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Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches
- adityaoberai1 1y agoFrustrated with the generated code slop being heralded by tech social media as the next "coming" for developers, I've written a piece on my frustrations with "vibe coding" and what steps beginners in tech should take in a world of AI-assisted software development.
- quantadev 1y agoExperienced senior developers can spot and fix the slop instantly, while still getting a 30x productivity gain, while entry level or junior devs basically only have one "Filter" by which they determine code quality which is: "Does the code seem to work?". Unfortunately "Slop" will appear to work enough of the time to fool a Junior. Also the reason Junior devs get "slop" is because their prompts are "slop". They don't know all the right terminologies for things, nor do they even have the writing/language skills necessary for good prompting. EDIT: Due to everyone checking my math I corrected this to 30x, as what's provable, from past experience.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoWhenever I can't just sit down and bash out code, it's because the design is wrong. These models are bad at design. I don't see where your 30×–50× could possibly come from.
- skydhash 1y agoMost of the times, the only reason I have the code open is to read it. If not for the huge amount of code, I could just print it out and go on my sofa. If I'm dealing with a difficult to implement algorithm, a whiteboard is a better help than bashing out code.
- quantadev 1y agoThat 30x math simply comes from spending 5min typing a prompt, and getting code generated that would take a human 2.5hrs to write. This means in the future most of a developer's time will be spent reviewing code, rather than typing it. Because AI will also be able to write the test cases too, so that effort [mostly] vanishes as well.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoUnless your job is producing disposable software (e.g. single-use mobile games for short marketing campaigns), this comment suggests you don't know how to do your job. If a piece of the program takes 5 minutes to describe, but 2½ hours to write, you're spending your time in the wrong place, producing code that's legacy almost on day 1. Quoth https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/29/sharp-axe/: > The text presents to the wood cutter the alternative either to spend time in sharpening his axe, or expend his strength in using a dull one. Which shall he do? Wisdom is profitable to direct. Sure, you don't need to sharpen your axe. Given a powerful internal combustion engine, you could drive a tank through the forest and fell many trees in rapid succession. But this strategy doesn't leave you with quality lumber, and leaves a huge mess for whoever comes after you (which may be your future self), and one day there won't be any trees left. If your job is producing disposable software, be aware that you're using unpaid labour to do so. Some of the programmers who produced that AI's training data are struggling to eat and keep a roof over their heads. Act accordingly.
- quantadev 1y agoThe 5min example is like a maximum/extreme case, yes. My average time spent writing each prompt is probably 30 seconds or less, and coding time saved per prompt like 25 to 60 minutes. When I do spend minutes (not seconds) writing prompts, it's because I'm actually typing a "Context File" which describes with full clarity certain aspects of my architecture that are relevant to an Agent task set. This context file might have constraints and rules I want the Agent to follow; so I type it once and reference it from like 10 to 20 prompts perhaps. I also keep the prompt files as an archive for the future, so I can always go back and see what my original thoughts were. Also the context files help me do system documentation later.
- khuey 1y agoI've worked with some pretty smart people in my career and I've never met anyone who could do "instant" code review.
- skydhash 1y agoActual code review is very slow. More often than not, you just looking for glaring mistakes, not that the code actually respect the specifications. Which results in the LGTM comment. Because you trust the other person's experience. In very critical system, change is very slow to get in.
- dambi0 1y agoRuling out or refining an approach on the grounds it’s unlikely to lead to a suitable outcome (fixing and removing slop) is not the same as saying this code or approach represents a good enough outcome given what we currently know about the constraints of the problem (code review)
- quantadev 1y agoThe "instant" to which you refer was meaning that I can tell instantly if the LLM generated what I wanted or not. That doesn't mean it's reviewed, it means I'm accepting it to _BE_ what I go with and ultimately review.
- solumunus 1y ago> getting a 30x to 50x productivity gain That is an absurd claim.
- tcoff91 1y agoIf you get a 30x gain then you're a 0.05x developer. a 50x gain would literally mean you could get a year's worth of work done in a week. Preposterous.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y agoBad/dumb developers don't get much of a boost in my experience working with a plethora of shitty contractors. Good developers aren't getting a 30x boost I don't think, but they are getting more out of the tooling than bad developers. The bottleneck is still finding good developers, even with the current generation of AI tooling in play.
- quantadev 1y agoIt was when I started using Github Copilot in "Agent Mode" that my LLM productivity gains went from like 5x to 30x. People who are just using a chatbot get like 5x gains. People who use "Agent Mode" to write up a description of a new feature that would take several days by a human, but get it done in one click by an Agent, are getting 30x or more. The amount of pushback I got on this thread tells me most devs simply haven't started using actual Agents yet.
- tcoff91 1y agoI’ve tried using agents. LLMs just can’t reliably accomplish the tasks that I have to do. They just get shit wrong and hallucinate a ton. If I don’t break the task down into tiny chunks then they go off the rails.
