what's being done is relatively unimportant because it's web stuff or whatever, just widgets and sadness.

As a result there's a whole universe of code where the how of it, the elegance, is the main thing, and what it's doing is putting characters on the screen a bit slower than the next thing but there are some amazing concepts that are supposed to make it all an axiomatic synthesis of how to think about code forever, replacing all precious concepts of thinking about code.

Now AI can think about code forever while doing nothing.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#282

Post by Kiro »

goatlover wrote: post #130
etothet wrote: post #125

“A lot of people seem convinced that the point of AI coding is to write low-quality code as fast as possible.” A lot of people think a lot of things, but I don’t think the majority of people think the point of using LLMs is so they can produce low-quality code. Do they produce low-quality code sometimes or often? Of course. But they also produce high-quality code very often. And sometimes they just a “fine” job. One…

Hopefully not, but there was recent thread with multiple posters arguing that code quality doesn't matter, and quality produced by humans in the past was often terrible. So who cares, ship it was the sentiment. Let the AIs handle the growing maintenance cost, I guess? Kind of a shocking thing to see argued on HN. Maybe it's just the vibe coders.

> arguing that code quality doesn't matter, and quality produced by humans in the past was often terrible

You're conflating two different things. I'm one of the people arguing for the latter, but not because I don't think code quality matters but as a counter to to sudden idealization of handcrafted code.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#283

Post by jnovek »

lintfordpickle wrote: post #250
aomix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking the problem to death with the AI before implementation is a nice zone for me. I feel productive, get good results out of the AI, and still largely understand the code. That’s the part of the AI revolution that I feel has made me a better engineer because I argue about design and architecture all day with a robot.

>> and still largely understand the code [...] ,that, I feel has made me a better engineer the cynic in me would say that a good engineer should fully understand the code you write. I'm not suggesting that AI is the problem here - you could vibe code with the AI have have it explain the reasoning and patterns - or else tell it to use 'simpler' patterns from the outset. For any one problem in software engineering, the…

> How can you reason about code you don't fully understand?

We all do, though. It takes months for a human to really get to know a project and, unless you’re working at a small startup, you’ll probably never know most of the code outside the corner you work in.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#284

Post by daniel3303 »

throwaway7783 wrote: post #141
aomix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking the problem to death with the AI before implementation is a nice zone for me. I feel productive, get good results out of the AI, and still largely understand the code. That’s the part of the AI revolution that I feel has made me a better engineer because I argue about design and architecture all day with a robot.

I follow the same process. I have a design in mind for the problem at hand, but I don't reveal it to Codex. I go back and forth a bit to see if its proposals are better than mine. I go back and forth on tradeoffs of various approaches. And then I ask it to compare its proposals with mine. I "win" most of the time but there are many times where it shows a me a better, or simpler approach, or makes me rethink the solut…

[flagged]

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#285

Post by vascocosta »

kieckerjan wrote: post #214

Another thing that I feel is underappreciated about agentic coding is that you can actually learn from it. I am a programmer with 25+ years of experience and I tend to do a lot of stuff according to fixed patterns/habits. Seeing how my coding agents do stuff helps me break out of these patterns, lets me consider new approaches, helps me pick up idioms and teaches me new hacks and tricks. That is very satisfying in it…

I'm exactly in the same boat. 25+ years of experience and I use agentic coding exactly to learn better patterns. I often let it implement something, read the code, learn the pattern, confirm it's a good practice and then code myself manually another section of the code.

I think many people that blindly say you cannot learn anything from vibe coding have some sweeping assumptions. It obviously depends. If you just let it do everything without even reading the code and understanding it, then yes. But the act of reading code is one of the best ways to actually learn, no matter if you read code from a human or from an LLM. I tend to learn way better by example than by reading a theoretical book.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#286

Post by HyperL0gi »

TACIXAT wrote: post #30

This article doesn't address writing code with AI, just code review. My issue with agentic coding is that I make numerous micro-architectural decisions while programming. I almost never have a full spec up front and develop one as I consider what I am writing. When using Claude Code or Codex, that is all gone. Claude Code is extremely eager to reach the end goal to the point that it feels like a fever dream to write…

> This article doesn't address writing code with AI, just code review. My issue with agentic coding is that I make numerous micro-architectural decisions while programming. I almost never have a full spec up front and develop one as I consider what I am writing.

working with AI forced me to write better specs but the way I write today is very different. I typically open Codex and have Linear MCP connected where my chat with the AI will end up writing the issue. Its a lot of back-end-forth where I tell what I want, the AI does all the code scanning, write something, I correct something, etc

The value for me is exactly that I tell what I want, the AI verify in the actual code if that's the path that makes more sense or not. In the end I have a pretty detailed spec that I'm much more confident is the correct path.

I find the spec easier to review than a huge PR so typically when executing is much faster and aligned with what I want.

The grill-me skill from Matt Pocock is great for this (https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/produc...)

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#287

Post by bsaul »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #112
scosman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes exactly. Too many people ask AI to one-shot complex tasks, and wonder it behaves like a junior asked to rush something. I have my own skill: 5 rounds of research/planning/test-planning. Interactive with me in loop for all important decisions. Starts with high level shape, then details. Planning can take 2-3 days of my time, then the implementation agent can take many hours (Opus 4.7). It splits the implementation…

"yes exactly. Too many people ask AI to one-shot complex tasks, and wonder it behaves like a junior asked to rush something." Because this version of AI is worth 10 trillion dollars. While the pragmatic versions from realists you can find all over this thread are ultimately probably less of a speed boost than just having your CEO/local micromanager be conveniently on vacation during critical periods when the work act…

"Because this version of AI is worth 10 trillion dollars."

i wonder how much the real version of AI is worth. I've got a hinch we're going to find out pretty soon.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#289

Post by locknitpicker »

well_ackshually wrote: post #190
locknitpicker wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The constant context changes, (...) After you put together a plan, today's models can take well over a minute to execute it. Also, your work shifts to code review and executing acceptance tests, followed by either tweaking your current change or moving on to the next change. This is really not about context changes. This is about not having to switch contexts because your focus stays on architecture+review instead…

>today's models can take well over a minute to execute it. A full, whole, entire _minute_ ?! Sixty seconds ! Oh no, they must be optimized away, we do not deserve our free time like so, we should toil until we fall over because... Growth? It's still context switching. Either what you're doing is surface enough that you don't give a shit, it doesn't matter and you don't review it anyways (so the only context is basica…

> A full, whole, entire _minute_ ?!

If you honestly had any concern about loosing focus and being forced to context switch, a 1 minute pause idling while waiting for something to happen would represent the root cause of your context switch problems.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#290

Post by alexwwang »

bottlepalm wrote: post #4

I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…

I think you need a skill to review those code by agent itself, but in a different role, not the one who wrote them. I did some research on this and developed a skill to get things done. By now it works well though I decide to prove and improve it with more tests. Dog food is not always delicious but not too bad either.
Post reply on HN