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Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

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Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#301

Post by t_mahmood »

stavros wrote: post #282
Rochus wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on old hardware and not-recent Linux and compiler versions, and I have no confidence yet in allowing AI direct (write) access to my repositories. Instead I provided Claude with the source code of a transpiler to C (one file) which is known to work, uses the same IR as the new code generators were supposed to use. This is a controlled experiment with a clear and complete input and clear expectations and sp…

I use Claude Code with the Max plan, and the experience isn't far off from what you describe. You still need to understand the system and review the implementation, because it makes many mistakes. That's not the part it saves me time in, it saves me time in looking up the documentation. Other than that, it might be slower, because the larger the code change is, the more time I need to spend reviewing, and past a poin…

So, I am paying $20, for a glorified code generator, that may or may not be correct, to write a small function that I can do for free, and be confident about the correctness, if I have not been lazy to implement a test for it.

If you point out, with test it's also the same with any AI tool available, but to come to that result, I have to continuously prompt it till it gives me the desired output, while I may be able to do it in 2/3 iterations.

Reading documentation always made me little bit knowledgeable than before, while prompting the LLM, gives me nothing of knowledge.

And, I also have to decide which LLM would be good for the task at hand, and most of them will not be free (unless I use a local, but that will also use GPU, and add an energy cost)

I may be nitpicking, but I see too many holes with this approach

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#302

Post by epolanski »

Rochus wrote: post #228

The article claims, that senior developers with over 10 years of experience are more than twice as likely to heavily rely on AI tools compared to their junior counterparts. No p-values or statistical significance tests are reported in either The Register article or Fastly's original blog post. I have over 30 years of experience and recently used Claude Opus 4.1 (via browser and claude.ai) to generate an ECMA-335 and…

Imho your post summarizes 90% of the posts I see about AI coding on HN: not understanding the tools, not understanding their strenghts and weaknesses, not being good at prompting or context management yet forming strong(ish) opinions.

If you don't know what they are good at and how to use them of course you may end up with mixed results and yes, you may waste time.

That's a criticism I have also towards AI super enthusiasts (especially vibe coders, albeit you won't find much here), they often confuse the fact that LLMs often one shot 80% of the solutions with the idea that LLMs are 80% there, whereas the Pareto principle well applies to software development where it's the hardest 20% that's gonna prove difficult.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#303

Post by codingdave »

> Senior developers were also more likely to say they invest time fixing AI-generated code.

That quote is the key - even if 1/3 of senior devs are pushing mostly AI-driven code, they are checking it first. And while the survey did not cover it, I suspect they are using their experience to decide which areas of a codebase are commonplace enough that AI can handle it vs. which areas are unique and require coding without AI.

People are learning when to use AI as a helpful tool and when not to.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#304

Post by quickthrowman »

theshrike79 wrote: post #215
darkwater wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the folks on the "reduce mental burden", "reduce cognitive load" train, are you all aware that this basically means you are exercising less your brain day in and day out, and in the end you will forget how to do things? You will learn how to guide an AI agent, but until the day an AI agent is perfect (and we don't know if we will ever see that day), you are just losing inch by inch your ability to actually un…

This, to me, feels like you're complaining to the 45 year old builder that they should be using a hammer instead of a nail gun. I know how to nail a nail, I've nailed so many nails that I can't remember them all. My job is to build a house efficiently, not nail nails. Anything that can make me more efficient at it is a net positive. Now I've saved 2 hours in the framing process by using a nail gun, I have 2 extra hou…

The builder still needs to study the plans and build a mental model of what they’re building.

