We're all CTO now • Hacker News Board

Re: We're all CTO now

#81

Post by nico » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

StopVibeCoding wrote: post #77

nico wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I became unable to understand what I was doing, and as I read through the code very little of it made any sense to me, sure the individual lines were readable, functions made some semblance of sense, but there was no logic Yes, this happens, and it’s similar to when you first start working on a codebase you didn’t write However, if instead of giving up, you keep going, eventually you do start understanding what the…

No. It is different, when working with a codebase written by humans there is always sanity. Even when looking at terrible codebases, there is some realm of reason, that once you understand can make navigating the code easy. I believe you missed the part of my comment saying that I have been coding professionally for 20 years. I have seen horrible codebases, and I'm telling you I'd rather see the switch statement with…

I respectfully disagree. I have about the same years of experience as you, and now also 1-2 years of AI-assisted coding

If you stay on top of the code you are getting from the AI, you end up molding it and understanding it

The AI can only spit out so much nonsense until the code just doesn’t work. This varies by codebase complexity

Usually when starting from scratch, you can get pretty far with barely even looking at the code, but with bigger repos you’ll have to actively be involved in the process and applying your own logic to what the AI is doing

If the code of what you are building doesn’t make sense, it’s essentially because you let it get there. And at the end of the day, it’s your responsibility as the developer to make it make sense. You are ultimately accountable for the delivery of that code. AI is not magic, it’s just a tool

Re: We're all CTO now

#82

Post by alsosprachben » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

StopVibeCoding wrote: post #36

CuriouslyC wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI writes code according to the instructions given. You can instruct it to architect and organize the code any way you want. You got the fruit of your inarticulation.

This is what I heard from many people online. I have tried beign specific, I have even gone as far as to feed its prompt with a full requirement document for a feature (1000+ words), and it did not seem to make any significant difference.

Need to use the Wittgenstein approach: “What can be shown cannot be said.” LLMs need you to show it what you want. Its model has seen nothing. Built up a library of examples. Humans also work better this way. Just good practice.

Re: We're all CTO now

#83

Post by cpursley » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #61

djha-skin wrote: post #42

I'm a DevOps engineer. I'm training someone new to the field. Often I'll ask the AI to do something and it goes sideways. Sometimes it really saves me time, but many times not. I'll break down and actually type out commands or even Google what to do instead of using the AI because it's still faster. It's true that my trainee uses the AI more because there's fewer commands in his muscle memory. But, it's still not gre…

Are you talking about CLI commands? I’ve been at programming for over a decade and don’t have the type of memory that allows me to remember all the obscure non-intuitive commands - AI has been a lifesaver, I could care a-less about nerd points.

warp is especially helpful with this

Re: We're all CTO now

#84

Post by alsosprachben » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

kaoD wrote: post #7

causal wrote: post #4

CTOs at most of my companies were more like tech evangelists

It depends a lot on the specific business and company stage. E.g. CTOs at boutiques basically meet clients and put on a performance to instill trust. CTOs on product startups with little funding are more like "I'll hire a teammate that can put up with the mess I wrote". CTOs after the product startups have large investments are more like "I'll pretend I know what I'm doing and let the principal engineers actually run…

I was CTO from 2 to 100, over 6 years, and led the core tech development the entire time. Tech Co-Founders certainly can and do code. I was a Principal Engineer before and after.

In a sense, you are right that the title is meaningless, and only means signature powers.

And you are right that other principals rewrote legacy stuff. But I also participated at the same level. I just knew I was only above due to some market luck lining up with my experience. Will never know exactly how much influence I had over that situation.

But I have a Jazz background. It is easy for me to respect equally everyone on the team. Sports can do the same, but I think music is probably more effective, because it is inherently more spectator than competitive. Musicians tend to make incredible team players, if they stuck with it for long enough. Many leaders in band are leaders in sports, in school. And the formal language abilities are already demonstrated in musicians.

Well, that went in a strange direction.

Re: We're all CTO now

#85

Post by johnisgood » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

matt3210 wrote: post #3

Author assumes we’re going to use AI more and more. I don’t agree. I regularly out perform the AI pushers on my team and I can talk about engineering in person too!

I cannot talk about engineering in person because I do not know how to pronounce words, and I am on the spectrum. :/ I can write about it though!

