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AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

blundergoat.com

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Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#291

Post by Forgeties79 »

hippo22 wrote: post #17
Forgeties79 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so intriguing, I wonder if the people who are against it haven't even used it properly. I feel like this is a common refrain that sets an impossible bar for detractors to clear. You can simply hand wave away any critique with “you’re just not using it right.” If countless people are “using it wrong” then maybe there’s something wrong with the tool.

> If countless people are “using it wrong” then maybe there’s something wrong with the tool. Not really. Every tool in existence has people that use it incorrectly. The fact that countless people find value in the tool means it probably is valuable.

Not saying the tool doesn’t have value. I’m saying the tool has a problem.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#292

Post by [deleted] »

airstrike wrote: post #131
wtetzner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a strawman. Most criticisms of AI for coding are about how overblown the claimed benefits are, not that there are no benefits.

While that may very well be true, it's a valid reply to the GP who made this claim, not to my comment explaining to the parent why their argument was logically flawed.

[deleted]

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#293

Post by Forgeties79 »

potsandpans wrote: post #29
rileymichael wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of people with poor programming experience could get together and start claiming their new tool is the future. Doesn’t mean the tool is actually useful, no matter how many people join the community.

Except my analogy is correct and yours is clearly biased. Continue to not use the tools and become irrelevant.

I don’t think yours is correct or that theirs is biased.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#294

Post by theredbeard »

Skipping the investigation phase to jump straight to solutions has killed projects for decades. Requirements docs nobody reads, analysis nobody does, straight to coding because that feels like progress. AI makes this pattern incredibly attractive: you get something that looks like a solution in seconds. Why spend hours understanding the problem when you can have code right now?

The article's point about AI code being "someone else's code" hits different when you realize neither of you built the context. I've been measuring what actually happens inside AI coding sessions; over 60% of what the model sees is file contents and command output, stuff you never look at. Nobody did the work of understanding by building / designing it. You're reviewing code that nobody understood while writing it, and the model is doing the same.

This is why the evaluation problem is so problematic. You skipped building context to save time, but now you need that context to know if the output is any good. The investigation you didn't do upfront is exactly what you need to review the AI's work.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#295

Post by nananana9 »

socketcluster wrote: post #27

I think AI is just a massive force multiplier. If your codebase has bad foundation and going in the wrong direction with lots of hacks, it will just write code which mirrors the existing style... And you get exactly was OP is suggesting. If however, your code foundations are good and highly consistent and never allow hacks, then the AI will maintain that clean style and it becomes shockingly good; in this case, the p…

This does not track with my experience, trying agents out in a ~100K LOC codebase written exclusively by me. I can't tell you whether nor not it has a good foundation by your standards, but I find the outputs to be tasteless, and there should be more than enough context for what the style of the code is.

Given how adamant some people I respect a lot are about how good these models are, I was frankly shocked to see SOA models do transformations like

  BEFORE:
    // 20 lines

  AFTER
    if (something)
        // the 20 lines
    else
        // the same 20 lines, one boolean changed in the middle
When I point this out, it extracts said 20 lines into a function that takes in the entire context used in the block as arguments:

  AFTER 2:
    if (something)
       function_that_will_never_be_used_anywhere_else(a, b, c, &d, &e, &f, true);
    else
       function_that_will_never_be_used_anywhere_else(a, b, c, &d, &e, &f, false);
It also tends to add these comments that don't document anything, but rather just describe the latest change it did to the code:

  // Extracted repeating code into a function:
  void function_that_will_never_be_used_anywhere_else(...) {
      ...
  }
and to top it off it has the audacity to tell me "The code is much cleaner now. Happy building! (rocketship emoji)"

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#296

Post by miningape »

sdf2erf wrote: post #88
rootusrootus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his use cases for LLMs at the time were summarizing emails in his email client Sounds just like my manager. Though he never has made a proclamation that this meant developers should be 10x as productive or anything along those lines. On the contrary, when I made a joke about LLMs being able to replace managers before they get anywhere near replacing developers, he nearly hyperventilated. Not because he didn't belie…

" we will have replaced a lot of other people first." This is flat out wrong and shows your lack of respect and understanding for other jobs.

Seems you don't like it much when the shoe is on the other foot

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#297

Post by thechao »

thedevilslawyer wrote: post #229
vohk wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't offer an example of code, but considering researchers were able to cause models to reproduce literary works verbatim, it seems unlikely that a git repository would be materially different. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/ai-memorizati...

Assuming that even works from a researcher's perspective, it's working back from a specific goal. There's 0 actual instances (and I've been looking) where verbatim code has been spat out. It's a convenient criticism of LLMs, but a wrong one. We need to do better.

I don't know code examples, but this tracks, for me. Anytime I have an agent write something "obvious" and crazy hard -- say a new compiler for a new language? Golden. I ask it to write a fairly simple stack invariant version of an old algorithm using a novel representation (topology) using a novel construction (free module) ... zip. It's 200loc, and after 20+ attempts, I've given up.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#298

Post by wtetzner »

airstrike wrote: post #131
wtetzner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a strawman. Most criticisms of AI for coding are about how overblown the claimed benefits are, not that there are no benefits.

While that may very well be true, it's a valid reply to the GP who made this claim, not to my comment explaining to the parent why their argument was logically flawed.

Except that the GP didn't claim that AI had no value?

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#299

Post by koliber »

The article is gone, but going off the title here...

If the easy stuff takes up 90% of the time, and the hard stuff 10%, then AI can be helpful. Personally, I can do "the easy stuff" with AI about 3-5x faster. So now I have a lot more free time for the hard stuff.

I don't let the AI near the hard stuff as it often gets confused and I don't save much time. I might still use it as a thought partner, but don't give it access to make changes.

Example: this morning I combined two codebases into one. I wrote both of them and had a good understanding of how everything worked. I had an opinion about some things I wanted to change while combining the two projects. I also had a strong opinion about how I wanted the two projects to interact with each other. I think it would have taken me about 2 workdays to get this done. Instead, with AI tooling, I got it done in 3 or so hours. I fired up another LLM to do the code review, and it found some stuff both I and the other LLM missed. This was valuable as a person developing things solo.

It freed up time for me to post on HN. :)

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#300

Post by Forgeties79 »

airstrike wrote: post #131
wtetzner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a strawman. Most criticisms of AI for coding are about how overblown the claimed benefits are, not that there are no benefits.

While that may very well be true, it's a valid reply to the GP who made this claim, not to my comment explaining to the parent why their argument was logically flawed.

Just because you disagree with me doesn’t mean my argument is “logically flawed.” And as the other commenter said, I never said AI had no value. I have used various AI tools for probably 4 years now.

If you’re going to talk to and about people in such a condescending way then you at least ask clarifying questions before jumping to the starkest, least charitable interpretation of their point.

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