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I am very biased on this topic. I have started using AI coding assistant and I am not looking back. This comes from an engineer that KEEP telling the junior o

by siscia 2y ago

I am very biased on this topic. I have started using AI coding assistant and I am not looking back. This comes from an engineer that KEEP telling the junior on his team to NOT use GenAI. The reality is that those tools are POWER TOOLS best used by engineers very well versed in the domain and in coding itself. For them, it is really a huge time saving. The work is more like approving PR for a quite competent engineer than writing the PR myself. My tool of choice is Cline, that is great, but not perfect. And the quality is 100% correlated to: 1. The model 2. The context window 3. How well I prompt it. In reverse order of importance. Even an ok model, well prompted gives you a satisfactory code.

MedadNewman 2y ago
Matches my observations, having used Github Copilot for several months. Its POWER TOOL.
- siscia 2y ago
  I wrote down the same concept as a more structured substack. https://slowtechred.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154138353/share-center https://slowtechred.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154138...
uludag 2y ago
> The reality is that those tools are POWER TOOLS best used by engineers very well versed in the domain and in coding itself. I'm starting to get a feeling of dread that our entire engineering organization is digging itself into a hole with lots of buggy code being written which no one seems to understand, presumably written with heavy LLM assistance. Our team seems to be failing to deliver more, and quality has seemingly worsened, despite leaning in to these tools. Reading hacker news gives me the idea that LLMs are a miracle panacea, a true silver bullet. I think that the positive stories I hear on hacker news goes through a big selection bias. It has always been the motivated people who always utilized their tools to their best ability. I definitely don't consider myself to be good in this regard either and struggle to use LLM tools effectively. Most of the time I would be happy with myself if I could just have a solid mental understanding of what the codebase is doing, never mind be a 10x AI enhanced developer.
- collingreen 2y ago
  > have a solid mental understanding of what the codebase is doing I think this is what truly matters no matter how or even if you're slinging code. I think this is what makes highly effective folks and also cleanly explains why high performers in one team or org can fail to deliver in another company or position.
  - namibj 2y ago
    Sorry for the late (and now in wrong thread) reply; is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42318876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42318876 still active? If so, happy to have a chat on it. If you want, let me know how to contact you best (feel free to send me mail to d10.pw).
- siscia 2y ago
  In my experience, coding with AI is much more mentally taxing than coding without. But it is much faster. When I use AI I need to continuously review, direct, and manage the AI. I go through every change and I agree with them, updates nits and regenerate code that is not up to par with a better or more specific prompt. Not doing this exercise is disastrous for the codebase. It really explodes in complexity in no time. Moreover it always try to fix error with more code. Not with better code.

by siscia 2y ago

MedadNewman 2y ago

Matches my observations, having used Github Copilot for several months. Its POWER TOOL.

siscia 2y ago
I wrote down the same concept as a more structured substack. https://slowtechred.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154138353/share-center https://slowtechred.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154138...

uludag 2y ago

> The reality is that those tools are POWER TOOLS best used by engineers very well versed in the domain and in coding itself. I'm starting to get a feeling of dread that our entire engineering organization is digging itself into a hole with lots of buggy code being written which no one seems to understand, presumably written with heavy LLM assistance. Our team seems to be failing to deliver more, and quality has seemingly worsened, despite leaning in to these tools. Reading hacker news gives me the idea that LLMs are a miracle panacea, a true silver bullet. I think that the positive stories I hear on hacker news goes through a big selection bias. It has always been the motivated people who always utilized their tools to their best ability. I definitely don't consider myself to be good in this regard either and struggle to use LLM tools effectively. Most of the time I would be happy with myself if I could just have a solid mental understanding of what the codebase is doing, never mind be a 10x AI enhanced developer.

collingreen 2y ago
> have a solid mental understanding of what the codebase is doing I think this is what truly matters no matter how or even if you're slinging code. I think this is what makes highly effective folks and also cleanly explains why high performers in one team or org can fail to deliver in another company or position.
- namibj 2y ago
  Sorry for the late (and now in wrong thread) reply; is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42318876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42318876 still active? If so, happy to have a chat on it. If you want, let me know how to contact you best (feel free to send me mail to d10.pw).
siscia 2y ago
In my experience, coding with AI is much more mentally taxing than coding without. But it is much faster. When I use AI I need to continuously review, direct, and manage the AI. I go through every change and I agree with them, updates nits and regenerate code that is not up to par with a better or more specific prompt. Not doing this exercise is disastrous for the codebase. It really explodes in complexity in no time. Moreover it always try to fix error with more code. Not with better code.