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AI agents to me seem maximalist by default, and if it takes 250 lines to meet a requirement they would choose that over the much simpler one-line change. In an

by ljm 1y ago

AI agents to me seem maximalist by default, and if it takes 250 lines to meet a requirement they would choose that over the much simpler one-line change. In an existing codebase this is easily solved by making your prompt more specific, possibly so specific you are just describing the actual changes to make. Even then I find myself asking for refinements that simplify the approach, with suggestions for what I know would work better. The only reason I'm not writing the change myself is because the AI agent is running a TDD-style red/green/refactor loop and can say stuff like "this is an integration test, don't use mocks and prefer to use relevant rspec matchers in favour of asserting on internal object state" and it will fix every test in the diff. In a brand new codebase I don't have a baseline any more and it's just an AI adding more and more into a ball of mud. I'm doing this with NixOS and the only thing keeping it sane is that each generated file is quite small and simple (owing to the language being declarative). Yet still, I have zero idea if I can even deploy it yet as a result.

dingnuts 1y ago
I stopped using AI assistance when I realized every time the agent made a change, I had to go behind and simplify it by about 80%. It's easier, faster, more fun, and produces a better end product if I just go ahead and do it myself. If I am feeling lazy I can have one of the chats give me their shit solution to the micro problem at hand and extract the line I need and integrate it properly. This is usually a little faster than reading the manual, but it's wrong often enough that I usually read the manual for everything the bot does, to make sure. And so next time I can skip asking it. Someone wake me up and tell me to try these tools again when the flow isn't prompting and deleting and repeat. inb4 someone tells me there's a learning curve for this human language product that is supposed to make it so I'm obsolete and my CEO can do my job because it makes coding so easy that even an experienced coder has to climb a steep learning curve but there's going to be a white collar blood bath also fucking pick a narrative, AI shills

by ljm 1y ago

dingnuts 1y ago

I stopped using AI assistance when I realized every time the agent made a change, I had to go behind and simplify it by about 80%. It's easier, faster, more fun, and produces a better end product if I just go ahead and do it myself. If I am feeling lazy I can have one of the chats give me their shit solution to the micro problem at hand and extract the line I need and integrate it properly. This is usually a little faster than reading the manual, but it's wrong often enough that I usually read the manual for everything the bot does, to make sure. And so next time I can skip asking it. Someone wake me up and tell me to try these tools again when the flow isn't prompting and deleting and repeat. inb4 someone tells me there's a learning curve for this human language product that is supposed to make it so I'm obsolete and my CEO can do my job because it makes coding so easy that even an experienced coder has to climb a steep learning curve but there's going to be a white collar blood bath also fucking pick a narrative, AI shills