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For me, I can’t get into using AI tools like Claude Code. As far as I go is chat style where I’m mostly in control. I enjoy the actual process of crafting cod

For me, I can’t get into using AI tools like Claude Code. As far as I go is chat style where I’m mostly in control. I enjoy the actual process of crafting code myself. For similar reasons, I could never be a manager. Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. If it gets to the point where the industry switches to agents, I’ll probably just find a new career

starfallg 1y ago
Pretty sure we can make LLM agents to transform declarative inputs to agentic action.
fsloth 1y ago
I strongly disagree agents are for extroverts. I do agree it’s definetly a tool category with a unique set of features and am not surprised it’s offputting to some. But it’s appeal is definetly clear to me as an introvert. For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. I think I’m slightly ADD. I love coding _interesting_ things but boring tasks cause extreme discomfort. Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! It’s a great time to be a software engineer!
- pron 1y ago
  > For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. I wish they were, but they're not that yet because LLMs aren't very good at logical reasonsing. So it's more like an attempt to program using natural language. Sometimes it does what you ask, sometimes not. I think "programming" implies that the machine will always do what you tell it, whatever the language, or reliably fail and say it can't be done because the "program" is contradictory, lacks sufficient detail, or doesn't have the necessary permissions/technical capabilities. If it only sometimes does what you ask, then it's not quite programming yet. > Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! I wish that, too, were true, and maybe it will be someday soon. But if I need to manually review the agent's output, then it doesn't feel like offloading much aside from the typing. All the same concentration and thought are still required, even for the boring things. If I could at least trust the agent to tell me if it did a good job or is unsure that would have been helpful, but we're not even there yet. That's not to say the tools aren't useful, but they're not yet "programming in a natural language" and not yet able to "offload" stuff to.
  - yomismoaqui 1y ago
    You can view Claude Code as a non-deterministic compiler where you input english and get functioning code on the other end. The non-determinism is not as much as a problem because you are reading over the results and validating that what it is created matches what you tell it to do. I'm not talking about vibe-coding here, I'm grabbing the steering wheel with both hands because this car allows me to go faster than if I was driving myself, but sometimes you have to steer or brake. And the analogy favors Claude Code here because you don't have to react in milliseconds while programming. TL;DR: if you do the commit you are responsible for the code it contains.
    - pron 1y ago
      Sure, and that may be valuable, but it's neither "programming" nor "offloading mental effort" (at least not much). Some have compared it to working with a very junior programmer. I haven't done that in a long while, but when I did, it didn't really feel like I was "offloading" much, and I could still trust even the most junior programmer to tell me whether the job was done well or not (and of any difficulties they encountered or insight they've learnt) much more than I can an agent, at least today. Trust is something we have, for the most part, when we work with either other people or with tools. Working without (or with little) trust is something quite novel. Personally, I don't mind that an agent can't accomplish many tasks; I mind a great deal that I can't trust it to tell me whether it was able to do what I asked or not.
      - gf000 1y ago
        There is probably a significant factor of what domain you work in, that might be part of the reason why you have different experiences. I don't know your current domain, but stuff like Loom requires very complex reasoning capabilities, most of which lives outside the actual codebase itself. Business code on the other hand often has a more direct mapping from idea to code, so LLMs might show more promise there.
      - fsloth 1y ago
        ”it's neither "programming" Sure it is. Modern ecosystem is sadly full of API:s like WPF on Windows that are both verbose and configuration heavy. Now, some people may be able to internalize xaml with little effort but not all us - and then you basically move forward iteratively, looking for code example, trying this or that … basically random walking towards something usable. Or you use an agentic LLM and it does this peeking and poking for you, and with decades old APIs like WPF likely has enough context to do the thing you asked it to do far more competently than you could train yourself to program WPF in a few days. Of course in the context of this example WPF was your main duty, you _would_ learn the ins and outs of it. In quite many jobs a task like this may not infact be even among your top ten duties but you need to do it. In these sort of situations a LLM is really nice. The worst it provides is a good first guess how to do something. If your contex is something like radiology treatment then no, don’t use LLM! But there are thoushands of miserable non-critical but necessary components in production for which LLM is just fine.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  > For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. Sort of. You still can't get a reliable output for the same input. For example, I was toying with using ChatGPT with some Siri shortcuts on my iPhone. I do photography on the side, and finding a good time for lighting for photoshoots is a usecase I use a lot so I made a shortcut which sends my location to the API along with a prompt to get the sunset time for today, total amount of daylight, and golden hour times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it says "I don't have specific golden hour times, but you can find those on the web" or a useless generic "Golden hour is typically 1 hour before sunset but can vary with location and season" Doesn't feel like programming to me, as I can't get reproducible output. I could just use the LLM to write some API calling script from some service that has that data, but then why bother with that middle man step. I like LLMs, I think they are useful, I use them everyday but what I want is a way to get consistent, reproducible output for any given input/prompt.
