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Write less code, be more responsible

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Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#71

Post by travelalberta »

Code Complete came out in '93 and even then they acknowledge most of the work around development wasn't actually programming but architecture, requirements, and design.

Sure you can let Claude have a field day and churn out whatever you want but the question is: a) Did you read the diffs and provide the necessary oversight to make sure it actually does what you want properly, b) Is the feature actually useful?

If you've worked on legacy systems you know there's so much garbage floating around that the bar isn't that high generally for code as long as it seems to work. If you read the code and documentation Claude makes thoroughly and aren't blindly accepting every commit there is not really a problem as long as you are responsible and can put your stamp of approval on it. If you are pushing garbage through it doesn't matter if a junior dev, yourself, or Claude wrote it, the problem isn't the code but your CI/CD process.

I think the problem is expectations. I know some devs at 'AI-native' organizations that have Claude do a lot for them. Which is fine, for a lot of boiler plate or standard requests they can now ship 2X code. The problem is the expectation is now that they ship 2X code. I think if you leave timelines relatively the same as pre-AI then having an agent generate, document, refactor, test, and evaluate code with you can lead to a better product.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#72

Post by Applejinx »

rwmj wrote: post #51
20k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t really understand the, “more, better, faster,” cachet to be honest. Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time. It’s usually the thinking that takes most of the time and if that goes away well… I dunno, that’s weird. I will understand it even less. This is what I've always found confusing as well about this push for AI. The act of typing isn't the hard part - its unde…

Don't worry. In a few years we'll be like the COBOL programmers who still understand how things work, our brains haven't atrophied, and we make good money fixing the giant messes created by others.

Sounds awful. I'm not interested in fixing giant messes. I'll just be tinkering away making little things (at scale) where the scope is very constrained and the fixing isn't needed.

People can do their vibecoding to make weird rehackings of stuff I did, almost always to make it more mainstream, limited, and boring, and usually to some mainstream acclaim. And they can flame out, not my problem.

I'm not fixing anybody's giant mess. I'm doing the equivalent of simply refusing to give up COBOL. To stop me, people will have to EOL a huge amount of working useful stuff for no good reason and replace it with untrustworthy garbage.

I am aware this is exactly the plan on so many levels. Bring it. I don't think it's going to be popular, or rather: I think only at this historical moment can you get away with that and not immediately be called on it, as a charlatan.

When our grandest celebrity charlatans go in the bin, the time for vibecoding will truly be over.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#73

Post by the_af »

mrklol wrote: post #50
lelanthran wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s more than just typing though. A simple example remembering the exact incantation of CSS classes to style something that you can easily describe in plain English. Do that enough and you won't know enough about your codebase to recognise errors in the LLM output.

imo a question is, do you still need to understand the codebase? What if that process changes and the language you’re reading is a natural one instead of code?

> What if that process changes and the language you’re reading is a natural one instead of code?

Natural language is not a good way to specify computer systems. This is a lesson we seem doomed to forget again and again. It's the curse of our profession: nobody wants to learn anything if it gets in the way of the latest fad. There's already a historical problem in software engineering: the people asking for stuff use plain language, and there's a need to convert it to a formal spec, and this takes time and is error prone. But it seems we are introducing a whole new layer of lossy interpretation to the whole mess, and we're doing this happily and open eyed because fuck the lessons of software engineering.

I could see LLMs being used to check/analyze natural language requirements and help turn them into formal requirements though.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#74

Post by deadbabe »

bdangubic wrote: post #14
agentultra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve never read Fred Brooks, I’d recommend it. The aphorism is a bit dated but rings true: you can’t add another developer and make the process go faster. It usually slows teams down. I’ve seen it time and again: startups move from their market-fit phase into an operational excellence phase on the backing of VC funding and they start hiring a ton of people. Most of those developers are highly educated, specializ…

> The aphorism is a bit dated but rings true: you can’t add another developer and make the process go faster. It usually slows teams down. I've been doing this for 30-years and this is another political slogan of sorts. this is true in every single imaginable job - new people slow you down, until they do not and become part of the well-oiled machine that is hopefully your team. not sure why people insist on saying th…

When people say code is the bottleneck, they don’t always mean the lack of code: it’s also the accumulation of code, which becomes like plaque clogging your arteries. When you have too many people pumping out too much code, it can be the death of your startup. Startups have failed from writing way too much code.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#75

Post by kjksf »

lelanthran wrote: post #59
mrklol wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imo a question is, do you still need to understand the codebase? What if that process changes and the language you’re reading is a natural one instead of code?

