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747s and coding agents

carlkolon.com

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Re: 747s and coding agents

#71

Post by rwyinuse »

bitwize wrote: post #63
scuff3d wrote: post #52

What the fuck are people working on where it's possible for the LLM to just add entire features. Refactors and class/method level code can be impressive, anything highly structured with good guard rails. As soon as things start to reach beyond that it falls to absolute garbage.

There are companies building entire applications, indeed replicating the functionality of existing SaaS applications to test their original applications,with no humans in the development loop. We're looking at the twilight of programming as a human skill. The LLMs are just that good.

The end result is, and will always be garbage if there is no "human in the loop" to test whether the result meets the requirements, and telling LLM what to do if it doesn't.

Like somebody else said, there is still a need for QA (and usually for requirements gathering too), that's a part of the development cycle. Developing software that is meant to be used by humans with zero humans involved isn't realistic.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#72

Post by rwyinuse »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #39
cedws wrote: post #24

We should be very concerned for the next generation. When you have the constant temptation of digging yourself out of a problem just by asking an LLM how will you ever learn anything? My biggest lessons were from hours of pain and toil, scouring the internet. When I finally found the solution, the dopamine hit ensured that lesson was burned into my neurons. There is no such dopamine hit with LLMs. You vaguely try to…

As an older person, I'm not worried. The world changes all the time. People are put people in difficult situations, and they have to adapt. "Oh no, how will people learn things?" is not that big of a struggle in the grand scheme. We're not burning books or giving people lobotomies. People can still learn if they want to, easier than ever before. Businesses will adapt, people will adapt, by necessity. Things will be v…

Yea, IMO people shouldn't make jobs / professions too big a part of their identity. At some point human programming may be largely gone, but probably there will be increased demand for something else.

It should be government's job to make it as easy as possible for people to retrain, switch jobs and start new careers. Obviously taxation should be reworked too, if AI and robots replace lots of jobs in some sectors. Profits produced by efficiency gains shouldn't be concentrated just among few billionaires.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#73

Post by medi8r »

jeffrwells wrote: post #68
scuff3d wrote: post #52

What the fuck are people working on where it's possible for the LLM to just add entire features. Refactors and class/method level code can be impressive, anything highly structured with good guard rails. As soon as things start to reach beyond that it falls to absolute garbage.

I built this entire app on ios + website without opening an IDE. https://www.gophergolfer.com/iphone NextJS, Rails, GraphQL, React Native Certainly wasn't one-shot for all of it but case in point it has dozens and dozens of "features" all LLM implemented

I want to hear someone say "I work at Google on a 10yr old 100KLOC service and AI is doing it all we are just vibe coding" as that would be really interesting. Greenfield yeah AI slaughters greenfield before breakfast

Re: 747s and coding agents

#74

Post by dongguanxianhao »

MDCore wrote: post #15
dongguanxianhao wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>hundredths of them Man, it would rule so much if programmers were literate and knew how to actually communicate what they intend to say.

It's obvious from the context here what the intended meaning was. Everyone makes typos sometimes.

It is literally not clear. OP could mean that they read hundredths of lines of code for each code they write ie 100 lines of code written and 1-3 lines read. That is in fact literally what they wrote.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#75

Post by padolsey »

thesz wrote: post #8

> I do read the code, but reviewing code is very different from producing it, and surely teaches you less. If you don’t believe this, I doubt you work in software. I work in software and for single line I write I read hundredths of them. If I am fixing bugs in my own (mostly self-education) programs, I read my program several times, over and over again. If writing programs taught me something, it is how to read progr…

> I work in software and for single line I write I read hundredths of them.