  - stirfish 1y ago
    For things where I don't want creativity, I tell it to write a script. For example, "write a comprehensive spec for a script that takes in the date and a location and computes when golden hour is." | "Implement this spec" That variability is nice when you want some creativity, e.g. "write a beautiful, interactive boids simulation as a single file in html, css, and JavaScript." Words like "beautiful" and interactive" are open to interpretation, and I've been happy with the different ways they are interpreted.
- klipklop 1y ago
  >I think I’m slightly ADD. I love coding _interesting_ things but boring tasks cause extreme discomfort. >Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! I agree and I feel that having LLM's do boilerplate type stuff is fantastic for ADD people. The dopamine hit you get making tremendous progress before you get utterly bored is nice. The thing that ADD/ADHD people are the WORST at is finishing projects. LLM will help them once the thrill of prototyping a green-field project is over.
  - 80hd 1y ago
    Seconding this. My work has had the same problem - by the time I've got things all hooked up, figured out the complicated stuff - my brain (and body) clock out and I have to drag myself through hell to get to 100%. Even with ADHD stimulant medication. It didn't make it emotionally easier, just _possible_ lol. LLMs, particularly Claude 4 and now GPT-5 are fantastic at working through these todo lists of tiny details. Perfectionism + ADHD not a fun combo, but it's way more bearable. It will only get better. We have a huge moat in front of us of ever-more interesting tasks as LLMs race to pick up the pieces. I've never been more excited about the future of tech
    - r_lee 1y ago
      Same here, especially for making bash scripts or lots of if this if that with logging type stuff, error handling etc.. Oh and also, from what I know, ADHD and perfectionism is a very common combination, I'm not sure if everyone has that but I've heard it's the case for many with ADD. Same with "standards" being extremely high for everything
  - whartung 1y ago
    I'm kind of in this cohort. While in the groove, yea, things fly but, inevitably, my interest wanes. Either something too tedious, something too hard (or just a lot of work). Or, just something shinier shows up. Bunch of 80% projects with, as you mentioned, the interesting parts finished (sorta -- you see the line at the end of the tunnel, it's bright, just don't bother finishing the journey). However, at the same time, there's conflict. Consider (one of) my current projects, I did the whole back end. I had ChatGPT help me stand up a web front end for it. I am not a "web person". GUIs and what not are a REAL struggle for me because on the one hand, I don't care how things look, but, on the other, "boy that sure looks better". But getting from "functional" to "looks better" is a bottomless chasm of yak shaving, bike shedding improvements. I'm even bad at copying styles. My initial UI was time invested getting my UI to work, ugly as it was, with guidance from ChatGPT. Which means it gave me ways to do things, but mostly I coded up the actual work -- even if it was blindly typing it in vs just raw cut and paste. I understood how things were working, what it was doing, etc. But then, I just got tired of it, and "this needs to be Better". So, I grabbed Claude and let it have its way. And, its better! it certainly looks better, more features. It's head and shoulders better. Claude wrote 2-3000 lines of javascript. In, like, 45m. It was very fast, very responsive. One thing Claude knows is boiler plate JS Web stuff. And the code looks OK to me. Imperfect, but absolutely functional. But, I have zero investment in the code. No "ownership", certainly no pride. You know that little hit you get when you get Something Right, and it Works? None of that. Its amazing, its useful, its just not mine. And that's really weird. I've been striving to finish projects, and, yea, for me, that's really hard. There is just SO MUCH necessary to ship. AI may be able to help polish stuff up, we'll see as I move forward. If nothing else it may help gathering up lists of stuff I miss to do.
- WhyOhWhyQ 1y ago
  It's interesting that every task in the world is boring to somebody, which means nothing left in the world will be done by those interested in it, because somebody will gladly shotgun it with an AI tool.
- sleepybrett 1y ago
  Programming implies that it's going to do what i say. I wish it did.
- kiitos 1y ago
  > For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. ... boring tasks cause extreme discomfort ... Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! The problem with this perspective, is that when you try to offload exactly the same boring task(s), to exactly the same LLM, the results you get back are never even close to being the same. This work you're offloading via natural language prompting is not programming in any meaningful sense. Many people don't care about this non-determinism. Some, because they don't have enough knowledge to identify, much less evaluate, the consequent problems. Others, because they're happy to deal with those problems, under the belief that they are a cost that's worth the net benefit provided by the LLM. And there are also many people who do care about this non-determinism, and aren't willing to accept the consequent problems. Bluntly, I don't think that anyone in group (1) can call themselves a software engineer.
- amelius 1y ago
  Last week there was this post about flow state, and pretty much explains the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44811457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44811457
  - vlan0 1y ago
    What is described in that post is a skill issue. The attention issues spoke about can be worked through. Because attention is a skill like anything else. And if one does not learn to practice. One becomes victim to it
- lsaferite 1y ago
