LLMs are only as good as the average codebase they were trained on. What else did you expect?
AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#42You mention two very specific aspects of AI producing code: - "It hyper-focuses on the current task and couldn't care less if its changes break other parts of the system." - "Long context = instant brain damage" This is why I quickly discovered that I had to turn AI into a knowledgable, patient tutor rather than let it code for me. I am thoroughly at the helm for all decisions big and small - I don't let AI touch the…
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Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#43You mention two very specific aspects of AI producing code: - "It hyper-focuses on the current task and couldn't care less if its changes break other parts of the system." - "Long context = instant brain damage" This is why I quickly discovered that I had to turn AI into a knowledgable, patient tutor rather than let it code for me. I am thoroughly at the helm for all decisions big and small - I don't let AI touch the…
Anthropic did a study where people who worked like this understood their systems a lot better than and were basically as fast as AI maximalists. Plus it’s so much cheaper… that has to matter.
Wait, hold on. So you're telling me that Anthropic is out there hyping their newest, most powerful LLM like crazy... but really it's just a token-selling scheme?
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#44My biggest challenge is what it does to my ability to pay attention
1. Set the Agent off on some task
2. Go scroll social media
Get back to whatever the agent was doing.
AI coding feels very anti-flow.
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#45So stop. I’m serious. Treat it like any other tool. When it helps solves problems, use it. When it makes problems, don’t use it. There are a lot of people and an enormous amount of money trying to make hands off agentic happen, but the happiest and most effective enthusiasts I know do not give up control: they go function by function and class by class, generating or writing as they see fit. The goal is to make usefu…
Couldn't agree more. Honestly, I don't believe in 'loop engineering' after working with AI these past few months, I've seen a lot of its decisions are really unreliable — and if you let it loop-engineer all night long, it's definitely going to leave you a pile of shit.
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#46You mention two very specific aspects of AI producing code: - "It hyper-focuses on the current task and couldn't care less if its changes break other parts of the system." - "Long context = instant brain damage" This is why I quickly discovered that I had to turn AI into a knowledgable, patient tutor rather than let it code for me. I am thoroughly at the helm for all decisions big and small - I don't let AI touch the…
Anthropic did a study where people who worked like this understood their systems a lot better than and were basically as fast as AI maximalists. Plus it’s so much cheaper… that has to matter.
The study looks at junior developers unfamiliar with what they're implementing. Post-hoc they broke down the AI group and grouped some into tutoring->hand coding. Another group was AI maximalist. We should keep in mind the comparison of these groups is very low n. Tutoring + hand coding seemed to have the best speed + understanding. This was all conducted in Jan 2026.
Where I'd push back drawing too many conclusions from this study: arguably most successful AI usage is senior developers that know the programming environment they're working in. Know how far to trust the AI. And carefully review / understand outputs.
Nevertheless, the study's still interesting, and I wish they'd replicate with a much higher n per group. Junior developers (undergrads?) are a more abundant group and not particularly specialized yet. They've also spent years hand-coding at University, but probably could adapt to AI tooling pretty easily.
The study: https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skil...
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#47[flagged]
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#48The problem I’m having is not this. I’ve got it pretty finely honed at creating concise ,correct code to specifation, but using it is a nightmare cycle of make a decision, wait 3-5 minutes, make another decision, wait 3-5 minutes… and it’s not enough to really wear you out so you can work 16 hours in a day. It quickly becomes a hellscape of productivity.
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#49try using a harness. i provide one in Yaw Mode and you can copy it and modify and use a modified if you wanted to learn and tweak yours. i use the skills /yaw-review excessively sometimes multiple times in a row on the same pr or session. followed by most often /yaw-address-all and then /yaw-coverage to add tests and /yaw-ship-ready to make production ready. after a few rounds of these they are not needed every time…
You are not suggesting harness will replace the need of programmer's review aren't you? The thing might go in the totally wrong direction and no harness will stop it. Surely unless you write harness for every specific task at hand but then why is it any better than writing or at least reviewing the code itself?
Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?
#50try using a harness. i provide one in Yaw Mode and you can copy it and modify and use a modified if you wanted to learn and tweak yours. i use the skills /yaw-review excessively sometimes multiple times in a row on the same pr or session. followed by most often /yaw-address-all and then /yaw-coverage to add tests and /yaw-ship-ready to make production ready. after a few rounds of these they are not needed every time…
You are not suggesting harness will replace the need of programmer's review aren't you? The thing might go in the totally wrong direction and no harness will stop it. Surely unless you write harness for every specific task at hand but then why is it any better than writing or at least reviewing the code itself?
it is not, it just helps to not go in the wrong direction as much. even in my comment i mentioned reviewing the code multiple times. so i do agree reviewing is essential.