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Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#421

Post by saulpw »

xpe wrote: post #372
Fraterkes wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me help you remove the beam from your own eye first: this comment leaves me with the impression that your writing isn’t great.

I welcome specific and actionable criticism. Would you like to engage with my (a) substance; (b) tone; (c) something else?

It's not organized well. As the reader I had to do too much work to discern your point and what was relevant. I'm sure it's obvious to you the writer, but one of the foundational skills of a good writer is empathy for their reader, whoever they may be. Even here, you think you're being open-minded, but you offered a multiple choice question, where the choices are reductive and it comes off as defensive. An open-ended question like "What problem did you have with my writing?" might elicit a better response.

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#422

Post by smaudet »

vidarh wrote: post #264
smaudet wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But no template based generator could write that code, even though it's fairly trivial Not true at all, in fact this sort of thing used to happen all the time 10 years ago, code reading APIs and generating clients... > He doesn't need to make the AI written code work, and so he doesn't need to spend a lot of time reading the AI written code - he can skim it for any sign it looks even faintly off and just kill it if…

> Not true at all, in fact this sort of thing used to happen all the time 10 years ago, code reading APIs and generating clients... Where is this template based code generator that can read my code, understand it, and generate a full client including a CLI, that include knowing how to format the data, and implement the required protocols? I'm 30 years of development, I've seen nothing like it. > I think you are missi…

> Where is this template based code generator that can read my code, understand it, and generate a full client including a CLI, that include knowing how to format the data, and implement the required protocols?

I'd argue you are quite a bit beyond "rote" code at that point (with the understanding and protocol bits). But, generating client code is not hard, there are numerous generators around e.g. swagger:

https://swagger.io/ https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-codegen/

In ten years I expect other generators/platforms exist too, that's merely one I'm familiar with.

> you're not on the hook for fixing a specific instance of code, because you can just throw it away and have the AI do it all over. > ... > No, I don't "hope it works" - I have tests.

These are contradictory statements. Every instance of that code you are responsible for, or you wouldn't test it and you wouldn't deign to "need" to throw it away.

> They point to a difference in opportunity cost.

Yes, we are all ultimately concerned with this. However this is not an easy metric to quantify, clearly you feel your OC (Opportunity Cost) because maybe you don't work well with other humans, ok whatever, however you are likely overestimating the supposed savings, and underestimating the lost OC of working with other developers, or simply writing code that doesn't need to be thrown out at all...

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#423

Post by mellosouls »

NoGravitas wrote: post #382
mellosouls wrote: post #364

The author makes the excellent point that LLM-coding still has a human bottleneck at the code review point - regardless of whether the issue at hand is fixed or not. Leaving aside the fact that this isn't an LLM problem; we've always had tech debt due to cowboy devs and weak management or "commercial imperatives": I'd be interested to know if any of the existing LLM ELO style leaderboards mark for code quality in add…

> Leaving aside the fact that this isn't an LLM problem; we've always had tech debt due to cowboy devs and weak management or "commercial imperatives": But this is one of the core problems with LLM coding, right? It accelerates an already broken model of software development (worse is better) rather than trying to help fix it.

Possibly so - which is why I think research towards quality rather than just test-passing would be a significant benefit.

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#424

Post by bluefirebrand »

didibus wrote: post #176
bluefirebrand wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When was the last time you thoroughly reviewed the source code of a library you imported? Doesn't matter, I'm not responsible for maintaining that particular code The code in my PRs has my name attached, and I'm not trusting any LLM with my name

Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Commit AI code under its own name. Then the code under your name can use the AI code as a black box. If your code that uses AI code works as expected, it is similar to when using libraries. If you consider that AI code is not code any human needs to read or later modify by hand, AI code is modified by AI. All you want to do is just fully test it, if it all works, it's good. Now you ca…

> Commit AI code under its own name.

"A computer can never be held accountable therefore a computer should never make a management decision"

I think we need to go back to this. I think a computer cannot be held accountable so a computer should never make any decision with any kind of real world impact

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#426

Post by wiseowise »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #411
wiseowise wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re twisting results. Just because they took more time doesn’t mean their productivity went down. On the contrary, if you can perform expert task with much less mental resources (which 99% of orgs should prioritize for) then it is an absolute win. Work is extremely mentally draining and soul crushing experience for majority of people, if AI can lower that while maintaining roughly same result with subjects allocat…

They took more time and, on average, had fewer correct answers. Decreased "productivity" was the language the researchers used.

There's more to productivity than fewer correct answers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44297190

Already replied better.

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#427

Post by wiseowise »

didibus wrote: post #414
Vinnl wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steelmanning their argument, employers will see benefits because while the employee might be more productive than with an LLM in the first two hours of the day, the cognitive load reduces their productivity as the day goes on. If employees are able to function at a higher level for longer during their day with an LLM, that should benefit the employer.

I think we are all working without data here, it's all conjecture. I went with OP's hypothesis that you are not faster, you throw things at the wall, wait, and see if it sticks, or re-throw it until it does. This reduces your cognitive load, but might not actually make you more productive. I'm assuming here that "you are not more productive" already accounted for what you are saying. Like in a 8h day, without AI, you…

> What you hypothesize could also be true, it the mental load is reduced, can you sustain a higher productivity for longer? We don't know, maybe.

It's not maybe, it's confirmed fact. Otherwise there wouldn't be burnout epidemic.

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#428

Post by tptacek »

smaudet wrote: post #422
vidarh wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not true at all, in fact this sort of thing used to happen all the time 10 years ago, code reading APIs and generating clients... Where is this template based code generator that can read my code, understand it, and generate a full client including a CLI, that include knowing how to format the data, and implement the required protocols? I'm 30 years of development, I've seen nothing like it. > I think you are missi…

> Where is this template based code generator that can read my code, understand it, and generate a full client including a CLI, that include knowing how to format the data, and implement the required protocols? I'd argue you are quite a bit beyond "rote" code at that point (with the understanding and protocol bits). But, generating client code is not hard, there are numerous generators around e.g. swagger: https://sw…

I know you two are off on your own thing right now, which is cool, but I just want to say that the point of my comment is solely that the kind of code review involved in LLM output is different and easier than human code review (because of the lack of obligation to salvage the code if it's suspect), and we all seem to have reached a consensus on that point.

I explicitly wasn't trying to persuade anyone that the cost/benefit tradeoff for LLM coding was positive. I obviously believe it is, but reasonable people can disagree.

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#429

Post by antisthenes »

thedelanyo wrote: post #195
socalgal2 wrote: post #180

> Another common argument I've heard is that Generative AI is helpful when you need to write code in a language or technology you are not familiar with. To me this also makes little sense. I'm not sure I get this one. When I'm learning new tech I almost always have questions. I used to google them. If I couldn't find an answer I might try posting on stack overflow. Sometimes as I'm typing the question their search wo…

So AI is basically best as a search engine.

Alwayshasbeen.jpg meme.

I mean yes, current large models are essentially compressing incredible amounts of content into something manageable by a single Accelerator/GPU, and making it available for retrieval through inference.

Re: Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

#430

Post by [deleted] »

rwmj wrote: post #275

> What I think happens is that these people save time because they only spot review the AI generated code, or skip the review phase altogether, which as I said above would be a deal breaker for me. In my experience it's that they dump the code into a pull request and expect me to review it. So GenAI is great if someone else is doing the real work.

[deleted]
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