Re: We're all CTO now

#86

Post by donperignon » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #11

donperignon wrote: post #8

Is not the first time that I read this kind of narrative, actually appears pretty often in my LinkedIn timeline. We are now managers of agents and now we are CTO of agents… this is plain delusional, you can play with the toys all day long, a mud cake won’t sell very well. This CTO doesn’t code much, I agree, if you are a contributor you know that so called agents are as useful as google and stack overflow on steroids…

Agents are definitely more useful than Google and SO… have you tried pair programming with Claude 4 Opus and building something? It’s amazing.

That’s why I said it’s like it but on steroids. It is what is it’s.i didn’t try (insert here last hyped version of whatever) I tried the mainstream services and it’s definitely not like to be “a manager” or CTO of agents

Re: We're all CTO now

#87

Post by danjl » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

StopVibeCoding wrote: post #36

CuriouslyC wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI writes code according to the instructions given. You can instruct it to architect and organize the code any way you want. You got the fruit of your inarticulation.

This is what I heard from many people online. I have tried beign specific, I have even gone as far as to feed its prompt with a full requirement document for a feature (1000+ words), and it did not seem to make any significant difference.

You are experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect of using AI. You used it enough to think you understand it, but not enough to really know how to use it well. That's okay, since even if you try and ignore and avoid it for now, eventually you'll have enough experience to understand how to use it well. Like any tool, the better you understand it and the better you understand the problems you're trying to solve, the better job you will do. Give an AI to a product manager and their code will be shit. Give it to a good programmer, and they're likely to ask the right questions and verify the code a little bit more so they get better results.

Re: We're all CTO now

#88

Post by danjl » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

mfalcon wrote: post #70

I'm doing something similar to the OP but I'm not a CTO but a "manager". Maybe the title is "we're all managers now". The CTO role is bigger than that.

And, we are not managing the LLMs. We are communicating with them. The better a developer gets it communication in general, the easier their life will be in the better job they will do for their company. The more they understand about what their customers need, the better job they will do building those tools. None of this is about managing. It's about learning how to communicate, how to ask the right questions and how to listen.

Re: We're all CTO now

#89

Post by cyberpunk » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #81

StopVibeCoding wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It is different, when working with a codebase written by humans there is always sanity. Even when looking at terrible codebases, there is some realm of reason, that once you understand can make navigating the code easy. I believe you missed the part of my comment saying that I have been coding professionally for 20 years. I have seen horrible codebases, and I'm telling you I'd rather see the switch statement with…

I respectfully disagree. I have about the same years of experience as you, and now also 1-2 years of AI-assisted coding If you stay on top of the code you are getting from the AI, you end up molding it and understanding it The AI can only spit out so much nonsense until the code just doesn’t work. This varies by codebase complexity Usually when starting from scratch, you can get pretty far with barely even looking at…

It sounds like parent commentator is giving it tasks and trying to make it come up with logic. It’s bad at this. Use it as a translator, i knock out the interface or write some logic in pseudocode and then get it to translate it to code, review it, generate tests and bam half an hour or more of coding has been done in a few minutes. all the logic is mine, but i don’t have to remember if that function takes &foo or foo, or the right magic ioreader i need or whatever…

whenever i try to get it to do my work for me, it ends badly.

it can be my syntax gimp tho sure.

Re: We're all CTO now

#90

Post by StopVibeCoding » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 7:44 PM UTC

cyberpunk wrote: post #89

nico wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. I have about the same years of experience as you, and now also 1-2 years of AI-assisted coding If you stay on top of the code you are getting from the AI, you end up molding it and understanding it The AI can only spit out so much nonsense until the code just doesn’t work. This varies by codebase complexity Usually when starting from scratch, you can get pretty far with barely even looking at…

It sounds like parent commentator is giving it tasks and trying to make it come up with logic. It’s bad at this. Use it as a translator, i knock out the interface or write some logic in pseudocode and then get it to translate it to code, review it, generate tests and bam half an hour or more of coding has been done in a few minutes. all the logic is mine, but i don’t have to remember if that function takes &foo or fo…

this is a good approach that I have admittedly not thought of.

At that point however, is it really saving you that much time over good snippets and quick macros in your editor?

For me writing the code is the easiest part of my job, I can write fast, and I have my vim configured in such a way where it makes writing code even faster.