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I’m spending months coding the old way

miguelconner.substack.com

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Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#331

Post by t43562 »

badc0ffee wrote: post #70
SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does depend on who you are; If you're a senior with 10+ years of experience, it's a failure of your abilities to cut your losses or know when to seek help if you take far too long debugging something. But for juniors, it's invaluable experience. And as a field we're already seeing problems resulting from the new generations of juniors being taught with modern web development, whose complexity is very obstructing…

There are definitely situations where you can't ask for help and you can't turn your back on the bug. I worked on a project that depended on an open source but deprecated/unmaintained Linux kernel module that we used for customers running RHEL[1]. There were a number of serious bugs causing panics that we encountered, but only for certain customers with high VFS workloads. I spent days to a week+ on each one, reading…

For sure! I had a bug that crashed our system once every 14 days or so and every coredump had a different stack trace. The "star programmer" managed to shift the bug onto me, the newbie graduate, after failing. This was a long time ago and I had to sort of invent fuzz-testing (as far as I knew!) to reproduce the problem in a short enough time that it could be debugged. That bug took weeks to find and there was nobody to help and only a manager kicking my arse every day. Instead of a medal I got brickbats for solving it but they did carry on using my testing system...

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#332

Post by t43562 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #110
grebc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s always the journey that matters. If you’re experienced as you are, you’re not learning the same way a junior assigned this might learn from it.

So the project I mentioned while I did write every single line of app code and IAC, made every architectural decision, etc., I did come on an off the project over the course of a year and I couldn’t even remember some of the decisions I made. I also used Codex and asked questions about how the codebase worked to refresh my own memory. Why wouldn’t a junior developer do the same? I mentioned that I had Codex describe…

It's what managers or team leads experience. They have a team that work on the code and even if they used to know what was going on they end up doing everything second hand and they don't realise when the project is going wrong technically because they aren't spending the time to build knowledge and it all looks reasonable from 5000 feet.

They start to make questionable decisions based on how they think things are. I have done this. Getting back into development allowed me to see what was going wrong, why changes were difficult and what we needed to do to test properly.

Hurray, you're an AI manager now but be careful how much you decide to not look "in the box" especially if you're trying to come up with release dates and so on.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#333

Post by josh_s »

bsaul wrote: post #307
jimbokun wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why whiteboards used to be so popular in many/most tech company offices. Doing this exact same process interactively with other people, and a not to NOT ERASE or later taking a picture of the whiteboard with your phone.

"used to be" ?? What are engineering team doing nowadays when discussing architecturing their systems ?

Miro.com is one of the few SaaS products that our team's collaboration could not live without.

Perfect for a distributed team to replace the DO NOT ERASE white boards of yore.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#334

Post by oasisaimlessly »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #89
Trasmatta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES. I don't know how many multi WEEK sessions of debugging I've been through in my career. Frustrating, but so many valuable lessons learned in the process. LLMs are absolutely causing us to lose something very important.

And if I were your boss you would immediately be fired if you spent weeks trying to debug an issue a junior developer solved just by launching Claude and telling it the symptoms of the issue because you refused to use an LLM.

I'm an actual boss, and wasting a week is cause for a 30-minute post-mortem, not immediate termination.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#335

Post by t43562 »

pretzel5297 wrote: post #271
octagons wrote: post #268

I think the author’s intent is well-placed, but it does feel a bit sad that this subject is blog-worthy. I’ve spent a lifetime teaching myself programming, computers, and engineering. I have no formal education in these disciplines and find that I excel due to the self-taught nature of my background. I take a very metered approach to AI and use it for autocomplete while still scrutinizing every token (not the AI kind…

> I simply don’t do anything that won’t teach me something new or improve my existing skills. Not trying to be rude but you either must not be a professional software engineer or your skill level isn't that high yet. You simply cannot always do things that teach you new skills or improve existing ones. In any sufficiently complex project, even the most novel ones, you'll do things you've done many times before.

I think professionals are almost always doing things that are at least 30% new...otherwise they've had a long time in one job which is a fortunate thing nowadays.

My last job started with "here's a book about go programming." 2 years later I was learning FastAPI. Now I'm programming in C again but I have spent most of my time learning about git actions and writing SCCS->git conversion software. I've never used SCCS before.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#336

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

t43562 wrote: post #332
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the project I mentioned while I did write every single line of app code and IAC, made every architectural decision, etc., I did come on an off the project over the course of a year and I couldn’t even remember some of the decisions I made. I also used Codex and asked questions about how the codebase worked to refresh my own memory. Why wouldn’t a junior developer do the same? I mentioned that I had Codex describe…

It's what managers or team leads experience. They have a team that work on the code and even if they used to know what was going on they end up doing everything second hand and they don't realise when the project is going wrong technically because they aren't spending the time to build knowledge and it all looks reasonable from 5000 feet. They start to make questionable decisions based on how they think things are. I…

Before AI, I didn’t know how each line of code worked for a project I was responsible for but the work was done by lower level developers. If I had a question about how they implemented something I would ask them to walk me through it and give feedback - just like my CTO did with me when I was responsible for leading major initiatives. It’s been over a decade (before AI) where my responsibilities were only what I personally coded.

