> This also: AI slowing down completion time by 19% - https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
Not sure which one is true
Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
341–350 of 388 posts
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'll be more detailed in my second reply. 1) Your original post asks a lot if not too much out the LLM, the expectation you have is too big, to the point that to get anywhere near decent results you need a super detailed prompt (if not several spec documents) and your conclusion stands true: it might be faster to just do it manually. That's the state of LLMs as of today. Your post neither hints at such detailed and l…
This is a kind of nuts take;
- Senior engineer
- Uses tools for non trivial undertaking
- Didn't find value in it
Your conclusion from that is "but they are doing it wrong", while also claiming they are saying things they didn't say (0 net benefits, useless, etc).
Do you see how that might undermine your point? That you feel they haven't take the time to understand the tools, but you didn't actually read what what wrote?
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strangely I've found myself more exhausted at the end of the week and I think it's because of the constant supervision necessary to stop Claude from colouring outside the lines when I don't watch it like a hawk. Also I tend to get more done at a time, it makes it easier to get started on "gruntwork" tasks that I would have procrastinated on. Which in turn can lead to burnout quite quickly. I think in the end it's jus…
Now we just need an AI that helps with more quality.
No, what I want better is tooling that makes supervising and getting insight into what it's doing a superior experience.
A far more interactive coding "agent" that makes sure it walks through every change it makes with you, and doesn't just rush through tasks. That helps team members come up to speed on a repository by working through it with them.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#344Earlier 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…
I have been coding and athletic training for about as long as eachother, your anecdote works. However just like in physical training, you should really spare your energy for stuff that you enjoy and actually progresses you.
By using LLMs to do some of the stuff I have long gotten over, I have a bit more mental energy to tackle new problems I wouldn't have previously.
As well LLMs just aren't actually that competent yet, so it's not like devs are completely hands off. Since I barely do boilerplate as I work across legacy projects, there's no way Claude Code today is writing half my code.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because if part of my tests involve calling an OpenAI endpoint, I don't want to pay .01 cent every time I run my tests. Because my tests shouldn't fail when a 3rd party dependency is down. Because I want to be able to fake failure conditions from my dependencies. Because unit tests have value and mocks make unit tests fast and useful. Even my integration tests have some mocks in them, especially for any services that…
> Because if part of my tests involve calling an OpenAI endpoint, I don't want to pay .01 cent every time I run my tests. This is a good time to think to yourself: do I need these dependencies? Can I replace them with something that doesn't expose vendor risk? These are very real questions that large enterprises grapple with. In general (but not always), orgs that view technology as the product (or product under test…
> This is a good time to think to yourself: do I need these dependencies? Can I replace them with something that doesn't expose vendor risk?
Given that my current projects all revolve solely around using LLMs to do things, yes I need them.
The entire purpose of the code is to call into LLMs and do something useful with the output. That said I need to gracefully handle failures, handle OpenAI giving me back trash results (forgetting fields even though they are marked required in the schema, etc), or just the occasional service outage.
Also integration tests only make sense once I have an entire system to integrate. Unit tests let me know that the file I just wrote works.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#346As a developer with over 30 years of experience, I face a dilemma when asked "how much AI code do you commit"?
a) Answer "a lot". This answer supports the notion that developers are a dying breed and soon everyone will be able to vibe code their own personal software. Which at this point is obviously false. This answer is detrimental to my job.
b) Answer "not much". Then this gets interpreted as "he's an old fart, he can't learn new things, we should be thinking of retiring him". Which is (hopefully) false. Which is - again - detrimental to my job.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Not only that, but the process described is how you train a junior dev.
There, at least, the wasted time results in the training of a human being who can become sophisticated enough to become a trusted independent implementer in a relatively short duration
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#348[deleted]
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Your time isn't free, and I'd certainly with more than $20/month.
I find it extremely useful as a smarter autocomplete, especially for the tedious work - changing function definitions, updating queries when DB schema changes, and writing http requests/api calls from vendor/library documentation.
Re: Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
But LLMs can make the soul crushing part so much easier. I need to add a FooController to an existing application, to store FooModels to the database. The controller needs the basic CRUD endpoints, etc. I can spend a day doing it (crushing my soul) or I can just tell any Agentic LLM to do it and no something that doesn't crush my soul, like talk with the customer about how the FooModels will be used after storing. "B…
If the mechanics of the work are “soul-crushing,” isn’t that the root cause, and the LLM is just a bandaid? I’m not saying every professional dev is enthused with all their tasks. But if you’re so eager to avoid parts of the job (however rote they are), then maybe it’s time for something new? I can’t write this without feeling preachy, and I apologize for that. But I keep reading a profound lack of agency in comments…
It’s a necessary part of the job.
Like no mechanic gets pleasure from an oil change or tire rotation. They’d rather figure out an issue with an old V8
But they do it because that’s a part of the job.