  I find Claude great at all of the boilerplate needed to get testing in place. It's also pretty good at divining test cases to lock in the current behavior, even if it's buggy. I use Claude as a first pass on tests, then I run through each test case myself to make sure it's a meaningful test. I've let it loose on the code coverage loop as well, so it can drill in and get those uncommon lines covered. I still don't have a good process for path coverage, but I'm not sure how easy that is in go as I haven't checked into it much yet. I'm with you 100% on the boring stuff. It's generally good at the boring stuff *because* it's boring and well-trod.
Terretta 1y ago
> I can’t get into using AI tools like Claude Code. As far as I go is chat style where I’m mostly in control. Try aider.chat (it's in the name), but specifically start with "ask" mode then dip a toe into "architect" mode, not "code" which is where Claude Code and the "vibe" nonsense is. Let aider.chat use Opus 4.1 or GPT-5 for thinking, with no limit on reasoning tokens and --reasoning-effort high. > agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. On the contrary, I think the non-vibe tools are force multipliers for those with an ability to communicate so precisely they find “extraverts and neurotypical people” confounding when attempting to specify engineering work. I'd put both aider.chat and Claude Code in the non-vibe class if you use them Socratically.
- dionian 1y ago
  thanks for this, going to try it out - i need to use paid api and not my claude max or gpt pro subn, right?
  - victorbjorklund 1y ago
    Aider actually has a mode that is called "copy-paste" where it basically gives you a context to paste in an LLM chat and then you copy-paste back the reply to aider
    - mock-possum 1y ago
      Sounds like extra steps
garciasn 1y ago
Agents are boon for introverts who fucking hate dealing with other people (read: me). I can iterate rapidly with another 'entity' in a technical fashion and not have to spend hours explaining in relatable language what to do next. I feel as if you need to work with these things more, as you would prefer to work, and see just how good they are.
wahnfrieden 1y ago
You are leaving a lot of productivity on the table by not parallelizing agents for any of your work. Seemingly for psychological comfort quirks rather than earnestly seeking results. Automation productivity doesn’t remove your own agency. It frees more time for you to apply your desire for control more discerningly.
- dexterlagan 1y ago
  I can imagine there are plenty of use cases, but I could not find one for myself. Can you give an example?
  - wahnfrieden 1y ago
    I personally use it for a lot of SwiftUI work. I parallelize it across at least 3 projects at once. I use only the largest models on highest thinking modes. I give instruction on implementation and provide reference implementations. I also use it for adding features/feature polish that address user pain points but that I can't prioritize for my own manual work just yet. There are a variety of user requests which sometimes LLMs are able to get done very suddenly when I give it a shot quickly. For these tasks, it's ok to abandon & defer them if the LLM spins its wheels.
bastawhiz 1y ago
> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people As a neurodivergent introvert, please don't speak for the rest of us.
- antonvs 1y ago
  That stuck out to me as well. People will make up all sorts of stories to justify their resistance to change.
  - bastawhiz 1y ago
    It's the same as saying that writing good commit messages is a boon for extroverts and neurotypicals. It's a computer. You're giving it instructions, and the only difference to traditional coding is that the input is English text.
kevinsync 1y ago
I kind of think we will see some industry attrition as a result of LLM coding and agent usage, simply because the ~vIbEs~ I'm witnessing boil down to quite a lot of resistance (for multiple reasons: stubbornness, ethics, exhaustion from the hype cycle, sticking with what you know, etc) The thing is, they're just tools. You can choose to learn them, or not. They aren't going to make or break your career. People will do fine with and without them. I do think it's worth learning new tools though, even if you're just a casual observer / conscientious objector -- the world is changing fast, for better or worse, and you'll be better prepared to do anything with a wider breadth of tech skill and experience than with less. And I'm not just talking about writing software for a living, you could go full Uncle Ted and be a farmer or a carpenter or a barista in the middle of nowhere, and you're going to be way better equipped to deal with logistical issues that WILL arise from the very nature of the planet hurtling towards 100% computerization. Inventory management, crop planning, point of sale, marketing, monitoring sensors on your brewery vats, whatever. Another thought I had was that introverts often blame their deficits in sales, marketing and customer service on their introversion, but what if you could deploy an agent to either guide, perform, or prompt (the human) with some of those activities? I'd argue that it would be worth the time to kick the tires and see what's possible there. It feels like early times still with some of these pie in the sky ideas, but just because it's not turn-key YET doesn't mean it won't be in the near future. Just food for thought!
- HardCodedBias 1y ago
  "ethics" I agree with all of your reasons but this one sticks out. Is this a big issue? Are many people refusing to use LLMs due to (I'm guessing here): perceived copyright issues, or power usage, or maybe that they think that automation is unjust?
  - kevinsync 1y ago
    I can't tell how widespread any of is, to be honest.. mostly because it's anecdata, and impossible to determine if what I'm seeing is just ragebait, or shallow dunks by reply-guys in comment sections, or particularly-loud voices on social media that aren't representative of the majority opinion, etc That said, the amount of sort-of-thoughtless, I'm-just-repeating-something-I-heard-but-don't-really-understand outrage towards AI that I'm seeing appears to be increasing -- "how many bottles of water did that slop image waste??", "Clanker"-adjacent memes and commentary (include self-driving + robots in this category), people ranting about broligarchs stealing art, music, movies, books to train their models (oddly often while also performatively parroting party lines about how Spotify rips artists off), all the way to refusing to interact with people on dating apps if they have anything AI in their profiles hahaha (file "AI" alongside men holding fish in their pics, and "crypto" lol) It's all chronically-online nonsense that may well just be perception that's artificially amplified by "the algorithm". Me, I have no fundamental issue with any of it -- LLMs, like anything else, aren't categorically good or bad. They can be used positively and negatively. Everything we use and consume has hidden downsides and unsavory circumstances.
