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I Will Never Use AI to Code

antman-does-software.com

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Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#61

Post by ofrzeta »

didip wrote: post #38

This kind of writing makes you sound immature. People used to drive manual. Now it’s all automatic transmission. Some cars even drive itself. People used to proudly use Vi to write code. But now IDE is commonplace. People used to write asm by hand. Transport Tycoon was written in assembly. But these days that would be insane. Technological progress is an absolute thing. It produces too much convenience and wealth to…

> People used to proudly use Vi to write code. But now IDE is commonplace.

this is funny because I met many software developers who did not have a, let's call it "Unix hacker background", who only ever used Git through an IDE. Now sometimes when they need to log into some system and use the commandline they are lost because they are neither familiar with a shell environment (readline and stuff) nor the Git commands.

I guess you can work that way but that's not for me, because I want to understand stuff. Of course I also use an IDE but I don't rely on it.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#62

Post by Anthony261 »

anon22981 wrote: post #53
grasbergerm wrote: post #41

It's fine if people don't want to use AI for anything, and honestly I don't even believe you need to justify it. The justification given here is interesting and I think shows misunderstanding. At one point the author writes > AI is a tool that can only produce software liabilities which I would argue is completely caused by misuse of AI. Sure, you can have AI write a ton of code that often comes with subtle bugs. But…

I suspect people with opinions like the author’s haven’t been in a project where people use LLMs responsibly. We had a senior dev basically just prompt and push, with very little overseeing and minimal instructions, causing so many bad PRs and even prod bugs. That made me a sceptic for many months about agents. Then we started to have (myself included) people actual plan out the tasks for the bot: give good specs, go…

Nope. My point is not about the quality of the generated code, it's the fact that it was generated. No matter how good it is it will always be a liability without the accompanying asset which is the understanding produced by undertaking the effort of writing the code. Generated code is exclusively cognitive debt. It is also, by definition, legacy code since no one wrote it.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#63

Post by smitty1e »

I'm not an AI enthusiast, but a great recent use-case has been to puzzle out the pyqgis interface.

In a seemingly endless class hierarchy of non-pythonic objects, using SuperGrok to figure out how to do QGIS automation has been a timesaver.

Basically its an improved Google search in this mode, but, hey: credit where due.

See: https://open.substack.com/pub/smitty1e/p/qgis-styles-for-mul...

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#64

Post by happytoexplain »

sho wrote: post #21

The final sentence says it all: > The thing is that even if I was wrong (I'm not) and AI was somehow helpful for software engineering (it isn't), I still wouldn't want to use it. So even if you were wrong on the facts (you are) you still wouldn't change your mind? In other words, you're unreasonable and know you're unreasonable and think that's totally fine? Well, cool. Next time, lead with that.

The bar for insulting people who have anything negative to say about AI is getting scarily low.

You can certainly disagree, but that sentence isn't unreasonable - you cut out context.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#66

Post by cassianoleal »

ofrzeta wrote: post #59

It doesn't have to be only extremes. How about using a little bit of AI? I also like coding but on the other hand writing down the 1000th loop to iterate over some array is not exactly fulfilling either. It's the same with wood craft as a hobby. On one end of the spectrum is a CNC router, that's something that would somehow defeat the purpose (for me). I am electric drill/screwdriver because it would be tedious to do…

> writing down the 1000th loop to iterate over some array is not exactly fulfilling either.

Code completion and snippets work well for this use case without AI.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#67

Post by ok_dad »

officialchicken wrote: post #27
ok_dad wrote: post #15

I was a hand tool woodworker, but the first time I had to rip 56 6 foot boards into 7 strips I immediately purchased a table saw. Now I use hand tools rarely because I find the speed and quality of my cuts are better. I still use hand tools for things that require certain standards, but electric tools almost always produce better quality results. It’s about the same for AI coding, I just get better results.

Your power tools run out of tokens and you have to open yet another online account to get around the daily sawing limits in order to finish the task today?

I’m a professional so I don’t mind paying for tools.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#68

Post by xigoi »

ok_dad wrote: post #15

I was a hand tool woodworker, but the first time I had to rip 56 6 foot boards into 7 strips I immediately purchased a table saw. Now I use hand tools rarely because I find the speed and quality of my cuts are better. I still use hand tools for things that require certain standards, but electric tools almost always produce better quality results. It’s about the same for AI coding, I just get better results.

Does your saw require you to pay for each use?

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#69

Post by ok_dad »

globular-toast wrote: post #42
ok_dad wrote: post #15

I was a hand tool woodworker, but the first time I had to rip 56 6 foot boards into 7 strips I immediately purchased a table saw. Now I use hand tools rarely because I find the speed and quality of my cuts are better. I still use hand tools for things that require certain standards, but electric tools almost always produce better quality results. It’s about the same for AI coding, I just get better results.

I think we have to be careful with such analogies. One does not have to have sweated for years with hand tools to understand what an accurate rip cut through ply looks like. On the other hand, if you just gave someone some rough cut wood and an electric sander, how would they even understand what that wood could look like having never used a good, sharp hand plane? With AI coding we're talking about people producing…

Everyone is talking about AI coding like only brainless idiots are using it. I’m a professional, I can judge and fix the clankers output. I don’t give a shit if some other idiot is using their tools right.

Re: I Will Never Use AI to Code

#70

Post by xigoi »

cassianoleal wrote: post #66
ofrzeta wrote: post #59

It doesn't have to be only extremes. How about using a little bit of AI? I also like coding but on the other hand writing down the 1000th loop to iterate over some array is not exactly fulfilling either. It's the same with wood craft as a hobby. On one end of the spectrum is a CNC router, that's something that would somehow defeat the purpose (for me). I am electric drill/screwdriver because it would be tedious to do…

> writing down the 1000th loop to iterate over some array is not exactly fulfilling either. Code completion and snippets work well for this use case without AI.

Or just using a language that doesn’t make it hard to iterate over arrays.
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