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Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

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Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#371

Post by devsda »

bigbuppo wrote: post #332

Also... if your workflow is "think hard, let LLM write it, read what AI wrote, think hard about what AI wrote, re-type what AI wrote, fix what AI wrote"... Where in the heck are the efficiency gains? Couldn't you just drop the LLM part of it and save the company a trillion dollars in tokens?

> Where in the heck are the efficiency gains?

It has been the opposite for us. It is now being weaponized by PMs and leads to add more work for developers and not less in terms of documentation and sign-offs.

Now stories automatically have additional 10 subtasks for documentation and tracking. These are created automatically through "skills" and the task of detailed documentation and updating those extra tasks is a chore. When complained, they just say "use AI". Every JIRA task these days feels like submitting a petition to the government bureaucracy.

PMs are happy because they did something new, leaders are happy for more tracking, developers are expected to be happy with "productivity gains" due to not having to write much code.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#372

Post by gxs »

I don’t know it feels like some og programmers would say the same thing about people who can’t program machine language

Code quality is only going to get better and to be perfectly honest learning how to get the llm to generate quality output is IMO time much better spent vs some misguided attempt to do something by hand — the prompting is the better skill to develop at this point and if you’re worried about atrophy it’s probably your least developed skill

Instead I focus on reading the plan and making sure I understand it, opening up a second session for second opinions or questions if I have gem

This obviously depends on where in the stack you live but code quality is accelerating at a significant rate - decision making not as much and it’s where your value is imo

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#373

Post by redleader55 »

Right ... While we do that, let's also retype the assembly code the compiler produces, do the linking manually and check you got the same result as the linker, and then finally write the bytes yourself. Whether or not you manually bit-bang à la Morse code the bits to storage is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#374

Post by aucisson_masque »

> might not be the most efficient way to work with an LLM, but I value comprehension over productivity.

LLM are becoming so good that they are better than us at understanding code. And it's only going to get worst every year.

I think that the job of 'coding' is done, it's dying and will be effectively dead in a decade.

You better find ways to make yourself usable around LLM work but not by doing what LLM already do.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#375

Post by drtgh »

spike021 wrote: post #325
estebarb wrote: post #112

This will cause cognitive debt anyway. As mentioned in https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.21972v1 : "When students rely on these outputs as a substitute for their own reasoning or critical engagement, the learning process is fundamentally compromised. Genuine learning requires the active construction of meaning, integration of knowledge, and reflective engagement with content. These processes cannot occur through passive con…

In a way it's not so different from learning in school. There were definitely times I read a textbook for a programming or other CS course and reused some example code or whatever to solve homework problems. I think the helpful part is taking something that already exists, learning how it works, and rewriting it yourself to internalize it. Again as usual the more important thing is that you know what you're using oth…

It is different from before. The programmers are used to read the code of smart or creative people, or the code of knolled people working for years to solve a specific problem, and within this process they analyze and learn to improve, thanks to this self-learning path, eureka moments included. This process includes to search (to read the voice of different perspectives and knowledges, to learn to use critical thinking).

Now is being proposed to read LLMs' slope and unrevised code constructed from statistics as the way to learn? This is a big mistake. IMHO.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#376

Post by [deleted] »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #358
bigbuppo wrote: post #332

Also... if your workflow is "think hard, let LLM write it, read what AI wrote, think hard about what AI wrote, re-type what AI wrote, fix what AI wrote"... Where in the heck are the efficiency gains? Couldn't you just drop the LLM part of it and save the company a trillion dollars in tokens?

Besides, many companies proactively punish doing anything not by LLM.

[deleted]

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#377

Post by default-kramer »

20k wrote: post #365
bigbuppo wrote: post #332

Also... if your workflow is "think hard, let LLM write it, read what AI wrote, think hard about what AI wrote, re-type what AI wrote, fix what AI wrote"... Where in the heck are the efficiency gains? Couldn't you just drop the LLM part of it and save the company a trillion dollars in tokens?

LLM speedups have always been predicated on not understanding the code they produce as well as if you wrote it yourself. Reviewing even well written code to understand it in depth, has always taken longer than simply writing it yourself - let alone sloppy LLM code that you have to fix People are, in heavy LLM systems, realising that the most valuable commodity is engineers knowing WTF is going on, and that loss of un…

> the most valuable commodity is engineers knowing WTF is going on, and that loss of understanding of your codebase is the #1 blocker to actually getting things done

Perfectly said. It was true before LLMs too.

As I've been reviewing more and more LLM code, I've noticed that while good developers can use LLMs to produce good code maybe 1x-5x faster (depending on circumstances), bad developers can use LLMs to produce bad code 1000x faster. And if you are collecting metrics that only capture that 1000x number, I bet you feel great about what you're doing.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#378

Post by backend_dev82 »

"... I don't enjoy reviewing AI-generated PRs. Poring over hundreds of lines of overly-defensive, badly-commented, subtly incorrect code is not fun. I might grudgingly do it for an employer—while making sure said employer becomes an ex-employer as soon as possible..."

I don't know about where you work, but in my neck of the woods if you want to be employed you will be reviewing AI PRs, there is no escaping that.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#379

Post by linuxhansl »

redleader55 wrote: post #373

Right ... While we do that, let's also retype the assembly code the compiler produces, do the linking manually and check you got the same result as the linker, and then finally write the bytes yourself. Whether or not you manually bit-bang à la Morse code the bits to storage is left as an exercise to the reader.

While I agree on some level, this not a great comparison.

A compiler/linker/etc is an algorithmic, precise, verifiable, repeatable, debuggable, etc, etc, process.

Using an LLM is an inherently stochastic process. It can is very, very helpful, but I think we are arriving at the realization that "vibe coding" wasn't the best idea - unless you are doing a PoC or demo.

In any case, neither absolve you from understanding in detail what is going on.

Maybe we'll get there, and we can fully trust what the LLM produces, but it seems we are not quite there, yet. Until then we'll have to understand everything the LLM produces and that's what the author is getting at.

Re: Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

#380

Post by dingocat »

throwaway120381 wrote: post #342
ablob wrote: post #329

So we are reduced to code monkeys mindlessly re-typing what an LLM wrote to increase potential understanding... Whatever this approaches, it is not a state of software engineering I find desirable.

Don't worry. No one will want human code in just a few years. This bizarre fixation that humans are decent at coding is a myth. Retype what the machine tells you? I would rather garden or move rocks around.

I used to like listening to music and reading books. Now my AI agent does it for me and it's so much faster at it than I used to be.
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