Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#321

Post by throwaway2037 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

andrelaszlo wrote: post #22

My most recent example of this is mentoring young, ambitious, but inexperienced interns. Not only did they produce about the same amount of code in a day that they used to produce in a week (or two), several other things made my work harder than before: - During review, they hadn't thought as deeply about their code so my comments seemed to often go over their heads. Instead of a discussion I'd get something like "go…

I see these posts on HN from time to time. Do you really think your code was any better when you were an intern? Mine was god awful. They probably binned all my work after each internship! I don't think an LLM makes them any worse.

Here is the crazy part: As a nearly neckbeard, there were no code reviews or PRs in my era. And mostly zero unit tests.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#322

Post by gopher_space » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #160

steveBK123 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dealt with a 4x as expensive statement-of-work fixed price contract that was nearshored and then subbed out to a revolving cast of characters. The SOW was so poorly specified that it was easy to maliciously comply with it, and it had no real acceptance tests. As a result legal didn't think IT would have a leg to stand on arguing with the vendor on the contract, and we ended up constantly re-negotiating on cost for…

I have seen the revolving cast of characters bit play out several times. It’s as if they hire 1 or 2 competent people and rotate them to face the client that is currently screaming the loudest. To be fair though, in your case it aounds like 51% (and maybe even 75+%) of the defect was in the specifications.

We found that any competent offshore contact would leave for a better job within a month.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#323

Post by nahumba » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

I disagree. Writing code was a bottle neck in software engineering. Code review is for code that doesnt hold the standards. Debuging is for code not written well. Integration is needed when you dont take to acoount the properties of the different parts

Specifications are the only missing part. And that is done through the question to the llm.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#324

Post by skeeter2020 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

>> LLMs are powerful — but they don’t fix the fundamentals

Sounds like we're (once again) rediscovering "No Silver Bullet".

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#325

Post by skeeter2020 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #141

oytis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess answering "you obviously didn't write it, please redo" is not an option, because then you are the dinosaur hindering company's march towards the AI future?

Honestly, I don't think it matters who wrote it; ultimately it's about the code and the product, not the individual author. That said, a lazy contribution - substandard code or poorly LLM generated - just wastes your time if your feedback is just put into the LLM again. Setting boundaries then is perfectly acceptable, but this isn't unique to LLMs.

I think there is actually a high positive correlation between quality and ownership though, so maybe it does matter who wrote it.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#326

Post by rat9988 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #325

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't think it matters who wrote it; ultimately it's about the code and the product, not the individual author. That said, a lazy contribution - substandard code or poorly LLM generated - just wastes your time if your feedback is just put into the LLM again. Setting boundaries then is perfectly acceptable, but this isn't unique to LLMs.

I think there is actually a high positive correlation between quality and ownership though, so maybe it does matter who wrote it.

It still doesn't matter. You don't reject it based on how it was written but the quality.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#327

Post by doug_durham » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

I think that the writer has it completely wrong. A lot of the "overhead" they describe came about precisely because software development was so precious and expensive. That will change now and LLMs can speed up the validation.

Finally LLMs makes code reading and understanding much easier and faster which is the exact opposite of what the writer claims.

It isn't going to be a work free utopia, but the write has the wrong framing of the situation.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#328

Post by exe34 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #241

exe34 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does that work as well with non-strangers who are your coworker? I'm not sure. I imagine if you have a say in their performance review, you might be able to set "writes code more thoughtfully" as a PIP?

No, because that's not measurable

It's measurable in the number of times you have to spend >x minutes to help them go through something they should have written up by themselves. You can count the number of times you have to look at something and tell them "do it again, but without LLM this time". At some point you fire them.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#329

Post by Sammi » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

LunicLynx wrote: post #226

Sammi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm expecting to see so much more poor quality software being made. We're going to be swimming in an ocean of bad software. Good experienced devs will be able to make better software, but so many inexperienced devs will be regurgitating so much more lousy software at a pace never seen before, it's going to be overwhelming. Or as the original commenter described, they're already being overwhelmed.

Did anyone say react in the windows start menu? Folks, we already have bad software. Everywhere. And nobody cares.

Windows usage share is slowly and surely falling. People care, they're just slow to realise.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

If you want to sell high quality software, then you must be patient. Several decades worth of patient.

Re: Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

#330

Post by bornfreddy » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #313

p_v_doom wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good experienced devs will be able to make better software I lowkey disagree. I think good experienced devs will be pressured to write worse software or be bottlenecked by having to deal with bad software. Depends on company and culture of course. But consider that you as expereinced dev now have to explain things that go completely over the head of the junior devs, and most likely the manager/PO, so you become the…

I think the recent post about the Cloudflare engineer who built an OAuth implementation, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159166 , shows otherwise (note the Cloudflare engineer, kentonv, comments a bunch in the discussion). The author, who is clearly an expert, said it took him days to complete what would have taken him weeks or months to write manually. I love that thread because it clearly shows both the bene…

There was also a review of that code about a week later [0] which highlights the problems with LLM-generated code.

Even looking strictly at coding, the hard thing about programming is not writing the code. It is understanding the problem and figuring out an elegant and correct solution, and LLM can't replace that process. They can help with ideas though.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215667