51–60 of 103 posts
AI (in its current state) is phenomenal for research on just about any topic; you can dive deep and cross-reference the material more easily than ever.
AI (in its current state) is not so good at actually doing things; we're a long ways off from simply speaking software into existence.
I have not stopped engineering software, but I type in less code. I still understand every line in our codebase and why it's there, but I spend a lot less time dealing with the mechanics. LLMs are super impressive for the software engineering work I do. I don't have a fleet of agents making 20 major changes to the codebase every day. I do about as much work with AI as I did before I used AI. But I think the quality has gone way up, and I am a stickler for pretty perfect code. Claude keeps me honest and reduces the cost of exploring alternate approaches, writing hairy tests, doing refactors, keeping docs up to date, keeping production stable and understandable, etc.
I basically do not agree with this article at all. Frontier models are like switching from dabbrev-mode to IntelliSense, something I was very resistant to at the time. "It's important that I know the APIs that I use everyday." Not really. Having your IDE remember whether it's HasPrefix(string, substring) or HasPrefix(substring, string) frees up my brain for something more important and I couldn't live without it. AI is the same way. It's a tool that makes me better at my work. Yes, it's expensive. That's the only downside I see. I am lucky that I can use as much Fable 5 as I want at work... I always feel bad when I share something that it did that was cool with someone who can't afford it. But costs will come down. I think this AI think is here to stay in the software engineering space. I don't think it removes the need for qualified software engineers at the controls. At least today.
Honestly, I am starting to feel it’s Groundhog Day every day here, reaching the same discussion we’ve been having for years now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoy building things. I do not enjoy the act typing out code by hand. > Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question To follow this debate through, to maximize coding enjoyment, shouldn't we be avoiding compilers? They take away a lot of the code we need to write. Frameworks as well?
I don't think the joy of coding comes simply from writing lots of code. It's the act of precisely expressing one's internal thoughts into an physical medium, and watching it take effect. Using AI as an intermediary makes it less enjoyable. It's like a painter telling his speedy assistant what he wants to paint, and reviewing every attempt until it looks like what he was aiming for. Obviously the painter won't find th…
I get their point, but they are probably wrong. Not saying the AIs will not get better and better. They probably will, but I see a chance that there are smaller and smaller gains and the AIs cant make those gains happen. But coding with llm's doesnt say its shoddy code per se. I view it as: We used to use hand saws to make cabinets. Then we had tracksaws. Then we had CNC saws... You still need to understand woodworki…
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Not the guy you asked, but honestly, I'm not sure which one of those I'd consider better use cases, not worse .
I ask because I think there's a huge difference between the two. People making end-user applications might think they can tolerate more errors and bloat from AI. Just because they can get away with doing that with AI (and that's debatable) does not mean that people can also get away with that in developing tools, libraries, languages etc. The errors, bloat and instability bubbles up exponentially as people build on i…
I see a lot more of "AI coding doesn't work well in this specific case, therefore it's entirely useless".
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Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question. People used to enjoy it but lately all I see are people talking about they "no longer have to do it" I see both sides of the argument people endless have over this. I have been hesitant to take a solid position, first because I suck at coding and second because I dont really have a dog in this fight. The only context I have is my friend in…
There are certain things I enjoy coding by hand, in exactly the same way I like using a manual coffee grinder. Coding can be enjoyable. But most of the time coding is a means to an end. I bet your friend in HVAC was not told to use a manual drill to have a deeper understanding of how to make holes for installation. AI is simply a power tool.
I could not disagree more strongly
Using a power tool does not erode your ability to think about how to build a shelf.
Using AI to write for you absolutely erodes your ability to think about what you're writing, be it software or blog posts
Came for the bad AI take, stayed for the P=NP claim.
I can only imagine that people who say things like: > If you use AI for anything else, and in particularly if you use it to generate code, you're wasting your time. Have not used frontier models in at least a year. It is nearly inconceivable to me that I would ever go back to writing code by hand, in any context. Even if no new model was ever released, the combination of GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4 flash is more than suf…
Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question. People used to enjoy it but lately all I see are people talking about they "no longer have to do it" I see both sides of the argument people endless have over this. I have been hesitant to take a solid position, first because I suck at coding and second because I dont really have a dog in this fight. The only context I have is my friend in…
What happen is that their boss gets a 3 page email screed with pictures of how they fucked up the thermostat wiring in trying to gerry-rig a new heat pump/air handler that supports only electric resistance backup heat into my house which has an oil boiler for backup. And I get shit from my wife about why our $10k new heat pump is blowing cold air on her during defrost cycles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you not enjoy coding? I'm not trying to be snarky, just a genuine question. People used to enjoy it but lately all I see are people talking about they "no longer have to do it" I see both sides of the argument people endless have over this. I have been hesitant to take a solid position, first because I suck at coding and second because I dont really have a dog in this fight. The only context I have is my friend in…
I love coding and I always have - arguably moreso now, if you can still call it coding. For me, it is not about the syntax nor the mechanics of typing though. My enjoyment comes from thinking about problems and breaking them down, or thinking about what architecture would best serve them. I guess I'm meant to be a systems design guy, so I'm lucky that AI-coding fits this well (AI models have limited context windows,…
I pretty strongly think it doesn't resemble coding even a little