cpldcpu 1y ago
I think you misunderstand what this does. It is not only a coding agent. It is an abstraction layer between you and the computer.
klipklop 1y ago
>Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. I completely disagree. Juggling several agents (and hopping from feature-to-feature) at once, is perfect for somebody with ADHD. Being an agent wrangler is great for introverts instead of having to talk to actual people.
filoleg 1y ago
> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. This sounds like a wild generalization. I am in neither of those two groups, and I’ve been finding tools like Claude Code becoming increasingly more useful over time. Made me much more optimistic about the direction of AI development in general too. Because with each iteration and new version it isn’t getting anywhere closer to replacing me or my colleagues, but it is becoming more and more useful and helpful to my workflow. And I am not one of those people who are into “prompt engineering” or typing novels into the AI chatbox. My entire interaction is typically short 2-3 sentences “do this and that, make sure that XYZ is ABC”, attach the files that are relevant, let it do its thing, and then manual checks/adjustments. Saves me a boatload of work tbh, as I enjoy the debugging/fixing/“getting the nuanced details right” aspect of writing code (and am pretty decent at it, I think), but absolutely dread starting from a brand new empty file.
joshred 1y ago
I think they're fantastic at generating the sort of thing I don't like writing out. For example, a dictionary mapping state names to their abbreviations, or extracting a data dictionary from a pdf so that I can include it with my documentation.
burnte 1y ago
> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. As an extrovert the chances I'll use an AI agent in the next year is zero. Not even a billion to one but a straight zero. I understand very well how AI works, and as such I have absolutely no trust in it for anything that isn't easy/simple/solved, which means I have virtually no use for generative AI. Search, reference, data transformation, sure. Coding? Not without verification or being able to understand the code. I can't even trust Google Maps to give me a reliable route anymore, why would I actually believe some AI model can code? AI tools are helpers, not workers.
- ragequittah 1y ago
  >no trust in it for anything that isn't easy/simple/solved I'm not sure what part of programming isn't generally solved thousands of times over for most languages out there. I'm only using it for lowly web development but I can tell you that it can definitely do it at a level that surprises me. It's not just "auto-complete" it's actually able to 'think' over code I've broken or code that I want improved and give me not just one but multiple paths to make it better.
  - burnte 1y ago
    In the case of programming is not quite as problematic with unsolved problems as much as others, like completeness. In the case of programming, it's context and understanding. It's great for small chunks of code but people think you can vibe code entire interactive applications with no programming knowledge, but LLMs simply don't understand, so they can't keep a cohesive idea of what the end goal is in mind. The larger the codebase it needs to work on the more likely it is to make catastrophic errors, create massive security flaws, or just generate nonfunctional code. Programming LLMs will become awesome when we create more narrowly targeted LLMs rather than these "train on everything" models.
taftster 1y ago
For me (an introvert), I have found great value in these tools. Normally, I kind of talk to myself about a problem / algorithm / code segment as I'm fleshing it out. I'm not telling myself complete sentences, but there's some sort of logical dialog I am having with myself. So I just have to convert that conversation into an AI prompt, basically. It just kind of does the typing for the construct already in my head. The trick is to just get the words out of my head as prompt input. That's honestly not much different than an author writing a book, for example. The story line is in their head, they just have to get it on paper. And that's really the tricky part of writing a novel as much as writing code. I therefore don't believe this is an introvert/extrovert thing. There are plenty of book authors which are both. The tools available as AI code agents are really just an advanced form of dictation.
sixo 1y ago
At one point in my life I liked crafting code. I took a break, came back, and I no longer liked it--my thoughts ranged further, and the fine-grained details of implementations were a nuisance rather than ~pleasurable to deal with. Whatever you like is probably what you should be doing right now. Nothing wrong with that.
wredcoll 1y ago
> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. Please stop with this kind of thing. It isn't true, it doesn't make sense and it doesn't help anyone.
MrDarcy 1y ago
For what it’s worth I’m neurodivergent, introverted and have avoided management up to the staff+level. Claude Code is great I use it all day every day now.
mock-possum 1y ago
It is effin nutzo that you would try to relate chatting with AI and agentic LLM codegen workflows to the intra/extra vert dichotomy or to neuro a/typicality - you so casually lean way into this absolute spectrum that I don’t even think associates the way you think it does, and it’s honestly kind of unsettling, like - what do you think you know about me, and about My People, that apparently I don’t know?? If it doesn’t work for you that’s fine, but turning it into some tribalised over-generalization is just… why, why would you do that, who is that kind of thing useful for??
block_dagger 1y ago
I bet your code sucks in quality and quantity compared to the senior+ engineer who uses the modern tools. My code certainly did even after 20 years of experience, much of that as senior/staff level at well paying companies.

