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The role of developer skills in agentic coding

martinfowler.com

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Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#51

Post by zeroonetwothree »

mjr00 wrote: post #6

> 15k LOC codebase I wish articles about AI assistance would caveat this at the start. 15k LOC is a weekend hackathon project, which is all well and good, but not reflective of the work that 99% of developers are doing in their day jobs.

Maybe 2-3 week project would be better to say. But yeah it’s quite small.

The industry average seems to be around 100 LOC per day per developer. So if you have a team of 10 that’s only 15 days of work. Once you’re involved in some existing legacy code base it’s likely in the millions.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#52

Post by ferguess_k »

giantg2 wrote: post #47
ferguess_k wrote: post #38

I don't really like AI in IDE. I don't want them to think for me. Code completion and Intellisense is good enough. That said, I think there are 3 items that are important: - Quickly grasp a new framework or a new language. People might expect you to do so because of AI's help. 2 weeks might be the maximum, instead of the minimum. The same for juniors. - Focus on the real important things. So instead of trying to memo…

Even code completion has issues. It might get the structure right, but it usually doesn't understand the business logic and I end up switching out what codes/vars are being used.

It's definitely possible. But in my case so far it's fine. I work as a DE so I only need the auto-completion to remind me what the column name is once I typed out the first few characters, because there are so many columns.

In my side projects I mostly use C/C++ so auto-completion helps me to find a struct member or something similar.

I guess it can become quite complicated when the projects becomes very large.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#53

Post by [deleted] »

mjr00 wrote: post #9
jstanley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, habitually write 7500 lines of code per day.

For a brand new project that you're trying to get done in a weekend--aka a weekend hackathon project--it's very doable. Would not recommend committing 7500 lines of code per day at your day job though.

[deleted]

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#54

Post by ebiester »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #44

i have mentored a few people to become Programmers. Some for months, some for years. It's like teaching someone to ride a bycicle. Hand-holding first, then hand-guiding, then short flights, then longer... Different people pick stuff at different pace and shape.. but they do learn.. if they want to. What i completely miss in these LLM parrots-agents-generators, is the learning. You can't teach them anything. They woul…

Consider rules for projects. It's not always perfect, but it does adapt based on my instructions.

For example, I have had good success in test first development as a rule. That means that I can make sure it has the specifications correct first.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#55

Post by senbrow »

_1tem wrote: post #48

Developer skill is obviously still essential — you can’t steer if you couldn’t drive. But what about developer energy? Before AI I could only code about 2 hours per day (actual time spent writing code) but with Claude Code I can easily code for 5 hours straight without breaking a sweat. It feels like riding an e-bike instead of a bicycle. AI genuinely feels like Steve Jobs analogy of a bicycle for the mind — it doesn…

The ebike analogy is perfect!

You still have to pedal, steer, and balance, but you're much faster overall.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#57

Post by [deleted] »

ikerino wrote: post #12

I use Cursor for most of my development these days. This article aligns pretty closely with my experiences. A few additional observations: 1. Anecdotally, AI agents feel stuck somewhere circa ~2021. If I install newer packages, Claude will revert to outdated packages/implementations that were popular four years ago. This is incredibly frustrating to watch and correct for. Providing explicit instructions for which pac…

[deleted]

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#59

Post by spwa4 »

Aurornis wrote: post #39
ikerino wrote: post #12

I use Cursor for most of my development these days. This article aligns pretty closely with my experiences. A few additional observations: 1. Anecdotally, AI agents feel stuck somewhere circa ~2021. If I install newer packages, Claude will revert to outdated packages/implementations that were popular four years ago. This is incredibly frustrating to watch and correct for. Providing explicit instructions for which pac…

> It feels like my AI agents are stuck somewhere circa ~2021. If I install newer packages or more recent versions, Claude will often revert to outdated packages/implementations that were popular four years ago. My experience is the same, though the exact dates differ. I assume LLMs gravitate toward solutions that are most represented in their training material. It's hard to keep them pulled toward newer versions with…

But they can't really be low-latency if they have to search for new versions ... and that makes such a big difference in how usable they are.

Re: The role of developer skills in agentic coding

#60

Post by owebmaster »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #44

i have mentored a few people to become Programmers. Some for months, some for years. It's like teaching someone to ride a bycicle. Hand-holding first, then hand-guiding, then short flights, then longer... Different people pick stuff at different pace and shape.. but they do learn.. if they want to. What i completely miss in these LLM parrots-agents-generators, is the learning. You can't teach them anything. They woul…

LLMs don't learn but agents do. You just need to insert that new knowledge in the prompt.
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