I'm not sure whether this should humble or confuse me. I am definitely WAY heavier on the write-side of this equation. I love programming. And writing. I love them both so much that I wrote a book about programming. But I don't like reading other peoples' code. Nor reading generally. I can't read faster than I can talk. I envy those who can. So, reading code has always been a pain. That said, I love little clever golf-y code, nuggets of perl or bitwise magic. But whole reams of code? Hundreds upon hundreds of lines? Gosh no. But I respect anyone who has that patience. FWIW I find that one can still gain incredibly rich understanding without having to read too heavily by finding the implied contracts/interfaces and then writing up a bunch of assertions to see if you're right, TDD style.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#76

Post by cjrp »

shich wrote: post #34

The pilot analogy hits different when you consider that pilots still train on simulators for exactly this reason — they're legally required to maintain proficiency even when autopilot handles 99% of flights. There's no equivalent mandate for software engineers. Nothing stops you from spending years as a pure "prompt pilot" and losing the ability to read a stack trace or reason about algorithmic complexity. The atroph…

The term "Children of the Magenta Line" has long been used in aviation to describe the over-reliance on automation. So even though they train to avoid losing manual skills, it's definitely still a concern.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#77

Post by cafebabbe »

0x00cl wrote: post #61
cedws wrote: post #24

We should be very concerned for the next generation. When you have the constant temptation of digging yourself out of a problem just by asking an LLM how will you ever learn anything? My biggest lessons were from hours of pain and toil, scouring the internet. When I finally found the solution, the dopamine hit ensured that lesson was burned into my neurons. There is no such dopamine hit with LLMs. You vaguely try to…

> We should be very concerned for the next generation. When you have the constant temptation of digging yourself out of a problem just by asking an LLM how will you ever learn anything? This is just the same concern whenever a new technology appears. * Socrates argued that writing would weaken memory, that it would create only superficially knowledge but incapable of really understanding. But it didn't destroy it. It…

Socrates was proven dead wrong by neurobiology.

LLMs making you dumber is far from being "disproven" by science. Quite the opposite https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Re: 747s and coding agents

#79

Post by bornfreddy »

demorro wrote: post #36
andoando wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok imagine you went back 30 years and you had a swarm of experts around you who you could ask anything you wanted and they would even do the work for you if you wanted. Does this mean youd be incapable of learning anything? Or could you possibly learn way more because you had the innate desire to learn and understand along with the best tool possible to do it? Its the same thing here. How you use LLMs is all up to yo…

> Does this mean you'd be incapable of learning anything? Yes. This strikes me as obvious. People don't have the sort of impulse control you're implying by default, it has to be learnt just like anything else. This sort of environment would make you an idiot if it's all you've ever known. You might as well be saying that you can just explain to children why they should eat their vegetables and rely on them to be rati…

I agree with your premise, but this example I strongly disagree with:

> You might as well be saying that you can just explain to children why they should eat their vegetables and rely on them to be rational actors.

YES! Explain to them, and trust them. They might not do exactly as you wish for them, but I'll bet you don't do exactly as you wish for yourself either. The children need your trust and they must learn how to navigate this world by themselves, with parents providing guidance and only taking the hard stance (but still explaining and discussing!) when safety is concerned. Also, lead by example. If you eat vegetables then children are likely to eat them too. The children are not stupid, they just don't have enough experience yet. Which you gain by trying (and failing), not by listening.

Re: 747s and coding agents

#80

Post by archmaster »

jeffrwells wrote: post #67
archmaster wrote: post #33

I've seen a lot of posts like this one, but this is the first to encapsulate how I feel so well. Honestly, I don't really know what to do. I spent my whole life (so far; I'm still very young) falling in love with programming, and now I just don't find this agent thing fun at all. But I just don't know how to find my niche if using LLMs truly does end up being the only way for me to build valuable things with my only…

Could I ask, what did you love about programming that you now don't find this agent thing fun at all. I'm genuinely curious, I feel very differently and excited about this agent thing. Asking because unlike a lot of other commentary, this struck me as being more about the act itself than being depressed/anxious for financial reasons, etc

I love the act of writing code, it clicks well with me. I love the feeling of my brain solving problems, figuring out how something works, and then finally understanding it. I love debugging. I love having built something that people love, solely wrought by my own fingers.

I got into programming because the act of spinning a web of code just feels like what I'm designed to do.

Vibe coding definitely has some of that, but it feels so detached from any understanding of the computer itself. I feel like I'm bossing someone around — and I would never want to be a non-coding manager. I'm curious, how/why do you feel so different?

(Obviously the financial side is stressful too, but I feel like I'm in a good spot to figure that out either way.)

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