starfallg 1y ago

Pretty sure we can make LLM agents to transform declarative inputs to agentic action.

fsloth 1y ago

I strongly disagree agents are for extroverts. I do agree it’s definetly a tool category with a unique set of features and am not surprised it’s offputting to some. But it’s appeal is definetly clear to me as an introvert. For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. I think I’m slightly ADD. I love coding _interesting_ things but boring tasks cause extreme discomfort. Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! It’s a great time to be a software engineer!

pron 1y ago
> For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. I wish they were, but they're not that yet because LLMs aren't very good at logical reasonsing. So it's more like an attempt to program using natural language. Sometimes it does what you ask, sometimes not. I think "programming" implies that the machine will always do what you tell it, whatever the language, or reliably fail and say it can't be done because the "program" is contradictory, lacks sufficient detail, or doesn't have the necessary permissions/technical capabilities. If it only sometimes does what you ask, then it's not quite programming yet. > Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! I wish that, too, were true, and maybe it will be someday soon. But if I need to manually review the agent's output, then it doesn't feel like offloading much aside from the typing. All the same concentration and thought are still required, even for the boring things. If I could at least trust the agent to tell me if it did a good job or is unsure that would have been helpful, but we're not even there yet. That's not to say the tools aren't useful, but they're not yet "programming in a natural language" and not yet able to "offload" stuff to.
- yomismoaqui 1y ago
  You can view Claude Code as a non-deterministic compiler where you input english and get functioning code on the other end. The non-determinism is not as much as a problem because you are reading over the results and validating that what it is created matches what you tell it to do. I'm not talking about vibe-coding here, I'm grabbing the steering wheel with both hands because this car allows me to go faster than if I was driving myself, but sometimes you have to steer or brake. And the analogy favors Claude Code here because you don't have to react in milliseconds while programming. TL;DR: if you do the commit you are responsible for the code it contains.
  - pron 1y ago
    Sure, and that may be valuable, but it's neither "programming" nor "offloading mental effort" (at least not much). Some have compared it to working with a very junior programmer. I haven't done that in a long while, but when I did, it didn't really feel like I was "offloading" much, and I could still trust even the most junior programmer to tell me whether the job was done well or not (and of any difficulties they encountered or insight they've learnt) much more than I can an agent, at least today. Trust is something we have, for the most part, when we work with either other people or with tools. Working without (or with little) trust is something quite novel. Personally, I don't mind that an agent can't accomplish many tasks; I mind a great deal that I can't trust it to tell me whether it was able to do what I asked or not.
    - gf000 1y ago
      There is probably a significant factor of what domain you work in, that might be part of the reason why you have different experiences. I don't know your current domain, but stuff like Loom requires very complex reasoning capabilities, most of which lives outside the actual codebase itself. Business code on the other hand often has a more direct mapping from idea to code, so LLMs might show more promise there.
    - fsloth 1y ago
      ”it's neither "programming" Sure it is. Modern ecosystem is sadly full of API:s like WPF on Windows that are both verbose and configuration heavy. Now, some people may be able to internalize xaml with little effort but not all us - and then you basically move forward iteratively, looking for code example, trying this or that … basically random walking towards something usable. Or you use an agentic LLM and it does this peeking and poking for you, and with decades old APIs like WPF likely has enough context to do the thing you asked it to do far more competently than you could train yourself to program WPF in a few days. Of course in the context of this example WPF was your main duty, you _would_ learn the ins and outs of it. In quite many jobs a task like this may not infact be even among your top ten duties but you need to do it. In these sort of situations a LLM is really nice. The worst it provides is a good first guess how to do something. If your contex is something like radiology treatment then no, don’t use LLM! But there are thoushands of miserable non-critical but necessary components in production for which LLM is just fine.
thewebguyd 1y ago
> For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. Sort of. You still can't get a reliable output for the same input. For example, I was toying with using ChatGPT with some Siri shortcuts on my iPhone. I do photography on the side, and finding a good time for lighting for photoshoots is a usecase I use a lot so I made a shortcut which sends my location to the API along with a prompt to get the sunset time for today, total amount of daylight, and golden hour times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it says "I don't have specific golden hour times, but you can find those on the web" or a useless generic "Golden hour is typically 1 hour before sunset but can vary with location and season" Doesn't feel like programming to me, as I can't get reproducible output. I could just use the LLM to write some API calling script from some service that has that data, but then why bother with that middle man step. I like LLMs, I think they are useful, I use them everyday but what I want is a way to get consistent, reproducible output for any given input/prompt.
- stirfish 1y ago
  For things where I don't want creativity, I tell it to write a script. For example, "write a comprehensive spec for a script that takes in the date and a location and computes when golden hour is." | "Implement this spec" That variability is nice when you want some creativity, e.g. "write a beautiful, interactive boids simulation as a single file in html, css, and JavaScript." Words like "beautiful" and interactive" are open to interpretation, and I've been happy with the different ways they are interpreted.
