4 ms·

Any time critics single out “autocomplete” in AI coding tooling, I know they haven’t really played around with this stuff. Autocomplete is barely useful with or

by aqme28 1y ago

Any time critics single out “autocomplete” in AI coding tooling, I know they haven’t really played around with this stuff. Autocomplete is barely useful with or without AI. The real game changers are “chat-with-codebase” or agentic development tools (do these have a better name?)

apwell23 1y ago
they are "game changers" if you are a mediocre software dev thats churning out crud widgets . any decent software developer uses and creates abstractions instead of generating reams of code using AI. From what i've seen at work AI is "game changer" for coding in worst sense. reams and reams of duplicated code that looks slightly different from other generated code doing similar things. Before AI ppl used to stop and create some library now they just generate shit because its so easy. AI is death of software engineering.
- righthand 1y ago
  Any good engineer enjoys creating abstractions too instead of hoping a machine trained on code golf will solve the problems. My manager probably adds 10+ hours to my week by pushing Llm code at our projects only to follow up with several merge requests to fix his work. I just approve whatever he pushes because he isn’t interested in actually solving the problem. He’s interested in seeing if he can fiddle the solution out of an Llm. Each time it involves me telling him the answer. His boss is the same way. Literally dragging the company efficiency down and proving the efficiency gains are meaningless.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    This is all of junior engineers on my team now. I shudder to think about having to maintain all this generated crap.
    - righthand 1y ago
      You don’t maintain it, you wait until a bug comes your way from their work and pass it down to them to screw around with more. Let them maintain it and eat their own careers.
- sebstefan 1y ago
  I'll dump you some of my last queries > I'd like to output lines where .stack_trace is non empty with JQ I vaguely remembered that it sometimes has "null" and sometimes has empty strings Time gained ~60s looking at the doc > Here is a Jira ticket's description: ```....``` Please rephrase this more clearly and make the text flow better? ^ Then I picked and chose the improvements No time gained but quality improved > Critique this for accuracy: (A long comment about the properties of randomness) No time gained but quality improved > How do I make excel prompt me to select the goddamn delimiter when I open a CSV file instead of just picking a random fucking one that never works Question was filtered due to content policy, because apparently they don't want you to offend the robot
  - apwell23 1y ago
    not sure how these are examples of > real game changers are “chat-with-codebase” or agentic development tools
    - sebstefan 1y ago
      It's not an example of that, just a response to >From what i've seen at work AI is "game changer" for coding in worst sense
      - apwell23 1y ago
        Ah gotcha. yea those are some of the ways i use llms too. There is a pesudo-mandate at work that all new code must be generated by LLMs so ppl are checking in llm junk without proper vetting. Why extract common logic into a method when you can just generate junk
neogodless 1y ago
When someone throws out a whole article because of a word in a meme image the author used to add some levity to the discussion, I can tell they either didn't read the article, or they just want to discredit the author without addressing the content of the article.
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  The "article" (the article scarequotes "A.I.", so fair game) is a data-free, extremely low-effort tosser blog post that could have been a tweet. It's pandering to the incredibly boring "ha ha AI is bad! Look, distraction!" head-in-the-sand approach that is far too common.
RobKohr 1y ago
I use Cursor as an agent and sometimes I use autocomplete. Both tools are dependent on what you are doing at the moment. I like autocomplete when I am focused in tight on one file. I spell things out in depth in file and start out code and hand pick completions. It brings my mind in sharp on what I am doing. Agent is when I am doing big but simple stuff where I am crafting less in detail. Refactoring and setting up tests and basic shallow framework code. But this article is on point. All of things listed are more impactful than LLMs
- ramses0 1y ago
  I've been using vim forever, and often use "advanced" editing techniques: macros, .-repeat, :g/.../norm ..., occasional templates. For certain projects I'd used `vscode` (with the vim plugin!), and there's definitely some helpful bits. The biggest helper for me is/was the `F2-rename-symbol` capability. Being able to "rename" securely in the whole file (or function), and across the project is super-useful. Working with Cursor and the autocomplete is (often) pretty shockingly good. eg: when I go to rename `someVar` to `someOtherVar`, it'll prompt to `<tab>` and: * rename the function call * edit the log lines * rename the return object value * ...etc... In vim, I'd `*` to automatically search for `someVar`, then `cwsomeOtherVar`, (change-word), then `n.n.n.` (next, repeat, etc.) ...so my overhead (by keystrokes) is `*` (search), `cw` (change word), (`n.`) next-and-change. Five "vim" characters, and I mentally get to (or have to) review each change place. In straight `vscode`, I can do `F2-rename` and that'll get me replace _some_ of the variables (then I still have to rename the log lines, etc). With Cursor, I make the `cw...` and it's 90%+ accurate in "doing what I probably also want to do" with the single `<tab>` character. It gets even more intriguing where you'll say `s/foo/fooSorted/` and it automatically inserts the `\*.sort()` call, or changes it to call `this.getFooSorted()` or `this.getSorted( foo )` or whatever. For "cromulent" code, cursor autocomplete is "faster than vim". For people that can't type that good, or even that can't program that good, it's a freaking god-send. Adding in the `Agent...` capabilities (again, for "cromulent" code)... if you're just guiding it along: "Now, add more tests" => "Now 50% more cowbell!" => "Whoops, that section would be more efficient if you cached stuff outside the loop." Even then, I have to have some empathy with the AI/Agent coding, "Hey... you messed up that part (btw, I probably would have messed up that part the first time through as well...)". We can't hold them to gold standards that we wouldn't meet either, but treating them as "helpful partners" really reduces the mental burden of typing in EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER by yourself.
klabb3 1y ago
Maybe. A bigger impact factor imo is the distance between the tech you're using and the center of mass of training data. Showcase site in NextJS with a CSS gradient hero banner and a news letter? AI will be amazing. But then again, so will many no-code solutions. The sweet spot is probably custom enough that you're just outside of Wordpress but within well-trained domains like web and its popular frameworks. If you venture outside the mainstream, quality degrades rapidly.
- closewith 1y ago
  > If you venture outside the mainstream, quality degrades rapidly. Whilst I agree, the mainstream is also where the vast majority of software development occurs. CRUD apps and enterprise workloads, etc. Saying that current LLMs are only useful for the mainstream is saying that they're incredible useful.
  - klabb3 1y ago
    > Saying that current LLMs are only useful for the mainstream is saying that they're incredible useful. Yes and no. If you have a hammer that works 98% of times, you might wanna use it a lot or not at all, depending on the circumstances. IME the double checking misses the point for production code. Might as well write it myself. I’m sure YMMV a lot.
ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
Yup. People have no clue, and it shows not only a skill gap, but a lack of curiosity and initiative to use these tools
- c0brac0bra 1y ago
  Sometimes it's not simply a lack of curiosity, but having the space to build these tools into your workflow. As a solo dev responsible for all development, project management, support, & infra, I've gotten as far as trying to use Aider for doing some features in our legacy codebase but not having it break the time-cost-benefit barrier. Now I feel like there's probably other workflows out there that I'm ignorant to that could be better, but keeping up feels impossible. Is there a particular approach/tool that you're finding to be really beneficial?
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
    My general flow: 1. Build huge prompt with Repo Prompt (500k+ tokens) 2. Ask for gemini pro to summarize the task using above prompt 3. Hand off coding to codex (openai) The above flow replaces a junior developer
    - apwell23 1y ago
      you seem to be spamming a version of this comment on every AI post. Can you put money where your mouth is. can you demo this flow on a open source issue on a repo like pytorch ? I am curious to see how many issues this junior developer can close.
      - ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
        I am spamming it because I cannot believe how well it works. Its really about prompt construction and distilling the code base into something that can be fed to the coding agent
        apwell23 1y ago

