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Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

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Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#41

Post by quantadev »

khuey wrote: post #9
quantadev wrote: post #3

Experienced senior developers can spot and fix the slop instantly, while still getting a 30x productivity gain, while entry level or junior devs basically only have one "Filter" by which they determine code quality which is: "Does the code seem to work?". Unfortunately "Slop" will appear to work enough of the time to fool a Junior. Also the reason Junior devs get "slop" is because their prompts are "slop". They don't…

I've worked with some pretty smart people in my career and I've never met anyone who could do "instant" code review.

The "instant" to which you refer was meaning that I can tell instantly if the LLM generated what I wanted or not.

That doesn't mean it's reviewed, it means I'm accepting it to _BE_ what I go with and ultimately review.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#42

Post by dlivingston »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #23
marcusestes wrote: post #4

Appreciate this. But. Do whatever you want. That’s an option too. Make a dumb thing, take your hands off the wheel, have fun. It’s your computer.

I like how every reply to you is the same, nuance doesn't exist, and we're all working on missile guidance systems and pacemaker firmware. There's such a wide range of software. There's plenty of space for an amateur to do some creative vibe coding. What's the point of the scolding and hand wringing?

People are conflating vibe coding for personal/hobbyist projects and vibe coding for production.

Evergreen tweet: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2659979-no-bitch-dats-a-whol...

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#43

Post by quantadev »

tcoff91 wrote: post #16
solumunus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting a 30x to 50x productivity gain That is an absurd claim.

If you get a 30x gain then you're a 0.05x developer. a 50x gain would literally mean you could get a year's worth of work done in a week. Preposterous.

One good prompt into Github Copilot 'Agent Mode' (running Claude 4) asking for a new feature can often result in up to 5 to 7 files being generated, and a total of 1000 lines of code being written. Your math is wrong. That's hours of work I didn't do, that only took me the time of describing the new feature with a paragraph of text.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#44

Post by JohnMakin »

dlivingston wrote: post #42
fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how every reply to you is the same, nuance doesn't exist, and we're all working on missile guidance systems and pacemaker firmware. There's such a wide range of software. There's plenty of space for an amateur to do some creative vibe coding. What's the point of the scolding and hand wringing?

People are conflating vibe coding for personal/hobbyist projects and vibe coding for production. Evergreen tweet: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2659979-no-bitch-dats-a-whol...

Given the fact that the post mentions an actual company with actual users that was seemingly vibe coded, I don't think anyone pointing out that this is reckless is conflating anything here. It seems like some are better than others at reading from context though, clearly.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#46

Post by tfandango »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #33
jajko wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my banking megacorp, despite having officially title of senior sw engineer, coding is maybe 10% of my time spent. And its the best, most creative part I actually enjoy. Why would I give up that? No real velocity gained even if all would be 1 click away in flawless production-ready state. The real cruft of seniority is: processes, knowing right people and their buttons, politics, being there to fix obscure corner c…

Lol, are you me? Also a senior developer at a financial institution. I've maybe coded like 1000 lines in the last 2 months. I just got a ticket recently that required code and it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders to finally be able to put hands to keyboard again.

Dang hello, me too. I recently became tech lead at our fintech co, and the few days a month I get to code is like vacation for my mind. I still remember the good ol' days where nobody talked to me and I solved problems all day long.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#47

Post by prmph »

Animats wrote: post #11

Articles like this make one think of John Henry vs. the steam drill. John Henry beat the steam drill, once, and died. Soon, there was a better steam drill. "Vibe coding" is only a few months old. ChatGPT was released less than three years ago. The singularity is just getting started. History of computer chess: - 1957 - early programs that played chess very badly. Excessive optimism - 1967 - programs that play amateur…

Chess is a bad example. Even a "stupid" computer that is sufficiently powerful can just brute-force-search its way to a win. There's nothing special here, it's basically just deeper and deeper search. Put another way. the limitation was always about sufficiently powerful hardware.

I'm not sure the same can be said about LLMs.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#48

Post by prmph »

quantadev wrote: post #35
tcoff91 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30x productivity gain? gtfo of here. Most things I try to use it for, it has so many problems with its output that at most I get a 50% productivity gain after fixing everything. I'm already super efficient at editing text with neovim so honestly for some tasks I end up with a productivity loss.

I can easily get a month of work done in a single day yes. So probably the 30x is about the current max, and 50x was hyperbole, because I didn't add it up before doing that post.

I just don't believe this. It's weird; I just don't know where folks are getting these extreme productivity gains from.

For example, the other day I asked a major LLMs to generate a simple markdown viewer with automatic section indentation for me in Node.js. The basic code worked after a few additional prompts from me.

Now I wanted folding. That was also done by the LLM. And then when I tried to add a few additional simples features, things fell apart. There were one or two seemingly simple runtime errors that the LLM was unable to fix after almost 10 tries.

I could fix it if I started digging inside the code, but then the productivity gains would start to slip away.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#49

Post by AaronAPU »

valianteffort wrote: post #20

Very grateful to have had good self-learning, education, then mentoring before LLM's existed. And although they are such a boon to productivity I worry what they will do to my ability to think on my own long term. Like reaching for your phone out of habit the moment you are bored, I don't want to need an LLM any time I am faced with a problem. I want to exercise my own brain. I feel as though my ability to reason wit…

I think if you are a self directed learner in general, who is drawn toward learning, it will magnify that tendency and lower the activation energy required to bootstrap new domains of knowledge.

But if you don’t like learning, and only do it because you have to, it will magnify that tendency and provide a way to avoid learning altogether.

We are likely to end up with a large subset of the population basically being meat puppets doing whatever their favorite flavor of LLM tells them to do.

Re: Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches

#50

Post by prmph »

quantadev wrote: post #43
tcoff91 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get a 30x gain then you're a 0.05x developer. a 50x gain would literally mean you could get a year's worth of work done in a week. Preposterous.

One good prompt into Github Copilot 'Agent Mode' (running Claude 4) asking for a new feature can often result in up to 5 to 7 files being generated, and a total of 1000 lines of code being written. Your math is wrong. That's hours of work I didn't do, that only took me the time of describing the new feature with a paragraph of text.

It's ridiculous to equate lines of code to amount of engineering work or value.

A massive amount of valuable work can result in a few lines of code. Conversely a millions lines of code can be useless or even have negative value.

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