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> This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents Because I have a coworker who is pushing slop at unsustainable l

> This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents Because I have a coworker who is pushing slop at unsustainable levels, and proclaiming to management how much more productive he is. It’s now even more of a risk to my career to speak up about how awful his PRs are to review (and I’m not the only one on the team who wishes to speak up). The internet is rife with people who claim to be living in the future where they are now a 10x dev. Making these claims costs almost nothing, but it is negatively effecting mine and many others day to day. I’m not necessarily blaming these internet voices (I don’t blame a bear for killing a hiker), but the damage they’re doing is still real.

tptacek 1y ago
I don't think you read the sentence you're responding to carefully enough. The antecedent of "this" isn't "coding agents" generally: it's "the value of an agent getting you past the blank page stage to a point where the substantive core of your feature functions well enough to start iterating on". If you want to respond to the argument I made there, you have to respond to the actual argument, not a broader one that's easier (and much less interesting) to take swipes at.
- sjdjsin 1y ago
  My understanding of your argument is: Because agents are good on this one specific axis (which I agree with and use fwiw), there’s no reason to object to them as a whole My argument is: The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. The small win (among others) is not worth the amounts of slop devs now have to deal with.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    Sounds like a very poorly managed team.
    - JasonSage 1y ago
      I have to agree. My experience working on a team with mixed levels of seniority and coding experience is that everybody got some increase in productivity and some increase in quality. The ones who spend more time developing their agentic coding as a skillset have gotten much better results. In our team people are also more willing to respond to feedback because nitpicks and requests to restructure/rearchitect are evaluated on merit instead of how time-consuming or boring they would have been to take on.
      - bsder 1y ago
        > My experience working on a team with mixed levels of seniority and coding experience is that everybody got some increase in productivity and some increase in quality. Is that true? There have been a couple of papers that show that people have the perception that they are more productive because the AI feels like motion (you're "stuck" less often) when in reality it has been a net negative.
    - roughly 1y ago
      In tech? Say it ain't so.
      - dingnuts 1y ago
        in any organization???
wilg 1y ago
Not sure what to tell you, if there's a problem you have to speak up.
- fn-mote 1y ago
  And the longer you wait, the worse it will be. Also, update your resume and get some applications out so you’re not just a victim.
j45 1y ago
Maybe it's possible to use AI to help review the PRs and claim it's the AI making the PR's hyperproductive?
- XenophileJKO 1y ago
  Yes, this. If you can describe why it is slop, an AI can probably identify the underlying issues automatically. Done right you should get mostly reasonable code out of the "execution focused peer".
  - austinjp 1y ago
    In climate terms, or even simply in terms of $cost, this very much feels like throwing failing on a bonfire. Should we really advocate for using AI to both create and then destroy huge amounts of data that will never be used?
    - wahnfrieden 1y ago
      The environmental cost of AI is mostly in training afaik. The inference energy cost is similar to the google searches and reddit etc loads you might do during handwritten dev last I checked. This might be completely wrong though
      - pastel8739 1y ago
        I hear this argument a lot, but it doesn’t hold water for me. Obviously the use of the AI is the thing that makes it worthwhile to do the training, so you obviously need to amortize the training cost over the inference. I don’t know whether or not doing so makes the environmental cost substantially higher, though.
    - XenophileJKO 1y ago
      I don't think it is a long term solution. More like training wheels. Ideally the engineers learn to use AI to produce better code the first time. You just have a quality gate. Edit: Do I advocate for this? 1000%. This isn't crypto burning electricity to make a ledger. This objectively will make the life of the craftsmanship focused engineer easier. Sloppy execution oriented engineers are not a new phenomenon, just magnified with the fire hose that an agentic AI can be.
matwood 1y ago
What if your coworker was pushing tons of crap code and AI didn't exist? How would you deal with the situation then? Do that.
- chotmat 1y ago
  It's not the same because, with AI, they will likely be called anti-ai or anti-progress if they push back against it.
  - matwood 1y ago
    Don't mention AI, just point out why the code is bad. I've had co-workers who were vim wizards and others who literally hunt and pecked to type. At no point did their tools ever come up when reviewing their code. AI is a tool like anything else, treat it that way. This also means that the OPs default can't be AI == bad; focus on the result.

