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Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

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Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#541

Post by 9dev »

mattlondon wrote: post #425
J_Shelby_J wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Id wager my life savings that devs aren’t even 1.5x more productive using these tools.

Even if I am only slightly more productive, it feels like I am flying. The mental toll is severely reduced and the feel good factor of getting stuff done easily (rather than as a slog) is immense. That's got to be worth something in terms of the mental wellbeing of our profession. FWIW I generally treat the AI as a pair programmer. It does most of the typing and I ask it why it did this? Is that the most idiomatic wa…

I absolutely share your feelings. And I realise I’m way less hesitant to pick up the dredge tasks; migrating to new major versions of dependencies, adding missing edge case tests, adding CRUD endpoints, nasty refactorings, all these things you usually postpone or go on procrastination sprees on HN are suddenly very simple undertakings that you can trivially review.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#542

Post by killerstorm »

joshribakoff wrote: post #504
killerstorm wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers have been confidently wrong about a lot of things. E.g. OOP and "patterns" in 90s. What was the last time you implemented a "visitor"? P. Norvig mentioned most of the patterns are transparent in Common Lisp: e.g. you can just use a `lambda` instead of "visitor". But OOP people kept doing class diagrams for a simple map or fold-like operation. AI producing a flawed code and "not understanding" are c…

Last time I used a visitor, it was probably last week when I created a lint rule. Visiting every node in a tree (ast or otherwise) with lambda is doing the pattern regardless of what you call the pattern. Tools like eslint still literally use the visitor pattern. I would point to software engineers dismissing tried and true ideas as the better generalization.

That means you don't understand visitor pattern: it's specifically an OOP pattern using OOP dispatch.

A tree traversal is a tree traversal.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#543

Post by spiderfarmer »

coldtea wrote: post #532
spiderfarmer wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re wrong in several ways. Even capable coders can’t create a Reddit clone in a week. Because it’s not just a glorified CRUD app. And I encourage you to think a bit harder before arguing like that. Yes you can create a CRUD app in some kind of framework and style it like Reddit. But that’s like putting lines on your lawn and calling it a clone of the Bernabeu. But even if you were right, the real barrier t…

> Because it’s not just a glorified CRUD app In what way (that's not related to the difficulty of scaling it, which I already addressed separately)? The point of my comment was: "Somebody with AI cloning Reddit in a week is not as special as you make it to be, all things considering. A Reddit clone is not that difficult, it's basically a CRUD app. The difficult part of replicating it, or at least all the basics of it…

Calling Reddit a CRUD app isn’t wrong, it’s just vacuous.

It strips away every part that actually makes Reddit hard.

What happens when you sign up?

A CRUD app shows a form and inserts a row.

Reddit runs bot detection, rate limits, fingerprinting, shadow restrictions, and abuse heuristics you don’t even see, and you don’t know which ones, because that knowledge is their moat.

What happens when you upvote or downvote?

CRUD says “increment a counter.”

Reddit says “run a ranking algorithm refined over years, with vote fuzzing, decay, abuse detection, and intentional lies in the UI.” As the number you see is not the number stored.

What happens when you add a comment?

CRUD says “insert record.”

Reddit applies subreddit-specific rules, spam filters, block lists, automod logic, visibility rules, notifications, and delayed or conditional propagation.

What happens when you post a URL?

CRUD stores a string.

Reddit fingerprints it, deduplicates it, fetches metadata, detects spam domains, applies subreddit constraints, and feeds it into ranking and moderation systems.

Yes, anyone can scaffold a CRUD app and style it like Reddit.

But calling that a clone is like putting white lines on your lawn and calling it the Bernabeu.

