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I've been using AI for code for more than two years already, the auto-completion is a nice help that I'm willing to pay for, but every time I try anything that'

I've been using AI for code for more than two years already, the auto-completion is a nice help that I'm willing to pay for, but every time I try anything that's harder than the basics it completely falls flat. It doesn't surprise me though, most of the people working on this are the same that had been promising self-driving cars. But that proved to be quite hard, and most of them moved on to the next thing which is this. So maybe a decade from now we'll be directing AIs instead of writing code. Or maybe that will also be difficult, and people will have moved on to the next thing they will fail to replace with AI.

AaronAPU 2y ago
Every time someone says this, when I ask they haven’t used o1-pro. Not saying that’s the case with you but I have to ask. In my experience it’s literally the only model which can actually code beyond auto-complete. Not perfect but a completely different tier above the rest.
- 9dev 2y ago
  People have been saying that since the start, too, albeit about different models. It never felt revolutionary; the moment I asked about a particularly gnarly recursive generic type problem, or something that requires insights from across the code base, it was just rubbish from all models. Good to finish the line I wanted to write, bad at creating software.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    >People have been saying that since the start The progress made since the start has been wild, and if it keeps increasing, even at a much slower pace, it's gonna be even better. That's like people looking at N64 games saying "wow, these new 3D graphics sure look like ass, they'll never catch on and replace 2D games". Or like people looking at the output of early C compilers going "wow, this is so unoptimized, I'll stick to coding in assembly for my career since nobody will ever use compilers for serious work". It boggles my mind how ignorant people can be about progress and disruption based on how past history played out. Oh well, at least more power to those who embrace the new tech early on.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      > Oh well, at least more power to those who embrace the new tech early on. Why would embracing it early before it is useful give you more power?
      - Macha 2y ago
        Speaking of which, it's been a minute since I've heard anyone call themselves a prompt engineer.
    - jaimebuelta 2y ago
      Well, there’s still a lot of 2D games. And, for many games, it’s probably the right choice.
    - 9dev 2y ago
      0.001 is infinitely more than 0, and yet it's a far way off from 1. Call me when we've reached 0.2 at least. Back with N64 or C compilers, we didn't talk about energy requirements on the level of small countries and billions of dollars to even compete with the status quo. You're like one of those guys in the fifties, thinking it'll only be a few more years until we're all commuting in flying cars powered by nuclear reactors.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      > "wow, this is so unoptimized, I'll stick to coding in assembly for my career since nobody will ever use compilers for serious work" I’m sure somebody said that, but I don’t think it was a common sentiment. Rather, people said that there were still some cases that required some assembly programming. And it is true. It’s just a niche. One they gets smaller over time. If you are a generalist it makes sense to retrain. If you are a specialist, there’s some level of socialization where you can get away with continuing to program assembly.
    - techpineapple 2y ago
      Do you really feel this way? I feel like we're probably batting better than 50%, but plenty of revolutionary technologies never manifest, and more specifically, there's such a wide swath of predictions. Sure I think LLM's will continue to get more useful, and they're helpful for programming, but the range of predictions runs the gamut from Software engineers may become a bit higher level like software managers/architects to, LLM's will bring on the end of scarcity and all white color jobs within the next 10 years. Like, how is some hesitance towards the possibilities of this specific implementation of AI "ignorant of the progress and disruption of history". A casual glance at the headlines around blockchain ~ 6 years ago should invite some skepticism. I think in some ways this is like looking at the difference between Camera only self-driving vs all the tools. I think it's quite possible LLM's look more like camera-only self-driving which will continue to get marginally better but may never solve the problem, and we're still waiting on the insight/architecture that will bring us full AGI.