- quantadev 1y agoThis can definitely happen, because the context windows even in a great Agent can become flooded. I often do prompts like "Add a row of buttons at the top right named 'copy', 'cut', and 'paste'", and let the Agent do that, before I implement each button, for example. The rule of thumb I've learned is to give an Agent the smallest possible task at a time, so there's zero ambiguity in the prompt, and context window is kept small.
- tcoff91 1y ago30x productivity gain? gtfo of here. Most things I try to use it for, it has so many problems with its output that at most I get a 50% productivity gain after fixing everything. I'm already super efficient at editing text with neovim so honestly for some tasks I end up with a productivity loss.
- quantadev 1y agoI can easily get a month of work done in a single day yes. So probably the 30x is about the current max, and 50x was hyperbole, because I didn't add it up before doing that post.
- prmph 1y agoI just don't believe this. It's weird; I just don't know where folks are getting these extreme productivity gains from. For example, the other day I asked a major LLMs to generate a simple markdown viewer with automatic section indentation for me in Node.js. The basic code worked after a few additional prompts from me. Now I wanted folding. That was also done by the LLM. And then when I tried to add a few additional simples features, things fell apart. There were one or two seemingly simple runtime errors that the LLM was unable to fix after almost 10 tries. I could fix it if I started digging inside the code, but then the productivity gains would start to slip away.
- quantadev 1y agoI'll spend like 10 minutes crafting a prompt that explains a new feature to be added to my app. I explain it in enough detail, with zero ambiguity, such that any human [senior] developer could do it. Often the result is 100s of lines of code generated, and well over 95% of the time the code "Claude 4" generates is exactly what I wanted. I'm using VSCode Github Copilot in "Agent Mode", btw. It's able to navigate around an entire project, understand it, and work on it. You just lean back and watch it open files, edit them, show you in realtime what it's thought process is, as it does everything, etc. etc. It's truly like magic. Any other way of doing development, in 2025, is like being in the stone ages.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- codr7 1y ago30x-50x :) Right, if you're getting that, experienced senior is a pretty wild stretch.
- Workaccount2 1y ago>while entry level or junior devs basically only have one "Filter" by which they determine code quality which is: "Does the code seem to work?". Based on my general experience with software over the last...30 years, most places must only have entry level and junior devs. Somehow despite 30 years of hardware improvement, basic software apps are still as clunky and slow as their '90s counterparts.
- quantadev 1y agoThe only thing more reckless than a junior is an LLM-empowered junior.
- marcusestes 1y agoAppreciate this. But. Do whatever you want. That’s an option too. Make a dumb thing, take your hands off the wheel, have fun. It’s your computer.
- ianpenney 1y agoThe problem experienced folks are worried about is not concerning what kids do in their basement with the ‘puter they got for Christmas.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agothat’s clearly not the danger. make a dumb thing that takes user input (including PII or maybe other protected data), then put it online and charge people to use it without vetting it for security? No, let’s not encourage that.
- JohnMakin 1y agoUnfortunately, no, not when you are dealing with user data. You don't own that and you don't deserve to be reckless with it just because you're paying for the hardware and bandwidth.
- gwbas1c 1y ago> Make a dumb thing, take your hands off the wheel, have fun This is why we need licensing for software developers: When you're building a service that has actual users, with actual data, and tangible consequences when it fails, "take your hands off the wheel, have fun" is fundamentally dangerous. Or, to put it differently: It's totally fine for some kids to build a treehouse. They might even get hurt. But, when it comes to dams and bridges, there is a reason why the people who design those need to get a license.
- jajko 1y agoProjects just for you or some very, very limited set of lets say your close friends? Sure, who cares. For folks actually workibg in companies handling various data that dont belong to them? Oh god, please no, thats a horrible advice.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
- blablablerg 1y agoNice vibe writing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Animats 1y agoArticles like this make one think of John Henry vs. the steam drill. John Henry beat the steam drill, once, and died. Soon, there was a better steam drill. "Vibe coding" is only a few months old. ChatGPT was released less than three years ago. The singularity is just getting started. History of computer chess: - 1957 - early programs that played chess very badly. Excessive optimism - 1967 - programs that play amateur chess - 1976 - first tournament win - 1980s - top programs not much stronger, but now running on PCs. - 1996 - first win against grandmaster - 2005 - last lose by top program against grandmaster - 2025 - all the good programs can trounce any human. LLMs are probably at the 1996 level now.
- skydhash 1y agoDid 1957 level plays a wrong move according to the rules of the games? Like moving a bishop horizontally? And randomly? Don't forget that in, 1957, computer's performance was much lower than today's. I wonder how a 1957 approach would fare on today's computer after removing limitations based on past limitations?
- prmph 1y agoChess is a bad example. Even a "stupid" computer that is sufficiently powerful can just brute-force-search its way to a win. There's nothing special here, it's basically just deeper and deeper search. Put another way. the limitation was always about sufficiently powerful hardware. I'm not sure the same can be said about LLMs.
- hadlock 1y agoIt seems a bit presumptuous that software and hardware would not evolve past May 2025 to improve watts/token over time, or whatever metric you choose. Consumer-grade GPUs didn't really arrive until 1995, and industry didn't really standardize OpenGL until the early 90s, consumer-grade GPUs didn't have OpenGL support until much later. Vulkan didn't come along until 2016. It's mostly an artificial limit that I can't buy a 4070 with 1TB of memory at Best Buy for $1200, or will be, in a year or two. I would expect watts/token to decrease by at least half by the end of the decade.