A nailgun isn’t automated in the way an LLM is, maybe if it moved itself around and fired nails where it thought they should go based on things it had seen in the past it would be a better comparison.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#305

Post by Rochus »

epolanski wrote: post #302
Rochus wrote: post #228

The article claims, that senior developers with over 10 years of experience are more than twice as likely to heavily rely on AI tools compared to their junior counterparts. No p-values or statistical significance tests are reported in either The Register article or Fastly's original blog post. I have over 30 years of experience and recently used Claude Opus 4.1 (via browser and claude.ai) to generate an ECMA-335 and…

Imho your post summarizes 90% of the posts I see about AI coding on HN: not understanding the tools, not understanding their strenghts and weaknesses, not being good at prompting or context management yet forming strong(ish) opinions. If you don't know what they are good at and how to use them of course you may end up with mixed results and yes, you may waste time. That's a criticism I have also towards AI super enth…

I'm pretty good at prompting and I successfully use Perplexity (mostly with Claude Sonnet 4) to develop concepts, sometimes with the same session expanded over several days. I think the user interface is much superior over Claude.ai. My hope was that the newer Claude Opus 4.1 would be much better in solving complicated coding tasks, which doesn't seem to be the case. For this I had to subscribe to claude.ai. Actually I didn't see much difference in performance, but a much worse UI and availability experience. When it comes to developing a complex topic in a factual dialogue, Claude Sonnet Thinking seems to me to be even more suitable than Claude Opus.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#307

Post by cc62cf4a4f20 »

I've been coding professionally for almost 30 years. I use Claude Code heavily, even for larger features. To get that to work half-decent, you have to take on a PM/Tech-lead role, you're no longer a senior engineer.

For large pieces of work, I will iterate with CC to generate a feature spec. It's usually pretty good at getting you most of the way there first shot and then either have it tweak things or manually do so.

Implementation is having CC first generate a plan, and iterating with it on the plan - a bit like mentoring a junior, except CC won't remember anything after a little while. Once you get the plan in place, then CC is generally pretty good at getting through code and tests, etc. You'll still have to review it after for all the reasons others have mentioned, but in my experience, it'll get through it way faster than I would on my own.

To parallelize some of the work, I often have Visual Studio Code open to monitor what's happening while it's working so I can redirect early if necessary. It also allows me to get a head start on the code review.

I will admit that I spent a lot of time iterating on my way of working to get to where I am, and I don't feel at all done (CC has workflows and subagents to help with common tasks that I haven't fully explored yet). I think the big thing is that tools like CC allow us to work in new ways but we need to shift our mindset and invest time in learning how to use these tools.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#308

Post by FpUser »

My programming background - started from machine codes. Did everything - business desktop, high performance game like apps, firmware for microcontrollers, web front ends, high performance enterprise grade backends, distributed etc. etc. Multiple languages. So lots of experience. Now I use AI quite extensively to generate snippets / classes of code with small and well defined functionality. Most of the time it works just fine and due to my extensive experience I could quickly spot wrong approach, inefficiency, potential issues etc. After telling AI to fix whatever if any problems I've found I usually satisfied with the solution. So overall AI has become a very valuable tool for me, saves gobbles of time. How much exactly - do not really know / care.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#309

Post by rr808 »

darkwater wrote: post #212
danielvaughn wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I’m still not more productive. Maybe 10% more. But it alleviates a lot of mental energy, which is very nice at the age of 40.

For all the folks on the "reduce mental burden", "reduce cognitive load" train, are you all aware that this basically means you are exercising less your brain day in and day out, and in the end you will forget how to do things? You will learn how to guide an AI agent, but until the day an AI agent is perfect (and we don't know if we will ever see that day), you are just losing inch by inch your ability to actually un…

You're right, but usually at the end of the day I'm completely mentally exhausted and dont want to talk to anyone. Its something I've realized is a big problem in my life. I'm actively trying to reduce mental load to leave stuff for other hobbies and social activities.

Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

#310

Post by RianAtheer »

I’m not surprised. AI tools have become such a huge time saver. I use them a lot too, but I still double check everything to keep quality high. I read an article on finance gossips called “The Rise of AI in Banking: Friend or Foe”, and it really put this into perspective. AI’s growth in finance shows how quickly it is reshaping industries, so seeing devs rely on AI for half their code makes total sense. Like in banking, it’s not about replacing humans but creating smarter systems, as long as we manage trust, ethics, and transparency, it’s a tool to level us up, not phase us out.
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