I treat AI just like a mid level developer ticket taker.

To a first approximation, no one gets ahead in corporate America or BigTech (been there done that) because they “codez real gud” and pull tickets off of a Jira board.

In the last decade+, I’ve been a early technical hire to lead a major initiative by a new manager/director/CTO respectively and none of them were interested in asking me questions about my coding ability. We spoke like seasoned professionals.

Even at my job in BigTech in the cloud consulting department (full time, RSU earning blue badge employee specializing in cloud + app dev) it was behavioral where they wanted to determine if I “were smart and got things done” [1]. My job after that where I am now as a staff consultant (full time employee) leading projects the interview was concerned about getting work done on time, on budget, meets requirements and whether the customer was happy with my results. Absolutely no one in the value chain cares about hand crafted bespoke code as long as it meets functional and non functional (security, scalability, usability, etc) requirements.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#337

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

oasisaimlessly wrote: post #334
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if I were your boss you would immediately be fired if you spent weeks trying to debug an issue a junior developer solved just by launching Claude and telling it the symptoms of the issue because you refused to use an LLM.

I'm an actual boss, and wasting a week is cause for a 30-minute post-mortem, not immediate termination.

I am a lead consultant and depending on the size of the project, I do have a team of less senior consultants who are dotted line reports. If I ever found one of my reports who missed deadlines because they refused to do something as simple as launch Claude (with our $5000 a month allowance a piece) and ask it to debug an issue, yes I would write them up.

There is a direct easy to measure line about the revenue that anyone below me makes the company. My revenue per hour isn’t as exact since I support pre-sales and follow on work.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#338

Post by whateveracct »

booleandilemma wrote: post #328
whateveracct wrote: post #324

i feel like i'm being gaslit into believing that coding was ever hard or the bottleneck. Typing and thinking in English is demonstrably slower than in code/the abstract (Haskell for me.) And no, I didn't write English plans before AI. Or have a stream of English thought in my head. Or even pronounce code as I read and wrote it. That's low-skill stuff.

It's the opposite. Coding was, and is, still hard. If you don't believe me go do an Advent of Code challenge after day 15. LLMs have tricked everyone into believing coding is easy.

I'm confused though. I have never like spent hours at a time coding at my job or side projects. And yet I keep building stuff..

I tried LLMs because of AI fomo by my CEO. "Opus 4.whatever is a stepwise improvement - I am convinced all coders who don't go all-in on AI will be obsolete soon." Multiple times I tried. Every time Claude creates crap and I have to spend a bunch of time correcting it in a loop. Or basically scripting it. And it's like..I never spent this much time thinking or actively working before.

So I'm back to being natty and I am delivering more and have more time during the workday to spend with my wife and kid and video games etc.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#339

Post by scarface_74 »

mindcrime wrote: post #186
scarface_74 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My responsibility is to make sure my code meets functional and non functional requirements. It’s to understand the *behavior*. My automated unit, integration, and load tests confirm that. Someone thought I was naive when I said my vibe coded internal web admin site met the security requirements without looking at a line of code. I knew that because the requirements were that anyone who had access to the site could do…

> My automated unit, integration, and load tests confirm that. Do they? Did you write them? If not, how do you know they confirm the desired behavior? If your tests are AI generated (and not human reviewed) then even if you're doing spec-driven development and provide a comprehensive spec, how can you be sure the tests actually test the desired behavior? Now if you're either writing or reviewing the tests, then sure.…

I review AI generated test of AI just like I reviewed tests of developers on a team I was leading.

There is no “morality” when it comes to my job. Outside of my feeling morally obligated to give my employer the benefit of all my accumulated skills for 40-45 hours a week in exchange for the money (and in a previous life RSUs) in my account.

I feel accountable to my coworkers and customers to deal with them fairly and honestly.

What other moral obligation should I have besides my employer, coworkers and customers?

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#340

Post by t43562 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #336
t43562 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what managers or team leads experience. They have a team that work on the code and even if they used to know what was going on they end up doing everything second hand and they don't realise when the project is going wrong technically because they aren't spending the time to build knowledge and it all looks reasonable from 5000 feet. They start to make questionable decisions based on how they think things are. I…

Before AI, I didn’t know how each line of code worked for a project I was responsible for but the work was done by lower level developers. If I had a question about how they implemented something I would ask them to walk me through it and give feedback - just like my CTO did with me when I was responsible for leading major initiatives. It’s been over a decade (before AI) where my responsibilities were only what I per…

Of course. You've had to give up and operate at the people level and it works because all those above you are doing that even more so.

...and you want to get ahead.

But you've made a trade off and to think otherwise would be a mistake. Someone else has to straddle the line that you're floating above and obviously part of your job is to get hold of such people.

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