You haven’t cloned the system, only its silhouette.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#544

Post by plomme »

dasil003 wrote: post #275
mark242 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that it's going to be the opposite. At re:Invent, one of the popular sessions was in creating a trio of SRE agents, one of which did nothing but read logs and report errors, one of which did analysis of the errors and triaged and proposed fixes, and one to do the work and submit PRs to your repo. Then, as part of the session, you would artificially introduce a bug into the system, then run into the bug…

I agree with both you and the GP. Yes, coding is being totally revolutionized by AI, and we don't really know where the ceiling will be (though I'm skeptical we'll reach true AGI any time soon), but I believe there still an essential element of understanding how computer systems work that is required to leverage AI in a sustainable way. There is some combination of curiosity of inner workings and precision of thought…

I don’t think there will be an “AI native” generation of developers. AI will be the entity that “groks pointers” and no one else will know it or care what goes on under the hood.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#545

Post by harrisi »

feastingonslop wrote: post #292
harrisi wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The aspect of "potentially secure/stable code" is very interesting to me. There's an enormous amount of code that aren't secure or stable already (I'd argue virtually all of the code in existence). This has already been a problem. There's no real ramifications for it. Even for something like Cloudflare stopping a significant amount of Internet traffic for any amount of time is not (as far as I know) investigated in a…

Nobody is saying to skip testing the software. Testing is still important. What the code itself looks like, isn’t.

Testing is not a proof a software system is correct. Also, if tests are generated as well, there's no trust in how anything works or if the tests are covering important aspects.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#546

Post by selfmodruntime »

rglover wrote: post #139

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

This article is a prime example. You‘re not foregoing frameworks. You‘re building your own. Except this time it‘s not „yours“, you let an AI build an unholy fusion of all frameworks in its dataset.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#547

Post by selfmodruntime »

mark242 wrote: post #215
rglover wrote: post #139

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

I would argue that it's going to be the opposite. At re:Invent, one of the popular sessions was in creating a trio of SRE agents, one of which did nothing but read logs and report errors, one of which did analysis of the errors and triaged and proposed fixes, and one to do the work and submit PRs to your repo. Then, as part of the session, you would artificially introduce a bug into the system, then run into the bug…

„understand how these systems actually function" isn't incompatible with "I didn't write most of this code“

Except now you have code you didn‘t write and patches you din‘t write either. Your „colleague“ also has no long term memory.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#548

Post by selfmodruntime »

kaydub wrote: post #328
seba_dos1 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you are only ever a single engineer, your career is filled with "I need to debug code I didn't write". That's the vast majority of my job and I've yet to find a way to have LLMs not be almost but not entirely useless at helping me with it. (also, it's filled with that even when you are a single engineer)

I hope you realize that means your position is in danger.

We have yet to see any large codebase that LLMs work on for a long time.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#549

Post by csande17 »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #543
coldtea wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it’s not just a glorified CRUD app In what way (that's not related to the difficulty of scaling it, which I already addressed separately)? The point of my comment was: "Somebody with AI cloning Reddit in a week is not as special as you make it to be, all things considering. A Reddit clone is not that difficult, it's basically a CRUD app. The difficult part of replicating it, or at least all the basics of it…

Calling Reddit a CRUD app isn’t wrong, it’s just vacuous. It strips away every part that actually makes Reddit hard. What happens when you sign up? A CRUD app shows a form and inserts a row. Reddit runs bot detection, rate limits, fingerprinting, shadow restrictions, and abuse heuristics you don’t even see, and you don’t know which ones, because that knowledge is their moat. What happens when you upvote or downvote?…

Moltbook didn't do any of that stuff either, though!

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#550

Post by Ma8ee »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #543
coldtea wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it’s not just a glorified CRUD app In what way (that's not related to the difficulty of scaling it, which I already addressed separately)? The point of my comment was: "Somebody with AI cloning Reddit in a week is not as special as you make it to be, all things considering. A Reddit clone is not that difficult, it's basically a CRUD app. The difficult part of replicating it, or at least all the basics of it…

Calling Reddit a CRUD app isn’t wrong, it’s just vacuous. It strips away every part that actually makes Reddit hard. What happens when you sign up? A CRUD app shows a form and inserts a row. Reddit runs bot detection, rate limits, fingerprinting, shadow restrictions, and abuse heuristics you don’t even see, and you don’t know which ones, because that knowledge is their moat. What happens when you upvote or downvote?…

Why do you think the app they call a clone of Reddit do all of those things, or most, or any?
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