klipklop 1y ago
>I think I’m slightly ADD. I love coding _interesting_ things but boring tasks cause extreme discomfort. >Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! I agree and I feel that having LLM's do boilerplate type stuff is fantastic for ADD people. The dopamine hit you get making tremendous progress before you get utterly bored is nice. The thing that ADD/ADHD people are the WORST at is finishing projects. LLM will help them once the thrill of prototyping a green-field project is over.
- 80hd 1y ago
  Seconding this. My work has had the same problem - by the time I've got things all hooked up, figured out the complicated stuff - my brain (and body) clock out and I have to drag myself through hell to get to 100%. Even with ADHD stimulant medication. It didn't make it emotionally easier, just _possible_ lol. LLMs, particularly Claude 4 and now GPT-5 are fantastic at working through these todo lists of tiny details. Perfectionism + ADHD not a fun combo, but it's way more bearable. It will only get better. We have a huge moat in front of us of ever-more interesting tasks as LLMs race to pick up the pieces. I've never been more excited about the future of tech
  - r_lee 1y ago
    Same here, especially for making bash scripts or lots of if this if that with logging type stuff, error handling etc.. Oh and also, from what I know, ADHD and perfectionism is a very common combination, I'm not sure if everyone has that but I've heard it's the case for many with ADD. Same with "standards" being extremely high for everything
- whartung 1y ago
  I'm kind of in this cohort. While in the groove, yea, things fly but, inevitably, my interest wanes. Either something too tedious, something too hard (or just a lot of work). Or, just something shinier shows up. Bunch of 80% projects with, as you mentioned, the interesting parts finished (sorta -- you see the line at the end of the tunnel, it's bright, just don't bother finishing the journey). However, at the same time, there's conflict. Consider (one of) my current projects, I did the whole back end. I had ChatGPT help me stand up a web front end for it. I am not a "web person". GUIs and what not are a REAL struggle for me because on the one hand, I don't care how things look, but, on the other, "boy that sure looks better". But getting from "functional" to "looks better" is a bottomless chasm of yak shaving, bike shedding improvements. I'm even bad at copying styles. My initial UI was time invested getting my UI to work, ugly as it was, with guidance from ChatGPT. Which means it gave me ways to do things, but mostly I coded up the actual work -- even if it was blindly typing it in vs just raw cut and paste. I understood how things were working, what it was doing, etc. But then, I just got tired of it, and "this needs to be Better". So, I grabbed Claude and let it have its way. And, its better! it certainly looks better, more features. It's head and shoulders better. Claude wrote 2-3000 lines of javascript. In, like, 45m. It was very fast, very responsive. One thing Claude knows is boiler plate JS Web stuff. And the code looks OK to me. Imperfect, but absolutely functional. But, I have zero investment in the code. No "ownership", certainly no pride. You know that little hit you get when you get Something Right, and it Works? None of that. Its amazing, its useful, its just not mine. And that's really weird. I've been striving to finish projects, and, yea, for me, that's really hard. There is just SO MUCH necessary to ship. AI may be able to help polish stuff up, we'll see as I move forward. If nothing else it may help gathering up lists of stuff I miss to do.
WhyOhWhyQ 1y ago
It's interesting that every task in the world is boring to somebody, which means nothing left in the world will be done by those interested in it, because somebody will gladly shotgun it with an AI tool.
sleepybrett 1y ago
Programming implies that it's going to do what i say. I wish it did.
kiitos 1y ago
> For me LLM:s are just a computer interface you can program using natural language. ... boring tasks cause extreme discomfort ... Now - I can offload the most boring task to LLM and spend my mental energy on the interesting stuff! The problem with this perspective, is that when you try to offload exactly the same boring task(s), to exactly the same LLM, the results you get back are never even close to being the same. This work you're offloading via natural language prompting is not programming in any meaningful sense. Many people don't care about this non-determinism. Some, because they don't have enough knowledge to identify, much less evaluate, the consequent problems. Others, because they're happy to deal with those problems, under the belief that they are a cost that's worth the net benefit provided by the LLM. And there are also many people who do care about this non-determinism, and aren't willing to accept the consequent problems. Bluntly, I don't think that anyone in group (1) can call themselves a software engineer.
amelius 1y ago
Last week there was this post about flow state, and pretty much explains the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44811457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44811457
- vlan0 1y ago
  What is described in that post is a skill issue. The attention issues spoke about can be worked through. Because attention is a skill like anything else. And if one does not learn to practice. One becomes victim to it
lsaferite 1y ago
I find Claude great at all of the boilerplate needed to get testing in place. It's also pretty good at divining test cases to lock in the current behavior, even if it's buggy. I use Claude as a first pass on tests, then I run through each test case myself to make sure it's a meaningful test. I've let it loose on the code coverage loop as well, so it can drill in and get those uncommon lines covered. I still don't have a good process for path coverage, but I'm not sure how easy that is in go as I haven't checked into it much yet. I'm with you 100% on the boring stuff. It's generally good at the boring stuff *because* it's boring and well-trod.