by aqme28 1y ago

apwell23 1y ago

they are "game changers" if you are a mediocre software dev thats churning out crud widgets . any decent software developer uses and creates abstractions instead of generating reams of code using AI. From what i've seen at work AI is "game changer" for coding in worst sense. reams and reams of duplicated code that looks slightly different from other generated code doing similar things. Before AI ppl used to stop and create some library now they just generate shit because its so easy. AI is death of software engineering.

righthand 1y ago
Any good engineer enjoys creating abstractions too instead of hoping a machine trained on code golf will solve the problems. My manager probably adds 10+ hours to my week by pushing Llm code at our projects only to follow up with several merge requests to fix his work. I just approve whatever he pushes because he isn’t interested in actually solving the problem. He’s interested in seeing if he can fiddle the solution out of an Llm. Each time it involves me telling him the answer. His boss is the same way. Literally dragging the company efficiency down and proving the efficiency gains are meaningless.
- apwell23 1y ago
  This is all of junior engineers on my team now. I shudder to think about having to maintain all this generated crap.
  - righthand 1y ago
    You don’t maintain it, you wait until a bug comes your way from their work and pass it down to them to screw around with more. Let them maintain it and eat their own careers.
sebstefan 1y ago
I'll dump you some of my last queries > I'd like to output lines where .stack_trace is non empty with JQ I vaguely remembered that it sometimes has "null" and sometimes has empty strings Time gained ~60s looking at the doc > Here is a Jira ticket's description: ```....``` Please rephrase this more clearly and make the text flow better? ^ Then I picked and chose the improvements No time gained but quality improved > Critique this for accuracy: (A long comment about the properties of randomness) No time gained but quality improved > How do I make excel prompt me to select the goddamn delimiter when I open a CSV file instead of just picking a random fucking one that never works Question was filtered due to content policy, because apparently they don't want you to offend the robot
- apwell23 1y ago
  not sure how these are examples of > real game changers are “chat-with-codebase” or agentic development tools
  - sebstefan 1y ago
    It's not an example of that, just a response to >From what i've seen at work AI is "game changer" for coding in worst sense
    - apwell23 1y ago
      Ah gotcha. yea those are some of the ways i use llms too. There is a pesudo-mandate at work that all new code must be generated by LLMs so ppl are checking in llm junk without proper vetting. Why extract common logic into a method when you can just generate junk

neogodless 1y ago

When someone throws out a whole article because of a word in a meme image the author used to add some levity to the discussion, I can tell they either didn't read the article, or they just want to discredit the author without addressing the content of the article.

llm_nerd 1y ago
The "article" (the article scarequotes "A.I.", so fair game) is a data-free, extremely low-effort tosser blog post that could have been a tweet. It's pandering to the incredibly boring "ha ha AI is bad! Look, distraction!" head-in-the-sand approach that is far too common.

