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Using AI to write better code more slowly

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Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#371

Post by gitaarik »

tikhonj wrote: post #329
zendist wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> models write much better code than humans can What? I think this is either over exaggerating model capabilities or you haven't seen much good code from humans? My experience is that my colleagues which have bought into model-first development have regressed in quality of the PRs they send out. LLMs are not better coders, in my experience. They lack holistic understanding and often need course correction for that re…

Over my time in the industry I've become increasingly convinced most people haven't seen what good human programmers are like. Otherwise we wouldn't have the popularity of things like Scrum, Clean Code (the book, not the concept), etc. I was lucky enough to see some good teams when I was a student (both at Berkeley itself and by interning at Jane Street), and it totally changed my intuition for what good programming…

That's an interesting point, and maybe that actually also explains the difference of people that believe that AI is making them more productive and people that believe it doesn't; if you never think about the architecture, then it becomes more slop over time, and it becomes harder to do anything. If you do think about architecture, development becomes easier and faster all the time. AI just accelerates both processes.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#372

Post by abalashov »

I'm pretty intensely disinterested in "agentic" coding. However, this was very much the inspiration behind the custom Claude-backed Goose agent I deployed into some of our Gitea repositories over Christmas--the less sensitive ones, of course, I'm not sending our proprietary code to Dario.

It does short and sweet code reviews, and going back and forth with it is, as often as not, slower than just typing and merging the code.

I'm quite pleased with it as a middle ground.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#374

Post by abalashov »

59nadir wrote: post #265
scosman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes exactly. Too many people ask AI to one-shot complex tasks, and wonder it behaves like a junior asked to rush something. I have my own skill: 5 rounds of research/planning/test-planning. Interactive with me in loop for all important decisions. Starts with high level shape, then details. Planning can take 2-3 days of my time, then the implementation agent can take many hours (Opus 4.7). It splits the implementation…

My personal experience with trying to front-load tons of planning and speccing out with LLMs is that at best it's a small improvement on code quality but with considerably more time spent. As a result I've abandoned the idea of having LLMs generate code except for very small, localized and tightly scoped things. They really can't produce much more than a function or a small module without shitting the bed (last time…

I expect you'll be told to try Opus 4.7, and in short, JuSt WaiT FoR ThE NexT MoDel, BRo.

This has been my experience every time I've suggested that there are any sort of inherent ontological/conceptual or computational limits to the sophistication of LLM mimicry.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#375

Post by 3836293648 »

mhluongo wrote: post #42
deadbabe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the 5x faster including shipping? Or just the work part? IMO if you are not shipping out faster then the faster work gains are meaningless. If you are shipping faster, you’re probably picking up more work and shipping everything too fast leading to burnout.

If you're not shipping faster, it's meaningless, and if you are, it's also bad?

If you're not shipping faster it's meaningless for the company.

And if you are, it's bad for the employee.

Is what the above comment actually said.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#376

Post by ggregoire »

TACIXAT wrote: post #30

This article doesn't address writing code with AI, just code review. My issue with agentic coding is that I make numerous micro-architectural decisions while programming. I almost never have a full spec up front and develop one as I consider what I am writing. When using Claude Code or Codex, that is all gone. Claude Code is extremely eager to reach the end goal to the point that it feels like a fever dream to write…

> On top of that, I enjoy programming, reverse engineering, etc. and I feel that the LLMs, while able to solve some problems or deliver some features, take that fun away.

Same, I prefer asking one or multiple very technical questions to Gemini, analyze, compare and understand the responses then implement it myself based on what I learned (or just integrate it to the codebase as it is, if I asked it to write a function) than delegating away all the fun to an agent.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#378

Post by isabelc »

bottlepalm wrote: post #4

I've hit this point with AI where it's not a simple process, but a long drawn out back and forth. I'll use AI to design the implementation of a medium sized, cross cutting feature. Review all the details, maybe iterate on just that. Then implement with Claude 4.7 Max - which runs slower, but does a better job. Then review the implementation, then have Codex GPT 5.5 xhigh fast review it - which almost always finds cor…

Your comment begins like ai slop.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#379

Post by miki123211 »

Each time a new technology comes around, we seem to forget all the lessons we learned before. We them re-learn them again, much more quickly and just as painfully.

The same thing happened with crypto. Crypto started with some correct assumptions like "online services that stop working when it's a holiday are ridiculous", "it should be possible to send money to a friend without your government knowing about it", or "money transfers cost nothing to execute, so they should cost nothing." It then promptly threw out the entire framework of banking regulations, quickly re-learning why most of those regulations existed in the first place.

Re: Using AI to write better code more slowly

#380

Post by [deleted] »

miki123211 wrote: post #379

Each time a new technology comes around, we seem to forget all the lessons we learned before. We them re-learn them again, much more quickly and just as painfully. The same thing happened with crypto. Crypto started with some correct assumptions like "online services that stop working when it's a holiday are ridiculous", "it should be possible to send money to a friend without your government knowing about it", or "m…

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