tptacek 1y ago

I don't think you read the sentence you're responding to carefully enough. The antecedent of "this" isn't "coding agents" generally: it's "the value of an agent getting you past the blank page stage to a point where the substantive core of your feature functions well enough to start iterating on". If you want to respond to the argument I made there, you have to respond to the actual argument, not a broader one that's easier (and much less interesting) to take swipes at.

sjdjsin 1y ago
My understanding of your argument is: Because agents are good on this one specific axis (which I agree with and use fwiw), there’s no reason to object to them as a whole My argument is: The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. The small win (among others) is not worth the amounts of slop devs now have to deal with.
- tptacek 1y ago
  Sounds like a very poorly managed team.
  - JasonSage 1y ago
    I have to agree. My experience working on a team with mixed levels of seniority and coding experience is that everybody got some increase in productivity and some increase in quality. The ones who spend more time developing their agentic coding as a skillset have gotten much better results. In our team people are also more willing to respond to feedback because nitpicks and requests to restructure/rearchitect are evaluated on merit instead of how time-consuming or boring they would have been to take on.
    - bsder 1y ago
      > My experience working on a team with mixed levels of seniority and coding experience is that everybody got some increase in productivity and some increase in quality. Is that true? There have been a couple of papers that show that people have the perception that they are more productive because the AI feels like motion (you're "stuck" less often) when in reality it has been a net negative.
  - roughly 1y ago
    In tech? Say it ain't so.
    - dingnuts 1y ago
      in any organization???

wilg 1y ago

Not sure what to tell you, if there's a problem you have to speak up.

fn-mote 1y ago
And the longer you wait, the worse it will be. Also, update your resume and get some applications out so you’re not just a victim.

j45 1y ago

Maybe it's possible to use AI to help review the PRs and claim it's the AI making the PR's hyperproductive?

XenophileJKO 1y ago
Yes, this. If you can describe why it is slop, an AI can probably identify the underlying issues automatically. Done right you should get mostly reasonable code out of the "execution focused peer".
- austinjp 1y ago
  In climate terms, or even simply in terms of $cost, this very much feels like throwing failing on a bonfire. Should we really advocate for using AI to both create and then destroy huge amounts of data that will never be used?
  - wahnfrieden 1y ago
    The environmental cost of AI is mostly in training afaik. The inference energy cost is similar to the google searches and reddit etc loads you might do during handwritten dev last I checked. This might be completely wrong though
    - pastel8739 1y ago
      I hear this argument a lot, but it doesn’t hold water for me. Obviously the use of the AI is the thing that makes it worthwhile to do the training, so you obviously need to amortize the training cost over the inference. I don’t know whether or not doing so makes the environmental cost substantially higher, though.
  - XenophileJKO 1y ago
    I don't think it is a long term solution. More like training wheels. Ideally the engineers learn to use AI to produce better code the first time. You just have a quality gate. Edit: Do I advocate for this? 1000%. This isn't crypto burning electricity to make a ledger. This objectively will make the life of the craftsmanship focused engineer easier. Sloppy execution oriented engineers are not a new phenomenon, just magnified with the fire hose that an agentic AI can be.

matwood 1y ago

What if your coworker was pushing tons of crap code and AI didn't exist? How would you deal with the situation then? Do that.

chotmat 1y ago
It's not the same because, with AI, they will likely be called anti-ai or anti-progress if they push back against it.
- matwood 1y ago
  Don't mention AI, just point out why the code is bad. I've had co-workers who were vim wizards and others who literally hunt and pecked to type. At no point did their tools ever come up when reviewing their code. AI is a tool like anything else, treat it that way. This also means that the OPs default can't be AI == bad; focus on the result.