  - AaronAPU 2y ago
    I’ll put you down as a “No, I haven’t used o1-pro”
    - 9dev 2y ago
      Feel free! I've played this game a few rounds, but it didn't get any less disappointing. I'm absolutely fine with missing out this time, but if you haven't had your fill yet, don't mind me. I'll be back in line for the iPhone 3G, thank you.
    - owebmaster 2y ago
      Can you share some code created using it?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- J_Shelby_J 2y ago
  O1-pro is the first time I’m actually hesitant to recommend an AI tool. Out of selfishness perhaps. It’s the true kick off of the AI career Cold War.
aerokr 2y ago
Self driving cars exist and are safer than human drivers, Waymo being the obvious answer - https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform-latest-generation-human-driven-vehicles-25-million-miles/ https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform.... Replacement is a matter of large scale deployment and coordination with legal frameworks, which isn’t the same problem as self driving cars.
- carlmr 2y ago
  Has Waymon figured out how to scale this yet? Last time I checked they needed highly precise and up to date maps that are not just available for every location, and thus they're limited to small test regions.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    > highly precise and up to date maps I would guess that's one of those "pick any two" things, given how many construction projects, repair, "life happens" stuff goes on in a modern city That said, unless I'm totally missing something they have a self-solving problem with that since the Waymo's all carry around cameras, lidar, and presumably radar so I would expect that they update the maps as they go. Come to think of it, that's very likely why I originally saw them roaming around the city with drivers in them: testing the pathfinding and mapping at the same time
    - carlmr 2y ago
      Yes, exactly the constant updating (last I heard) was what caused scaling issues. I'm not sure if they resolved it yet. But yes, they should be able to use the driving data to improve the updating process. Not sure if it can be fully automated yet though. I would believe at some point this is possible though, since at least if they send the data home about things that "don't match" with their precise maps, they can easily use as much compute as they want on the servers to get the maps updated.
margalabargala 2y ago
Even in the best case scenario for LLMs, they aren't mind readers. They'll be time savers. They're more like compilers for language to code, like how actual compilers transform code to assembly. The job has changed before, it will change again. It may get easier to enter the industry, but the industry will still exist and will still need subject matter experts a decade from now.
- dgellow 2y ago
  I don’t feel LLMs are the good tool for that. It’s nice to have something that behaves as if it understood my requests and business model, but we need reproducibility, otherwise it’s too unpredictable. I also don’t like English as a language to express requirements, it’s not strict enough and depends too much on an implicit context. Whatever high-level abstraction we end up with it cannot be something that results in the wrong implementation because the agent incorrectly read the tone of the exchange.
  - kristianc 2y ago
    > Whatever high-level abstraction we end up with it cannot be something that results in the wrong implementation because the agent incorrectly read the tone of the exchange. That can easily be said of most Product Manager > SWE relationships too though
  - lunarboy 2y ago
    That's why code was invented in the first place no? But now LLMs are in the ballpark where lay people can describe something vaguely and get a working MVP. Whether you can ship, scale, and debug that code is a completely different question
    - hooverd 2y ago
      Lay people can pour concrete and nail boards together; that doesn't mean they'll lay a good foundation and erect a square frame.
torginus 2y ago
This. All these reasoning models that push out complete modules of code tend to not write code I would have - and have difficulty writing code that matches up with the rest of the codebase. And even if it does, the burden of understanding what the AI does falls onto my shoulders, and as everyone knows, understanding someone elses code is 10x harder than writing your own.
