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I have to say, it was fun while it lasted! Couldn't really have asked for a more rewarding hobby and career. Prompting an AI just doesn't have the same feeling

by pton_xd 10mo ago

I have to say, it was fun while it lasted! Couldn't really have asked for a more rewarding hobby and career. Prompting an AI just doesn't have the same feeling, unfortunately.

cmarschner 10mo ago
For me it‘s the opposite. I do have a good feeling what I want to achieve, but translating this into and testing program code has always been causing me outright physical pain (and in case of C++ I really hate it). I‘ve been programming since age 10. Almost 40 years. And it feels like liberation. It brings the “what to build“ question front and center while “how to build it“ has become much, much easier and more productive
markus_zhang 10mo ago
Indeed. I still use AI for my side projects, but strictly limit to discussion only, no code. Otherwise what is the point? The good thing about programming is, unlike playing chess, there is no real "win/lose" in the scenario so I won't feel discouraged even if AI can do all the work by itself. Same thing for science. I don't mind if AI could solve all those problems, as long as they can teach me. Those problems are already "solved" by the universe anyway.
- Hamuko 10mo ago
  Even the discussion side has been pretty meh in my mind. I was looking into a bug in a codebase filled with Claude output and for funsies decided to ask Claude about it. It basically generated a "This thing here could be a problem but there is manual validation for it" response, and when I looked, that manual validation were nowhere to be found. There's so much half-working AI-generated code everywhere that I'd feel ashamed if I had to ever meet our customers. I think the thing that gives me the most value is code review. So basically I first review my code myself, then have Claude review it and then submit for someone else to approve.
  - markus_zhang 10mo ago
    I don't discuss actual code with ChatGPT, just concepts. Like "if I have an issue and my algo looks like this, how can I debug it effectively in gdb?", or "how do I reduce lock contention if I have to satisfy A/B/...". Maybe it's just because my side projects are fairly elementary. And I agree that AI is pretty good at code review, especially if the code contains complex business logic.
sunshowers 10mo ago
It depends. I've been working on a series of large, gnarly refactors at work, and the process has involved writing a (fairly long), hand-crafted spec/policy document. The big advantage of Opus has been that the spec is now machine-executable -- I repeatedly fed it into the LLM and see what it did on some test cases. That sped up experimentation and prototyping tremendously, and it also found a lot of ambiguities in the policy document that were helpful to address. The document is human-crafted and human-reviewed, and it primarily targets humans. The fact that it works for machines is a (pretty neat) secondary effect, but not really the point. And the document sped up the act of doing the refactors by around 5x. The whole process was really fun! It's not really vibe coding at that point, really (I continue to be relatively unimpressed at vibe coding beyond a few hundred lines of code). It's closer to old-school waterfall-style development, though with much quicker iteration cycles.

by pton_xd 10mo ago

I have to say, it was fun while it lasted! Couldn't really have asked for a more rewarding hobby and career. Prompting an AI just doesn't have the same feeling, unfortunately.

cmarschner 10mo ago

For me it‘s the opposite. I do have a good feeling what I want to achieve, but translating this into and testing program code has always been causing me outright physical pain (and in case of C++ I really hate it). I‘ve been programming since age 10. Almost 40 years. And it feels like liberation. It brings the “what to build“ question front and center while “how to build it“ has become much, much easier and more productive

markus_zhang 10mo ago

Indeed. I still use AI for my side projects, but strictly limit to discussion only, no code. Otherwise what is the point? The good thing about programming is, unlike playing chess, there is no real "win/lose" in the scenario so I won't feel discouraged even if AI can do all the work by itself. Same thing for science. I don't mind if AI could solve all those problems, as long as they can teach me. Those problems are already "solved" by the universe anyway.

Hamuko 10mo ago
Even the discussion side has been pretty meh in my mind. I was looking into a bug in a codebase filled with Claude output and for funsies decided to ask Claude about it. It basically generated a "This thing here could be a problem but there is manual validation for it" response, and when I looked, that manual validation were nowhere to be found. There's so much half-working AI-generated code everywhere that I'd feel ashamed if I had to ever meet our customers. I think the thing that gives me the most value is code review. So basically I first review my code myself, then have Claude review it and then submit for someone else to approve.
- markus_zhang 10mo ago
  I don't discuss actual code with ChatGPT, just concepts. Like "if I have an issue and my algo looks like this, how can I debug it effectively in gdb?", or "how do I reduce lock contention if I have to satisfy A/B/...". Maybe it's just because my side projects are fairly elementary. And I agree that AI is pretty good at code review, especially if the code contains complex business logic.

sunshowers 10mo ago

It depends. I've been working on a series of large, gnarly refactors at work, and the process has involved writing a (fairly long), hand-crafted spec/policy document. The big advantage of Opus has been that the spec is now machine-executable -- I repeatedly fed it into the LLM and see what it did on some test cases. That sped up experimentation and prototyping tremendously, and it also found a lot of ambiguities in the policy document that were helpful to address. The document is human-crafted and human-reviewed, and it primarily targets humans. The fact that it works for machines is a (pretty neat) secondary effect, but not really the point. And the document sped up the act of doing the refactors by around 5x. The whole process was really fun! It's not really vibe coding at that point, really (I continue to be relatively unimpressed at vibe coding beyond a few hundred lines of code). It's closer to old-school waterfall-style development, though with much quicker iteration cycles.