RobKohr 1y ago

I use Cursor as an agent and sometimes I use autocomplete. Both tools are dependent on what you are doing at the moment. I like autocomplete when I am focused in tight on one file. I spell things out in depth in file and start out code and hand pick completions. It brings my mind in sharp on what I am doing. Agent is when I am doing big but simple stuff where I am crafting less in detail. Refactoring and setting up tests and basic shallow framework code. But this article is on point. All of things listed are more impactful than LLMs

ramses0 1y ago
I've been using vim forever, and often use "advanced" editing techniques: macros, .-repeat, :g/.../norm ..., occasional templates. For certain projects I'd used `vscode` (with the vim plugin!), and there's definitely some helpful bits. The biggest helper for me is/was the `F2-rename-symbol` capability. Being able to "rename" securely in the whole file (or function), and across the project is super-useful. Working with Cursor and the autocomplete is (often) pretty shockingly good. eg: when I go to rename `someVar` to `someOtherVar`, it'll prompt to `<tab>` and: * rename the function call * edit the log lines * rename the return object value * ...etc... In vim, I'd `*` to automatically search for `someVar`, then `cwsomeOtherVar`, (change-word), then `n.n.n.` (next, repeat, etc.) ...so my overhead (by keystrokes) is `*` (search), `cw` (change word), (`n.`) next-and-change. Five "vim" characters, and I mentally get to (or have to) review each change place. In straight `vscode`, I can do `F2-rename` and that'll get me replace _some_ of the variables (then I still have to rename the log lines, etc). With Cursor, I make the `cw...` and it's 90%+ accurate in "doing what I probably also want to do" with the single `<tab>` character. It gets even more intriguing where you'll say `s/foo/fooSorted/` and it automatically inserts the `\*.sort()` call, or changes it to call `this.getFooSorted()` or `this.getSorted( foo )` or whatever. For "cromulent" code, cursor autocomplete is "faster than vim". For people that can't type that good, or even that can't program that good, it's a freaking god-send. Adding in the `Agent...` capabilities (again, for "cromulent" code)... if you're just guiding it along: "Now, add more tests" => "Now 50% more cowbell!" => "Whoops, that section would be more efficient if you cached stuff outside the loop." Even then, I have to have some empathy with the AI/Agent coding, "Hey... you messed up that part (btw, I probably would have messed up that part the first time through as well...)". We can't hold them to gold standards that we wouldn't meet either, but treating them as "helpful partners" really reduces the mental burden of typing in EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER by yourself.

klabb3 1y ago

Maybe. A bigger impact factor imo is the distance between the tech you're using and the center of mass of training data. Showcase site in NextJS with a CSS gradient hero banner and a news letter? AI will be amazing. But then again, so will many no-code solutions. The sweet spot is probably custom enough that you're just outside of Wordpress but within well-trained domains like web and its popular frameworks. If you venture outside the mainstream, quality degrades rapidly.

closewith 1y ago
> If you venture outside the mainstream, quality degrades rapidly. Whilst I agree, the mainstream is also where the vast majority of software development occurs. CRUD apps and enterprise workloads, etc. Saying that current LLMs are only useful for the mainstream is saying that they're incredible useful.
- klabb3 1y ago
  > Saying that current LLMs are only useful for the mainstream is saying that they're incredible useful. Yes and no. If you have a hammer that works 98% of times, you might wanna use it a lot or not at all, depending on the circumstances. IME the double checking misses the point for production code. Might as well write it myself. I’m sure YMMV a lot.

ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago

Yup. People have no clue, and it shows not only a skill gap, but a lack of curiosity and initiative to use these tools

c0brac0bra 1y ago
Sometimes it's not simply a lack of curiosity, but having the space to build these tools into your workflow. As a solo dev responsible for all development, project management, support, & infra, I've gotten as far as trying to use Aider for doing some features in our legacy codebase but not having it break the time-cost-benefit barrier. Now I feel like there's probably other workflows out there that I'm ignorant to that could be better, but keeping up feels impossible. Is there a particular approach/tool that you're finding to be really beneficial?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
  My general flow: 1. Build huge prompt with Repo Prompt (500k+ tokens) 2. Ask for gemini pro to summarize the task using above prompt 3. Hand off coding to codex (openai) The above flow replaces a junior developer
  - apwell23 1y ago
    you seem to be spamming a version of this comment on every AI post. Can you put money where your mouth is. can you demo this flow on a open source issue on a repo like pytorch ? I am curious to see how many issues this junior developer can close.
    - ldjkfkdsjnv 1y ago
      I am spamming it because I cannot believe how well it works. Its really about prompt construction and distilling the code base into something that can be fed to the coding agent
      - apwell23 1y ago