- clown_strike 2y ago
  > And even if it does, the burden of understanding what the AI does falls onto my shoulders, and as everyone knows, understanding someone elses code is 10x harder than writing your own. Which means we're doing it backwards. AI writes code as well as a committee of StackOverflow users but reads it without breaking a sweat. Use AI to do the harder part.
greenie_beans 2y ago
meanwhile i'm building entire features with it, and they work without bugs and i understand all the code.
- sceptic123 2y ago
  In what language? On what size of code base?
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    python, django, react, javascript, vanilla js, html, css, tailwind, htmx, bash, etc, etc, etc
    - AlexeyBelov 2y ago
      Can you describe what tools you're using and how (to a first approximation)?
      - greenie_beans 2y ago
        i always recommend simon willison's blog: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ he's the creator of django and has been writing about coding with LLMs since the beginning. he was one of the first people to report about prompt injection and hallucinations. you will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of coding with LLMs if you approach his blog with an open mind.
NBJack 2y ago
> Or maybe that will also be difficult, and people will have moved on to the next thing they will fail to replace with AI. Probably quantum computing. That seems to be the next hyped up product.
- AbstractH24 2y ago
  Hasn’t been discussed for ages?
ddoolin 2y ago
Honestly, I don't know why nobody says it, but I just _don't want to._ I don't want to use it too much. It's not that I'm paranoid about it outputting bad code, but I just like doing almost all of it myself. It helps that I will do better than it 100% of the time but that isn't really why I don't use it. If it's going to replace all of us, fine. I guess you can chalk me up as not being into this hyper-productivity mindset. I just want to write code, period. I use it in the same manner as I see most comments saying; that is, as a fancy code complete, but I haven't found myself wishing "if only this could do all of it for me!"
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  I think a good analogy is 3D printing. Certainly, it's faster from idea to prototype, but the actual act of carving wood or molding clay is itself a creative process that for some will never be replaced because we have cheap commodity 3D printers.
  - elliottkember 2y ago
    3D printing is an interesting analogy. When I got my printer I really truly thought I’d be printing all sorts of things to use around the house and gadgets and stuff. It turns out that to be a good 3D printer, you need to be really good at CAD, and measuring stuff with Vernier calipers. That’s like prompt engineering. Then there was the nozzle temperature, print errors, and other strange results — call those hallucinations. Once I had designed something that I needed many instances of, it was great. But for one-offs, it was a lot of work. So it goes with AI.
    - hoaxminion 2y ago
      [dead]
- danielbln 2y ago
  I'll provide a counter perspective: I love building things, but the minutae and implementation details of code are merely a means to an end for me, something that stands in between me and a feature/experiment. Agentic coding, especially when doing green field or prototyping takes the grunt work away and let's me build on a higher abstraction level. And I love it, though I can see that that's not for everyone.
m463 2y ago
> anything that's harder than the basics it completely falls flat I kind of wonder if there's a way to make ai-accessible software. For example, lets say someone wrote some really descriptive tutorial on blender, not only simple features, but advanced ones. added some college texts on adjacent problems to help prevent "falling flat" at more difficult tasks. could something like that work? I figure LLMs are now just reading simple tutorials now, what about feeding them advanced stuff?
justanotherjoe 2y ago
What you said struck me: > It doesn't surprise me though, most of the people working on this are the same that had been promising self-driving cars. Where did you pick that up? That's just pure hallucination (ironically). Also what are you implying, that Tesla made LLM now? If I have to guess their amount of contribution to LLM it'd be way closer to 0 than 'most'. It's one of those things that is so easy to say but has no actual truth.

