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Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

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Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#91

Post by everyone »

doug_durham wrote: post #87
everyone wrote: post #40

Is anyone doing this who is not making CRUD web-apps or other very common types of programs for which there is masses of training data to copy from the net? I tend to do oddball stuff (eg. software for custom arcade machines, AR games) and any forays I've made into AI code have made it seem like a total waste of time for me. (ie. I will spend much longer trying to get AI do to a shitty job, compared to just doing it…

I write low level highly performance sensitive code and I get excellent results using LLMs. It isn't a narrow area of applicability.

"low level highly performance sensitive" doesnt mean uncommon. What you're doing may be common with loads of examples to copy. (I dont know cus u didnt say what you're actually doing)

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#92

Post by hellisothers »

scotty79 wrote: post #69
voidUpdate wrote: post #25

What's interesting to me is how many people have found out with the LLM boom that they don't want to be developers/engineers, they want to be managers, delegating all the work to another entity and checking in occasionally to see how the coding is coming along

You seem to think you can only be an engineer if you are holding the shovel yourself. Building software consists of many parts. I love each individually. I was always a bit dissatisfied about how they interact and how they block each other. I love puzzle solving, I love debugging, but I kinda hated building software because it depended on those elements and I'm not fond of context switching. I can love building softw…

> LLM doesn't feel like a person. It feels way better

Somebody trademark this! :D

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#93

Post by carlos-menezes »

This text is regurgitated on a daily basis. I skimmed through the text and could tell not only that but also that the author has given up on writing altogether.

> I think harder about the real problems

Are you /really/? If an LLM gives you an immediate, coherent answer, there's a risk you accept the framing too quickly instead of doing the harder work of questioning premises, testing alternatives and noticing what might be missing.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#94

Post by chonydev »

Following the calculator analogy made by another person here and not disrespectful but joking intentended but this sounds kinda:

"I'm done. I'm not going to do a calculation, remember a single formula or theorem anymore. Now I'm just choose the problem that I want to solve and the math branch that I wanna use. I think all these educations stages (decades) was the toll we had to pay and I'm not going to pay anymore. "

Also who can say that is able to consider all weights that each decision involves and be able to surpass AI's broad view!?. I mean ... mythos finding a full chain of processes to make an exploit from a single bug? We can beat that ?! For how long ?

I don't know where it is going to end up but as a newcomer to the field I 'll try to keep learning programming and build a solid base. Focusing less on knowing all little syntax of each language or library and outsourcing all boring and repetitive tasks to AI.

I don't take sides here: I welcome such a wonderful tool but everything has its tradeoffs.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#95

Post by jdc0589 »

ModernMech wrote: post #90
jdc0589 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You go from formulating unique solutions to flagging things that look wrong and then just picking an alternative LLM generated one. totally depends on how you use the tools. Plenty of people fall in to that scenario, but plenty of others explicitly tell the LLM tools what and how to build something.

How do you make it follow your instructions though? I often an agent like Codex how to build something, and then it just ignores me.

some models do ok with instruction, some don't. You still have to review pretty thoroughly and make corrections or re-prompt.

For the most part I use claude code w/ opus plan mode + sonnet implementation mode, and it does pretty well. I go through the planning process for anything other than the most basic changes.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#96

Post by phito »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #66
phito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I do ask an LLM another question about something small it will offer solutions but doesn’t offer the solution I think makes sense in the architectures I’ve written. This is my experience as well, and I've been using Claude Code a lot. Extremely impressive tools, but they're like fast food. They will solve your immediate problems quickly and cheaply, but you're going to have issues on the long term if that's all…

Fast food might be the right approach if it's a business that prefers speed to maintainability, and they might move towards that with LLMs. I wish more developers would go with it instead of fight it. It's not like it's a personal failure you can't convince the business to slow down and prefer quality. The quality of the craft can live on in open source and personal projects.

I agree, just like some people decide that they're OK with eating junk food every day, knowing the long term risk. They are free to take it.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#97

Post by 4b11b4 »

Opposite, I trust less and less the more I use these things. Must write certain things myself, especially types. Sometimes I'll even touch a new file myself (I know, creating files yourself?!) and write some pseudocode in a new file alongside some voice vomit

Also, /only/ verifying is exhausting...

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#98

Post by grebc »

hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #66
phito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I do ask an LLM another question about something small it will offer solutions but doesn’t offer the solution I think makes sense in the architectures I’ve written. This is my experience as well, and I've been using Claude Code a lot. Extremely impressive tools, but they're like fast food. They will solve your immediate problems quickly and cheaply, but you're going to have issues on the long term if that's all…

Fast food might be the right approach if it's a business that prefers speed to maintainability, and they might move towards that with LLMs. I wish more developers would go with it instead of fight it. It's not like it's a personal failure you can't convince the business to slow down and prefer quality. The quality of the craft can live on in open source and personal projects.

Lol sure thing Sam!

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#99

Post by grebc »

voidUpdate wrote: post #25

What's interesting to me is how many people have found out with the LLM boom that they don't want to be developers/engineers, they want to be managers, delegating all the work to another entity and checking in occasionally to see how the coding is coming along

Three quarters of my university class couldn’t code properly, like seriously struggled with basic coding tasks but still made their way through the course.

You then get into the work environment where despite hiring efforts you still find those numbers hold.

I’m not surprised LLM usage has taken off.

Re: Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore

#100

Post by aselimov3 »

hibikir wrote: post #39
aselimov3 wrote: post #8

I think the main issue with this approach is that your solution space eventually narrows. You go from formulating unique solutions to flagging things that look wrong and then just picking an alternative LLM generated one. I’ve noticed this recently as all my side project work is being done by hand. If I do ask an LLM another question about something small it will offer solutions but doesn’t offer the solution I think…

If you have a very specific decision in mind, there's no need to ask the LLM at all and hope it guesses it. Depending on how sure I am, I will either explain what I want vaguely, or even phrasing things as questions, or be direct and inflexible. It ends up writing the code I would. It's not all that different from what happens if I am delegating a larger task to another human being. The only actual difference there i…

I was mainly just speaking to the point of the article with regards to ability to think about code/solve technical problems. I think most EMs I speak to would say their technical skill set is degraded from years not writing code. I think if you just review code without writing it, your technical skills degrade regardless of whether you are reviewing junior or LLM code. In both cases you maybe gain architecture design and soft skills but you are definitely not improving your technical skill set
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