Terretta 1y ago

> I can’t get into using AI tools like Claude Code. As far as I go is chat style where I’m mostly in control. Try aider.chat (it's in the name), but specifically start with "ask" mode then dip a toe into "architect" mode, not "code" which is where Claude Code and the "vibe" nonsense is. Let aider.chat use Opus 4.1 or GPT-5 for thinking, with no limit on reasoning tokens and --reasoning-effort high. > agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. On the contrary, I think the non-vibe tools are force multipliers for those with an ability to communicate so precisely they find “extraverts and neurotypical people” confounding when attempting to specify engineering work. I'd put both aider.chat and Claude Code in the non-vibe class if you use them Socratically.

dionian 1y ago
thanks for this, going to try it out - i need to use paid api and not my claude max or gpt pro subn, right?
- victorbjorklund 1y ago
  Aider actually has a mode that is called "copy-paste" where it basically gives you a context to paste in an LLM chat and then you copy-paste back the reply to aider
  - mock-possum 1y ago
    Sounds like extra steps

garciasn 1y ago

Agents are boon for introverts who fucking hate dealing with other people (read: me). I can iterate rapidly with another 'entity' in a technical fashion and not have to spend hours explaining in relatable language what to do next. I feel as if you need to work with these things more, as you would prefer to work, and see just how good they are.

wahnfrieden 1y ago

You are leaving a lot of productivity on the table by not parallelizing agents for any of your work. Seemingly for psychological comfort quirks rather than earnestly seeking results. Automation productivity doesn’t remove your own agency. It frees more time for you to apply your desire for control more discerningly.

dexterlagan 1y ago
I can imagine there are plenty of use cases, but I could not find one for myself. Can you give an example?
- wahnfrieden 1y ago
  I personally use it for a lot of SwiftUI work. I parallelize it across at least 3 projects at once. I use only the largest models on highest thinking modes. I give instruction on implementation and provide reference implementations. I also use it for adding features/feature polish that address user pain points but that I can't prioritize for my own manual work just yet. There are a variety of user requests which sometimes LLMs are able to get done very suddenly when I give it a shot quickly. For these tasks, it's ok to abandon & defer them if the LLM spins its wheels.

bastawhiz 1y ago

> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people As a neurodivergent introvert, please don't speak for the rest of us.

antonvs 1y ago
That stuck out to me as well. People will make up all sorts of stories to justify their resistance to change.
- bastawhiz 1y ago
  It's the same as saying that writing good commit messages is a boon for extroverts and neurotypicals. It's a computer. You're giving it instructions, and the only difference to traditional coding is that the input is English text.

kevinsync 1y ago

I kind of think we will see some industry attrition as a result of LLM coding and agent usage, simply because the ~vIbEs~ I'm witnessing boil down to quite a lot of resistance (for multiple reasons: stubbornness, ethics, exhaustion from the hype cycle, sticking with what you know, etc) The thing is, they're just tools. You can choose to learn them, or not. They aren't going to make or break your career. People will do fine with and without them. I do think it's worth learning new tools though, even if you're just a casual observer / conscientious objector -- the world is changing fast, for better or worse, and you'll be better prepared to do anything with a wider breadth of tech skill and experience than with less. And I'm not just talking about writing software for a living, you could go full Uncle Ted and be a farmer or a carpenter or a barista in the middle of nowhere, and you're going to be way better equipped to deal with logistical issues that WILL arise from the very nature of the planet hurtling towards 100% computerization. Inventory management, crop planning, point of sale, marketing, monitoring sensors on your brewery vats, whatever. Another thought I had was that introverts often blame their deficits in sales, marketing and customer service on their introversion, but what if you could deploy an agent to either guide, perform, or prompt (the human) with some of those activities? I'd argue that it would be worth the time to kick the tires and see what's possible there. It feels like early times still with some of these pie in the sky ideas, but just because it's not turn-key YET doesn't mean it won't be in the near future. Just food for thought!

HardCodedBias 1y ago
"ethics" I agree with all of your reasons but this one sticks out. Is this a big issue? Are many people refusing to use LLMs due to (I'm guessing here): perceived copyright issues, or power usage, or maybe that they think that automation is unjust?
- kevinsync 1y ago
  I can't tell how widespread any of is, to be honest.. mostly because it's anecdata, and impossible to determine if what I'm seeing is just ragebait, or shallow dunks by reply-guys in comment sections, or particularly-loud voices on social media that aren't representative of the majority opinion, etc That said, the amount of sort-of-thoughtless, I'm-just-repeating-something-I-heard-but-don't-really-understand outrage towards AI that I'm seeing appears to be increasing -- "how many bottles of water did that slop image waste??", "Clanker"-adjacent memes and commentary (include self-driving + robots in this category), people ranting about broligarchs stealing art, music, movies, books to train their models (oddly often while also performatively parroting party lines about how Spotify rips artists off), all the way to refusing to interact with people on dating apps if they have anything AI in their profiles hahaha (file "AI" alongside men holding fish in their pics, and "crypto" lol) It's all chronically-online nonsense that may well just be perception that's artificially amplified by "the algorithm". Me, I have no fundamental issue with any of it -- LLMs, like anything else, aren't categorically good or bad. They can be used positively and negatively. Everything we use and consume has hidden downsides and unsavory circumstances.

