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The hidden cost of AI coding

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Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#381

Post by CopyOnWrite »

7589447636 wrote: post #316
CopyOnWrite wrote: post #285

Most comments here surprise me: I am using Githubs Copilot / ChatGPT 4.0 at work with a code base which is mostly implements a basic CRUD service... and outside of small/trivial example (where the generated code is mostly okay), prompting is more often than not a total waste of time. Now, I wonder if I am just totally unable to write/refine good prompts for the LLM (as it works for smaller samples, I hope I am not to…

> Now, I wonder if I am just totally unable to write/refine good prompts for the LLM (as it works for smaller samples, I hope I am not too far off) or what could explain the huge discrepancy of experience. Programming language / stack plays plays a big role, I presume.

Fair enough. Still, I was out of luck for some fairly simple SQL statements, were the model knows 100% of the DDL statements.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#382

Post by ponector »

apercu wrote: post #366
ponector wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate IT, will pick literally anything else to work at, but the money is an issue.

I have a love/hate relationship with tech, but it would take many paragraphs to explain it :)

I love IT because it is a way to earn decent money, a way to escape from poverty. Hate everything else, though.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#383

Post by randcraw »

kelsey978126 wrote: post #279
clbrmbr wrote: post #204

I have actually had some really great flow evenings lately, the likes of which I have not enjoyed in many years, precisely because of AI-assisted coding. The trick is to break the task down in to components that are of moderate complexity so that the AI can handle them (Gemini 2.5 Pro one-shots), and keep your mind on the high-level design which today's AI cannot coordinate. What helps me is to think of it like I'm a…

people seem to forget this type of argument from the article was used for stack overflow for years, calling it the destruction of programming. "How can you get into flow when you are just copying and pasting?". Those same people are now all sour grapes for AI assisted development. There will always be detractors saying that the documentation you are using is wrong, the tools that you are using are wrong, and the meth…

Will an engineering team ever be able to craft a thing of wonder, that surprises and delights? I think great software can do that. But I've seen it arise only rarely, and almost always as originating from one enlightened mind, someone who imagined a better way than the well-trod paths taken by so many who went before. I can imagine AI as a means to go only 'where man gas gone before'.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#384

Post by senko »

ang_cire wrote: post #369
vendiddy wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love coding but I also love AI. I don't know if I'm a minority but I'd like to think there are a lot of folks like me out there. You can compare it to someone who is writing assembly code and now they've been introduced to C. They were happy writing assembly but now they're thrilled they can write things more quickly. Sure, AI could lead us to write buggier code. Sure, AI could make us dumber because we just have A…

I love AI as a concept. I hate the reality of our current AI, which is benefitting corporations over workers, being used for surveillance and censorship (nevermind direct social control via misinformation bots), and is copying the work of millions without compensating them in order to do it. And the push for coders to use it to increase their output, will likely just end up meaning expectations of more LoC and more f…

How is using Claude over Llama benefitting corporations over workers? I work with AI every day and sum total of my token spend across all providers is less than a single NVidia H100 card I'd have to buy (from a pretty big corporation!), at the very least, for comparable purpose?

How are self-hosted LLMs not copying the work of millions without compensating them for it?

How is the push for more productivity through better technology somehow bad?

I am pro FOSS but can't understand this comment.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#385

Post by newman8r »

7589447636 wrote: post #314
bredren wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just gatekeeping. It is a stubborn refusal to see that one could be programming something much more sophisticated if they could use these iteration loops efficiently. Many of these folks would do well to walk over to the intersection of Market, Bush, and Battery Streets in San Francisco and gaze up at the Mechanics Monument.

> It is a stubborn refusal to see that one could be programming something much more sophisticated if they could use these iteration loops efficiently Programming something more sophisticated with AI? AI is pretty much useless if you're doing anything somewhat novel. What it excels at is vomiting code that has already been written a million times so you can build yet another Electron cross-platform app.

what sort existing of projects do you think couldn't have been created with an AI-heavy workflow?

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#386

Post by celsius1414 »

andybak wrote: post #188
TrackerFF wrote: post #185

Some people love programming, for the sake of programming itself. They love the CS theory, they love the tooling, they love most everything about it. Other people see all that as an means to an end - and find no joy from the technical aspect of creating something. They're more interested in the end result / product, rather than the process itself. I think that if you're in group A, it can be difficult to understand g…

> Some people love programming > Other people see all that as an means to an end I think it's worth pointing out that most people are both these things at different times. There's things I care about and want a deep understanding of but there's plenty of tasks I want to just "go away". If I had an junior coder - I'd be delegating these. Instead I use AI when I can. There's also tasks where I want a jump start. I pref…

You likely don’t have a say in the matter, but you should have a junior developer. That’s where senior developers come from.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#387

Post by kordlessagain »

Honestly, most of the "real engineer" rhetoric is exhausting. Here's the thing: the people most obsessed with software craftsmanship, pattern orthodoxy, and layered complexity often create some of the most brittle, hostile, constantly mutating systems imaginable. You may be able to build abstractions, but if you're shipping stuff that users have to re-learn every quarter because someone needed to justify a promotion via another UI revamp or tech stack rewrite, you're not designing well. You're just changing loudly.

Also, stop gatekeeping AI tooling like it’s cheating. We’re not in a craft guild. The software landscape is full of shovelware and half-baked “best practices” that change more often than a JavaScript framework’s logo. I'm not here to honor the tradition of suffering through YAML hell or memorizing the 400 ways to configure a build pipeline. I’m here to make something work well, fast, and that includes leveraging AI like the power tool it is.

So yeah, you can keep polishing the turd pile of over-engineered “real” systems. The rest of us will be using AI to build, test, and ship faster than your weekly stand-up even finishes.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#388

Post by alpaca128 »

jerjerjer wrote: post #313
bgwalter wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picasso (if he really said that) had a machine painting for him?

Picasso explicitly wanted his designs (for cutlery, plates, household items he designed) to be mass-produced, so your question is not as straightforward as you make it to be.

Picasso also never said this, and this quote is about ideas, not automation.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#389

Post by jspdown »

godelski wrote: post #125
iamleppert wrote: post #3

There's nothing stopping you from coding if you enjoy it. It's not like they have taken away your keyboard. I have found that AI frees me up to focus on the parts of coding I'm actually interested in, which is maybe 5-10% of the project. The rest is boiler plate, cargo-culted, Dockerfile, build system and bash environment variable passing circle of hell that I really could care less about. I care about certain things…

I think you're robbing yourself. Of course, it all depends how you use the LLM. While the same can be true for StackOverflow, the LLMs just scale the issues up. > The rest is boiler plate, cargo-culted, Dockerfile, build system and bash environment variable passing circle of hell that I really could care less about. Except you do care. It's why you're frustrated and annoyed. And good!!! That feeling is because what y…

I share the same opinion.

While it looks like a productivity boost, there's a clear price to pay. The more you use it, the less you learn and the less you are able to assess quality.

Re: The hidden cost of AI coding

#390

Post by jimbobimbo »

It's 9am in the morning. I login to my workstation and muddle my way through the huge enterprise code base which doesn't fit into any model context window for the AI tool to be useful (and even if it did, we can't use any random model due to compliance and proprietary and whatnot).

I have thousands deadlines which are suddenly coming due and a bunch of code which is broken because some poor soul under the same pressure put something that "works" in. And it worked, until it didn't, and now it's my turn in the barrel.

Is this the joy?

I'm not complaining, I'm doing it for the good money.

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