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- BrenBarn 1y ago> This is not innovation. This is a security breach waiting to happen. No, it is innovation. The problem is that innovation is often bad.
- dlivingston 1y agoHow specifically is innovation often bad? Innovation, like scientific discovery, is merely an expansion of the veil of knowledge. Specific applications may be good or bad but knowledge and processes are neutral.
- Workaccount2 1y agoInnovation usually creates losers, who formerly benefited from the less efficient system in place.
- BrenBarn 1y agoBut applications can themselves be innovations. Innovation isn't a concept that's restricted only to abstract knowledge.
- paulcole 1y agoLove it. We’ve reached the no-true-scotsman part of the vibe coding hype speedrun.
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y agoI'm curious which part of the article led you to that conclusion? It seems to make a pretty reasonable distinction between vibe coding and general use AI in coding to me. It's clearly not hyping up vibe coding, or even presenting it in a positive light.
- paulcole 1y agoThere’s an article?
- valianteffort 1y agoVery grateful to have had good self-learning, education, then mentoring before LLM's existed. And although they are such a boon to productivity I worry what they will do to my ability to think on my own long term. Like reaching for your phone out of habit the moment you are bored, I don't want to need an LLM any time I am faced with a problem. I want to exercise my own brain. I feel as though my ability to reason without them has already began to degrade, my mind fogs more these days. I try to curb it by having conversations rather than just asking for solutions. I don't care that the tool isn't going anywhere, but just like relying on calculators won't make you better at arithmetic, I don't think relying on LLM's will make you a better engineer.
- Ancalagon 1y agoOh totally agree. These LLMs are like tiktok on my phone in terms of addictiveness.
- AaronAPU 1y agoI think if you are a self directed learner in general, who is drawn toward learning, it will magnify that tendency and lower the activation energy required to bootstrap new domains of knowledge. But if you don’t like learning, and only do it because you have to, it will magnify that tendency and provide a way to avoid learning altogether. We are likely to end up with a large subset of the population basically being meat puppets doing whatever their favorite flavor of LLM tells them to do.
- reaperducer 1y agoEvery time I see someone on HN crowing about how great so-called "vibe" coding is, I can't help by think they must be doing the lowest, most basic types of coding. I don't need AI to help me code. What I need AI to do is help me figure out new coding solutions. But all AI seems able to do is regurgitate things that other people have already done that it's ingested from the internet. I'll ask AI how to do abc, within xyz parameters, with def available and ghi constraints. I typically get back one of two things: 1. A list of 20 steps to achieve abc that somewhere around the middle has a step that's the equivalent of "Then magic happens" or two to three steps that are entirely unrelated to one other or the project at hand. 2. A list of what should be 20 steps that suddenly ends at step 7, leaving the problem only half done. Most frustrating is when the "AI" says to use $tool/$library, but $tool/$library is not available on the specified platform, or hasn't been updated since 2011 and no longer works. When I tell the AI this, it always responds with, "You are right, that tool is no longer available. Here's a list of even more broken steps you can take to work around it." So far, for my coding needs, AI seems only able to regurgitate what's already been done and published by others. That's great, but there are search engines for that. I have novel problems, and until AI can actually live up to the "I" part of its name, it is worthless to me.
- jajko 1y agoIn my banking megacorp, despite having officially title of senior sw engineer, coding is maybe 10% of my time spent. And its the best, most creative part I actually enjoy. Why would I give up that? No real velocity gained even if all would be 1 click away in flawless production-ready state. The real cruft of seniority is: processes, knowing right people and their buttons, politics, being there to fix obscure corner case production issues and so on. How can llm help me with that? It can't. For code sweatshops they may be a blessing, for corporations drowning in regulations and internal abysmal labyrinths of their IT, not so much.
- yoyohello13 1y agoLol, are you me? Also a senior developer at a financial institution. I've maybe coded like 1000 lines in the last 2 months. I just got a ticket recently that required code and it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders to finally be able to put hands to keyboard again.
- _fat_santa 1y agoUgh I feel like this general topic had been beaten to death, every article inevitably references the same viral moments on Twitter and draws roughly the same conclusions. But these articles get posted and upvoted cause we developers just eat that shit up (if I’m being honest I do at least, every time I see these kinds of posts I always smirk cause I know what the comments section is gonna be like).
- codr7 1y agoUnfortunately it seems like the more you use AI, the dumber you become; I suspect these discussions will get more and more dramatic until we have two camps that don't even understand what the other side is saying anymore.
- sys_64738 1y agoThey said the same about search engines. People nowadays don't look up the index cards themselves and most kids probably can't figure it out. But other growth industries morph on top of what comes next. That's where the money is now.
- codr7 1y agoNot the same thing, a search engine is a tool you use, an AI is something that uses you as a tool.
- aiwatcher 1y ago[flagged]