cpldcpu 1y ago

I think you misunderstand what this does. It is not only a coding agent. It is an abstraction layer between you and the computer.

klipklop 1y ago

>Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. I completely disagree. Juggling several agents (and hopping from feature-to-feature) at once, is perfect for somebody with ADHD. Being an agent wrangler is great for introverts instead of having to talk to actual people.

filoleg 1y ago

> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. This sounds like a wild generalization. I am in neither of those two groups, and I’ve been finding tools like Claude Code becoming increasingly more useful over time. Made me much more optimistic about the direction of AI development in general too. Because with each iteration and new version it isn’t getting anywhere closer to replacing me or my colleagues, but it is becoming more and more useful and helpful to my workflow. And I am not one of those people who are into “prompt engineering” or typing novels into the AI chatbox. My entire interaction is typically short 2-3 sentences “do this and that, make sure that XYZ is ABC”, attach the files that are relevant, let it do its thing, and then manual checks/adjustments. Saves me a boatload of work tbh, as I enjoy the debugging/fixing/“getting the nuanced details right” aspect of writing code (and am pretty decent at it, I think), but absolutely dread starting from a brand new empty file.

joshred 1y ago

I think they're fantastic at generating the sort of thing I don't like writing out. For example, a dictionary mapping state names to their abbreviations, or extracting a data dictionary from a pdf so that I can include it with my documentation.

burnte 1y ago

> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. As an extrovert the chances I'll use an AI agent in the next year is zero. Not even a billion to one but a straight zero. I understand very well how AI works, and as such I have absolutely no trust in it for anything that isn't easy/simple/solved, which means I have virtually no use for generative AI. Search, reference, data transformation, sure. Coding? Not without verification or being able to understand the code. I can't even trust Google Maps to give me a reliable route anymore, why would I actually believe some AI model can code? AI tools are helpers, not workers.

ragequittah 1y ago
>no trust in it for anything that isn't easy/simple/solved I'm not sure what part of programming isn't generally solved thousands of times over for most languages out there. I'm only using it for lowly web development but I can tell you that it can definitely do it at a level that surprises me. It's not just "auto-complete" it's actually able to 'think' over code I've broken or code that I want improved and give me not just one but multiple paths to make it better.
- burnte 1y ago
  In the case of programming is not quite as problematic with unsolved problems as much as others, like completeness. In the case of programming, it's context and understanding. It's great for small chunks of code but people think you can vibe code entire interactive applications with no programming knowledge, but LLMs simply don't understand, so they can't keep a cohesive idea of what the end goal is in mind. The larger the codebase it needs to work on the more likely it is to make catastrophic errors, create massive security flaws, or just generate nonfunctional code. Programming LLMs will become awesome when we create more narrowly targeted LLMs rather than these "train on everything" models.

taftster 1y ago

For me (an introvert), I have found great value in these tools. Normally, I kind of talk to myself about a problem / algorithm / code segment as I'm fleshing it out. I'm not telling myself complete sentences, but there's some sort of logical dialog I am having with myself. So I just have to convert that conversation into an AI prompt, basically. It just kind of does the typing for the construct already in my head. The trick is to just get the words out of my head as prompt input. That's honestly not much different than an author writing a book, for example. The story line is in their head, they just have to get it on paper. And that's really the tricky part of writing a novel as much as writing code. I therefore don't believe this is an introvert/extrovert thing. There are plenty of book authors which are both. The tools available as AI code agents are really just an advanced form of dictation.

sixo 1y ago

At one point in my life I liked crafting code. I took a break, came back, and I no longer liked it--my thoughts ranged further, and the fine-grained details of implementations were a nuisance rather than ~pleasurable to deal with. Whatever you like is probably what you should be doing right now. Nothing wrong with that.

wredcoll 1y ago

> Agents are a boon for extraverts and neurotypical people. Please stop with this kind of thing. It isn't true, it doesn't make sense and it doesn't help anyone.

MrDarcy 1y ago

For what it’s worth I’m neurodivergent, introverted and have avoided management up to the staff+level. Claude Code is great I use it all day every day now.

mock-possum 1y ago

It is effin nutzo that you would try to relate chatting with AI and agentic LLM codegen workflows to the intra/extra vert dichotomy or to neuro a/typicality - you so casually lean way into this absolute spectrum that I don’t even think associates the way you think it does, and it’s honestly kind of unsettling, like - what do you think you know about me, and about My People, that apparently I don’t know?? If it doesn’t work for you that’s fine, but turning it into some tribalised over-generalization is just… why, why would you do that, who is that kind of thing useful for??

block_dagger 1y ago

I bet your code sucks in quality and quantity compared to the senior+ engineer who uses the modern tools. My code certainly did even after 20 years of experience, much of that as senior/staff level at well paying companies.