AaronAPU 2y ago

Every time someone says this, when I ask they haven’t used o1-pro. Not saying that’s the case with you but I have to ask. In my experience it’s literally the only model which can actually code beyond auto-complete. Not perfect but a completely different tier above the rest.

9dev 2y ago
People have been saying that since the start, too, albeit about different models. It never felt revolutionary; the moment I asked about a particularly gnarly recursive generic type problem, or something that requires insights from across the code base, it was just rubbish from all models. Good to finish the line I wanted to write, bad at creating software.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >People have been saying that since the start The progress made since the start has been wild, and if it keeps increasing, even at a much slower pace, it's gonna be even better. That's like people looking at N64 games saying "wow, these new 3D graphics sure look like ass, they'll never catch on and replace 2D games". Or like people looking at the output of early C compilers going "wow, this is so unoptimized, I'll stick to coding in assembly for my career since nobody will ever use compilers for serious work". It boggles my mind how ignorant people can be about progress and disruption based on how past history played out. Oh well, at least more power to those who embrace the new tech early on.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > Oh well, at least more power to those who embrace the new tech early on. Why would embracing it early before it is useful give you more power?
    - Macha 2y ago
      Speaking of which, it's been a minute since I've heard anyone call themselves a prompt engineer.
  - jaimebuelta 2y ago
    Well, there’s still a lot of 2D games. And, for many games, it’s probably the right choice.
  - 9dev 2y ago
    0.001 is infinitely more than 0, and yet it's a far way off from 1. Call me when we've reached 0.2 at least. Back with N64 or C compilers, we didn't talk about energy requirements on the level of small countries and billions of dollars to even compete with the status quo. You're like one of those guys in the fifties, thinking it'll only be a few more years until we're all commuting in flying cars powered by nuclear reactors.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    > "wow, this is so unoptimized, I'll stick to coding in assembly for my career since nobody will ever use compilers for serious work" I’m sure somebody said that, but I don’t think it was a common sentiment. Rather, people said that there were still some cases that required some assembly programming. And it is true. It’s just a niche. One they gets smaller over time. If you are a generalist it makes sense to retrain. If you are a specialist, there’s some level of socialization where you can get away with continuing to program assembly.
  - techpineapple 2y ago
    Do you really feel this way? I feel like we're probably batting better than 50%, but plenty of revolutionary technologies never manifest, and more specifically, there's such a wide swath of predictions. Sure I think LLM's will continue to get more useful, and they're helpful for programming, but the range of predictions runs the gamut from Software engineers may become a bit higher level like software managers/architects to, LLM's will bring on the end of scarcity and all white color jobs within the next 10 years. Like, how is some hesitance towards the possibilities of this specific implementation of AI "ignorant of the progress and disruption of history". A casual glance at the headlines around blockchain ~ 6 years ago should invite some skepticism. I think in some ways this is like looking at the difference between Camera only self-driving vs all the tools. I think it's quite possible LLM's look more like camera-only self-driving which will continue to get marginally better but may never solve the problem, and we're still waiting on the insight/architecture that will bring us full AGI.
- AaronAPU 2y ago
  I’ll put you down as a “No, I haven’t used o1-pro”
  - 9dev 2y ago
    Feel free! I've played this game a few rounds, but it didn't get any less disappointing. I'm absolutely fine with missing out this time, but if you haven't had your fill yet, don't mind me. I'll be back in line for the iPhone 3G, thank you.
  - owebmaster 2y ago
    Can you share some code created using it?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
J_Shelby_J 2y ago
O1-pro is the first time I’m actually hesitant to recommend an AI tool. Out of selfishness perhaps. It’s the true kick off of the AI career Cold War.

aerokr 2y ago

Self driving cars exist and are safer than human drivers, Waymo being the obvious answer - https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform-latest-generation-human-driven-vehicles-25-million-miles/ https://waymo.com/research/do-autonomous-vehicles-outperform.... Replacement is a matter of large scale deployment and coordination with legal frameworks, which isn’t the same problem as self driving cars.

carlmr 2y ago
Has Waymon figured out how to scale this yet? Last time I checked they needed highly precise and up to date maps that are not just available for every location, and thus they're limited to small test regions.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > highly precise and up to date maps I would guess that's one of those "pick any two" things, given how many construction projects, repair, "life happens" stuff goes on in a modern city That said, unless I'm totally missing something they have a self-solving problem with that since the Waymo's all carry around cameras, lidar, and presumably radar so I would expect that they update the maps as they go. Come to think of it, that's very likely why I originally saw them roaming around the city with drivers in them: testing the pathfinding and mapping at the same time
  - carlmr 2y ago
    Yes, exactly the constant updating (last I heard) was what caused scaling issues. I'm not sure if they resolved it yet. But yes, they should be able to use the driving data to improve the updating process. Not sure if it can be fully automated yet though. I would believe at some point this is possible though, since at least if they send the data home about things that "don't match" with their precise maps, they can easily use as much compute as they want on the servers to get the maps updated.

margalabargala 2y ago

Even in the best case scenario for LLMs, they aren't mind readers. They'll be time savers. They're more like compilers for language to code, like how actual compilers transform code to assembly. The job has changed before, it will change again. It may get easier to enter the industry, but the industry will still exist and will still need subject matter experts a decade from now.

dgellow 2y ago
I don’t feel LLMs are the good tool for that. It’s nice to have something that behaves as if it understood my requests and business model, but we need reproducibility, otherwise it’s too unpredictable. I also don’t like English as a language to express requirements, it’s not strict enough and depends too much on an implicit context. Whatever high-level abstraction we end up with it cannot be something that results in the wrong implementation because the agent incorrectly read the tone of the exchange.
- kristianc 2y ago
  > Whatever high-level abstraction we end up with it cannot be something that results in the wrong implementation because the agent incorrectly read the tone of the exchange. That can easily be said of most Product Manager > SWE relationships too though
- lunarboy 2y ago
  That's why code was invented in the first place no? But now LLMs are in the ballpark where lay people can describe something vaguely and get a working MVP. Whether you can ship, scale, and debug that code is a completely different question
  - hooverd 2y ago
    Lay people can pour concrete and nail boards together; that doesn't mean they'll lay a good foundation and erect a square frame.

