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The hidden cost of AI coding

terriblesoftware.org

291–300 of 475 posts

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, Lisp, Fortran and COBOL had been around most of the time when assembly was popular. Assembly was used because of resource constraints. Secondly, you are not writing anything you get from an LLM. You prompt it and it spits out other people's code, stripped of attribution. This is what children do: Ask someone to fix something for you without understanding the result.

Good artists copy, great artists steal

Picasso (if he really said that) had a machine painting for him?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#292
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solving problems for real people. Isn't the answer here kind of obvious? No. There are a thousand other ways of solving problems for real people, so that doesn't explain why some choose software development as their preferred method. Presumably, the reason for choosing software development as the method of solving problems for people is because software development itself brings joy. Different people find joy in di…

I'm probably just not as smart or creative as you, but say my problem is I have a ski cabin that I want to rent it to strangers for money. Nevermind a thousand, What are 100 ways without using software that I could do something about that, vs listing it on Airbnb?

I was speaking about solving people's problems generally. It's easy to find specific problems that are best addressed with software, just as it's easy to find specific problems that can't be addressed with software.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#293
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

People who can't spin pottery shouldn't be allowed to have bowls, especially mass produced by machine ones. I understand your point, but I think it is ultimately rooted in a romantic view of the world, rather than the practical truth we live in. We all live a life completely inundated with things we have no expertise in, available to us at almost trivial cost. In fact it is so prevalent that just about everyone takes…

Sounds like Communist Albania where everybody had to be able to repair the car and take it apart and put it back together to own one

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's usually a few years old and already obsolete - the frameworks and the language have gone through a gazillion changes and what you did in 2021 suddenly no longer works at all.

I mean, the training data also has a cutoff date and changed beyond that are not reflected in the code suggestions. Also, I know that people love to joke on modern software and JS in particular. But if you take react code from 2020 and drop it into a new react codebase it still works. Even class based components work. Yes, if you jumped on the newest framework bandwagon every time stuff will break all the time, but A…

True. But LLMs have access to the web. I’ve told ChatGPT plenty of times to verify an SDK API or if I knew the API was new, I just gave it a link to the documentation. This was mostly around various AWS SDKs

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#295
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already see this happening with low code, SaaS and MACH architectures. What used to be a project doing a CMS backend, now is spent doing configurations on a SaaS product, and if we are lucky, a few containers/serveless for integrations. There are already AI based products that can automate those integrations if given enough data samples. Many believe AI will keep using current programming languages as translation s…

> just like those Assembly developers thought compiling via Assembly text generation and feeding into an Assembly would still be around Confused by what you mean. Is this not the case?

No, only primitive UNIX toolchains still do this, most modern compilers generate machine code directly, without having to generate Assembly text files and executing the Assembler process on it.

You can naturally revert to old ways, by asking for the Assembly manually, and call the Assembler yourself.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

yes, that is one aspect of it.

1) refactoring. copy paste, re-arrange, extract, delete and rebuild the connection. i have the mental model and tell the LLM do do it across multiple files or classes. does it way faster and exactly how i would do it given the right prompt which is just a huge file that dictates how things are structured, style, weird edge cases i encountered as time goes on.

2) new features or sections based on existing. i have a service class and want to duplicate and wire up different sections across domains. not easy enough to just be templated, but LLM can do it and understand the nuances. again, generate multiple files across classes no problem.

i can do all these things "fast". i can do them even faster when using the LLM, it offloads the tediousness and i save my brian for other tasks. alot of times i'm just researching my next thing while it chugs away. i come back, lint and review and i'm good to go.

i'm honestly still writing the majority of the code myself, esp if it's like design stuff or new features where the requirements and direction aren't as clear, but when i need to it gives me a huge boost.

keeps me in the flow, i basically recharge while continuing to code. and it's not a small script but a full fledged app, albeit very straightforward architecture wise. the gains are very real. i'm just surprised at the sentiment on HN around it. it's not even just skepticism but outright dogging on it.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#297
post #63
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close, those were all deterministic, this is probabilistic.

The output of the LLM is probabilistic. The code you actually commit or merge is not.

Exactly. If LLMs were like higher level languages you'd be committing the prompt. LLMs are actually like auto-complete, snippets, stackoverflow and rosetta code. It's not a higher level of abstraction, it's a tool for writing code.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#298

Flow Management Flow comes when challenge meets skill Too much skill and too little challenge creates boredom; too little skill and too much challenge creates anxiety AI has reduced the challenge needed for achieving your goal, creating boredom Remedy: find greater challenges?

I will start by saying I don't have much experience with the latest AI coding tools.

From what I've seen using them would lead to more boredom. I like solving problems. I don't like doing code reviews. I wouldn't trust any AI generated code at this stage without reviewing it. If I could swap that around so I write code and AI gives me a reasonable code review and catches my mistakes I'd be much more interested.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love coding - but I am not very good at it. I can describe what I want in great detail, with great specificity. But I am not personally very good at turning that detailed specification into the proper syntax and incantations. AI is like jet fuel for me. It’s the translation layer between specs and code I’ve always wanted. It’s a great advisor for implementation strategies. It’s a way to try new strategies in code q…

This is really interesting to me. Do you love coding , or do you love creating programs ? It seems like the latter given your metaphor being a microphone to make you seem like you could sing well, i.e. wanting the end state itself rather than the achievement via the process. "wanted to sound like him" vs "wanted to sing like him"

I very much like creating programs.

The code is a tool. Nothing more.

I love the shed I built for my family. I don’t have a single feeling for the hammer I used to build it.

For the record: I can sing well. I just can’t sound like Tony Rice. I don’t have his vocal cords or training.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#300

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.

Yes, I have the same feeling about the wall/hype cycle. Most of my time is understanding code and formulating a plan to change code w/o breaking anything... even if LLMs would generate 100% perfect code on the first try, it would not help in a big way.

One thing I forgot to mention is asking LLMs questions from within the IDE instead of doing a web search... this works quite nice, but again, it is not a crazy productivity boost.

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