> What if that process changes and the language you’re reading is a natural one instead of code? Okay, when that happens, then sure, you don't need to understand the codebase. I have not seen any evidence that that is currently the case, so my observation that "Continue letting the LLM write your code for you, and soon you won't be able to spot errors in its output" is still applicable today . When the situation chan…

The same logic applies to your statement:

> Do that enough and you won't know enough about your codebase to recognise errors in the LLM output.

Okay, when that happens, then sure, you'll have a problem.

I have not seen any evidence that that is currently the case i.e. I have no problems correcting LLM output when needed.

When the situation changes, then we can talk about pulling back on LLM usage.

And the crucial point is: me.

I'm not saying that everyone that uses LLM to generate code won't fall into "not able to use LLM generated code".

I now generate 90% of the code with LLM and I see no issues so far. Just implementing features faster. Fixing bugs faster.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#76

Post by cess11 »

20k wrote: post #11
agentultra wrote: post #2

I’m working as a single solo developer of a tiny video game. I’m writing it in C with raylib. No coding assistants, no agents, not even a language server. I only work on it for a few hours during the week. And it’s progressing at a reasonable pace that I’m happy with. I got cross-compilation from Linux to Windows going early on in a couple of hours. Wasn’t that hard. I’ve had to rework parts of the code as I’ve progr…

>I don’t really understand the, “more, better, faster,” cachet to be honest. Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time. It’s usually the thinking that takes most of the time and if that goes away well… I dunno, that’s weird. I will understand it even less. This is what I've always found confusing as well about this push for AI. The act of typing isn't the hard part - its unde…

"This is what I've always found confusing as well about this push for AI."

I think it's a few things converging. One is that software developers have become more expensive for US corporations for several reasons and blaming layoffs on a third party is for some reason more palatable to a lot of people.

Another is that a lot of decision makers are pretty mediocre thinkers and know very little about the people they rule over, so they actually believe that machines will be able to automate what software developers do rather than what these decision makers do.

Then there's the ever-present allure of the promise that middle managers will somehow wrestle control over software crafts from the nerds, i.e. what has underpinned low-code business solutions for ages and always, always comes with very expensive consultants, commonly software developers, on the side.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#77

Post by groby_b »

lelanthran wrote: post #42
koolba wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The act of typing isn't the hard part - its understanding what's going on, and why you're doing it. Using AI to generate code is only faster if you try and skip that step - which leads to an inevitable disaster It’s more than just typing though. A simple example remembering the exact incantation of CSS classes to style something that you can easily describe in plain English. Yes, you could look them up or maybe eve…

> It’s more than just typing though. A simple example remembering the exact incantation of CSS classes to style something that you can easily describe in plain English. Do that enough and you won't know enough about your codebase to recognise errors in the LLM output.

That's a bold assertion without any proof.

It also means you're so helpless as a developer that you could never debug another person's code, because how would you recognize the errors, you haven't made them yourself.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#78

Post by kjksf »

NilMostChill wrote: post #68
vbezhenar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI not just types code for you. It can assist with almost every part of software development. Design, bug hunting, code review, prototyping, testing.

A Luddite farm worker can assist in all those things, the question is, can it assist in a useful manner?

Not only it can but it does.

Just as I was reading this claude implemented a drag&drop of images out of SumatraPDF.

I asked:

> implement dragging out images; if we initiate drag action and the element under cursor is an image, allow dragging out the image and dropping on other applications

then it didn't quite work:

I'm testing it by trying to drop on a web application that accepts dropped images from file system but it doesn't work for that

Here's the result: https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/commit/58d9a4...

It took me less than 15 mins, with testing.

Now you tell me:

1. Can a farm worker do that?

2. Can you improve this code in a meaningful way? If you were doing a code review, what would you ask to be changed?

3. How long would it take you to type this code?

Here's what I think: No. No. Much longer.

Re: Write less code, be more responsible

#80

Post by svieira »

kjksf wrote: post #78
NilMostChill wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Luddite farm worker can assist in all those things, the question is, can it assist in a useful manner?

Not only it can but it does. Just as I was reading this claude implemented a drag&drop of images out of SumatraPDF. I asked: > implement dragging out images; if we initiate drag action and the element under cursor is an image, allow dragging out the image and dropping on other applications then it didn't quite work: I'm testing it by trying to drop on a web application that accepts dropped images from file system but…

Why is it using a temp file? Is there really no more elegant way to pass around pointers to images than spilling to disk?
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