torginus 2y ago

This. All these reasoning models that push out complete modules of code tend to not write code I would have - and have difficulty writing code that matches up with the rest of the codebase. And even if it does, the burden of understanding what the AI does falls onto my shoulders, and as everyone knows, understanding someone elses code is 10x harder than writing your own.

clown_strike 2y ago
> And even if it does, the burden of understanding what the AI does falls onto my shoulders, and as everyone knows, understanding someone elses code is 10x harder than writing your own. Which means we're doing it backwards. AI writes code as well as a committee of StackOverflow users but reads it without breaking a sweat. Use AI to do the harder part.

greenie_beans 2y ago

meanwhile i'm building entire features with it, and they work without bugs and i understand all the code.

sceptic123 2y ago
In what language? On what size of code base?
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  python, django, react, javascript, vanilla js, html, css, tailwind, htmx, bash, etc, etc, etc
  - AlexeyBelov 2y ago
    Can you describe what tools you're using and how (to a first approximation)?
    - greenie_beans 2y ago
      i always recommend simon willison's blog: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/ he's the creator of django and has been writing about coding with LLMs since the beginning. he was one of the first people to report about prompt injection and hallucinations. you will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of coding with LLMs if you approach his blog with an open mind.

NBJack 2y ago

> Or maybe that will also be difficult, and people will have moved on to the next thing they will fail to replace with AI. Probably quantum computing. That seems to be the next hyped up product.

AbstractH24 2y ago
Hasn’t been discussed for ages?

ddoolin 2y ago

Honestly, I don't know why nobody says it, but I just _don't want to._ I don't want to use it too much. It's not that I'm paranoid about it outputting bad code, but I just like doing almost all of it myself. It helps that I will do better than it 100% of the time but that isn't really why I don't use it. If it's going to replace all of us, fine. I guess you can chalk me up as not being into this hyper-productivity mindset. I just want to write code, period. I use it in the same manner as I see most comments saying; that is, as a fancy code complete, but I haven't found myself wishing "if only this could do all of it for me!"

CharlieDigital 2y ago
I think a good analogy is 3D printing. Certainly, it's faster from idea to prototype, but the actual act of carving wood or molding clay is itself a creative process that for some will never be replaced because we have cheap commodity 3D printers.
- elliottkember 2y ago
  3D printing is an interesting analogy. When I got my printer I really truly thought I’d be printing all sorts of things to use around the house and gadgets and stuff. It turns out that to be a good 3D printer, you need to be really good at CAD, and measuring stuff with Vernier calipers. That’s like prompt engineering. Then there was the nozzle temperature, print errors, and other strange results — call those hallucinations. Once I had designed something that I needed many instances of, it was great. But for one-offs, it was a lot of work. So it goes with AI.
  - hoaxminion 2y ago
    [dead]
danielbln 2y ago
I'll provide a counter perspective: I love building things, but the minutae and implementation details of code are merely a means to an end for me, something that stands in between me and a feature/experiment. Agentic coding, especially when doing green field or prototyping takes the grunt work away and let's me build on a higher abstraction level. And I love it, though I can see that that's not for everyone.

m463 2y ago

> anything that's harder than the basics it completely falls flat I kind of wonder if there's a way to make ai-accessible software. For example, lets say someone wrote some really descriptive tutorial on blender, not only simple features, but advanced ones. added some college texts on adjacent problems to help prevent "falling flat" at more difficult tasks. could something like that work? I figure LLMs are now just reading simple tutorials now, what about feeding them advanced stuff?

justanotherjoe 2y ago

What you said struck me: > It doesn't surprise me though, most of the people working on this are the same that had been promising self-driving cars. Where did you pick that up? That's just pure hallucination (ironically). Also what are you implying, that Tesla made LLM now? If I have to guess their amount of contribution to LLM it'd be way closer to 0 than 'most'. It's one of those things that is so easy to say but has no actual truth.