3 ms·

> I'd just like to see a live coding session from one of these 10x AI devs I'd also like to see how it compares to their coding without AI. I mean I really ne

by godelski 10mo ago

> I'd just like to see a live coding session from one of these 10x AI devs I'd also like to see how it compares to their coding without AI. I mean I really need to understand what the "x" is in 10x. If their x is <0.1 then who gives a shit. But if their x is >2 then holy fuck I want to know. Who doesn't want to be faster? But it's not like x is the same for everybody.

llmslave2 10mo ago
Yeah this is the key point. Part of me wonders if it's just 0.1x devs somehow reaching 1.0x productivity...
- bonesss 10mo ago
  Also the terrible code bases and orgs that are out there… the amount of churn bad JavaScript solutions with eight frontend frameworks might necessitate and how tight systems code works are very different.
  - nosianu 10mo ago
    This has nothing to do with JS! I wish that idea would die. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 It's not just about them (link, Oracle), there is terrible code all over the place. Games, business software, everything. It has nothing to do with the language! Anyone who claims that may be part of the problem, since they don't understand the problem and concentrate on superficial things. Also, what looks terrible may not be so. I once had to work on an in-house JS app (for internal cost reporting and control). It used two GUI frameworks - because they had started switching to another one, but then stopped the transition. Sounds bad, yes? But, I worked on the code of the company I linked above, and that "terrible" JS app was easy mode all the way! Even if it used two GUI frameworks at once, understanding the code, adding new features, debugging, everything was still very easy and doable with just half a brain active. I never had to ask my predecessor anything either, everything was clear with one look at the code. Because everything was well isolated and modular, among other things. Making changes did not affect other places in unexpected ways (as is common in biology). I found some enlightenment - what seems to be very bad at first glance may not actually matter nearly as much as deeper things.
  - Bridged7756 10mo ago
    Speaking from ignorance or speaking from ego or both? There's only three major players, React, Vue or Angular. Angular is batteries included. The other two have their lib ecosystem and if not you can easily wrap stuff around regular js libs. That's about it. The JS ecosystem sees many newcomers, it's only natural that some of the codebases were written poorly or that the FOTM mentality gets a lot of steam, against proper engineering principles. Anecdotally the worst code I've ever seen was in a PHP codebase, which to me, would be the predecessor of JavaScript in this regard, bolstering many junior programmers maintaining legacy (or writing Greenfield ) systems due to cheap businesses being cheap. Anyways, thousands long LoC files, with broken indentation and newlines, interspersed JS and CSS here and there. Truly madness, but that's another story. Point is JavaScript is JavaScript, and other fields like systems and backend, mainly backend, act conceited and talk about JS as if it was the devil, when things like C++, Java, aren't necessarily known for having pretty codebases.
zo1 10mo ago
I'm a "backend" dev, so you could say that I am very very unfamiliar, have mostly-basic and high-level knowledge of frontend development. Getting this thing to spit out screens and components and adjust them as I see fit has got to be some sort of super-power and definitely 20x'd my frontend development for hobby projects. Previous to this, my team was giving me wild "1 week" estimates to code simple CRUD screens (plus 1 week for "api integration") and those estimates always smelled funny to me. Now that I've seen what the AI/agents can do, those estimates definitely reek, and the frontend "senior" javascript dev's days are numbered. Especially for CRUD screens, which lets face it, make up most screens these days and should absolutely be churned out like in an assembly line instead of being delicate "hand crafted" precious works of art that allows 0.1x devs to waste our time because they are the only ones who supposedly know the ancient and arcane 'npm install, npm etc, npm angular component create" spells. Look at the recent Tailwind team layoffs, they're definitely seeing the impact of this as are many team-leads and managers in most companies in our industry. Especially "javascript senior dev" heavy shops in the VC space, which many people are realizing they have an over-abundance of because those devs bullshitted entire teams and companies into thinking simple CRUD screens take weeks to develop. It was like a giant cartel, with them all padding and confirming the other "engineer's" estimates and essentially slow-devving their own screens to validate the ridiculous padding.
- vitaflo 10mo ago
  One of the more ignorant comments I’ve read on HN.
- Bridged7756 10mo ago
  Your UIs are likely still ass. Pre-made websites/designs were always a thing, in fact, it's (at least to me) common to just copy the design of another place as "inspiration". When you have 0 knowledge of design everything looks the greatest, it's something you kind of have to get a feel for. Frontend engineers do more than just churning out code. Still have to do proper tests using Cypress/Playwright, deal with performance, a11y/accessibility, component tests, if any, deal with front end observability (more complex than backend, out of virtue of different clients and conditions the code is run on), deal with dependencies (in large places it's all in-house libraries or there's private repos to maintain), deal with CI/CD, etc, I'm probably missing more. Twcs layoffs were due to AI cannibalizing their business model by reducing traffic to the site. And what makes you think the backend is safe? As if churning out endpoints and services or whatever gospel by some thought leader would make it harder for an AI to do. The frontend has one core benefit, it's pretty varied, and it's an ever moving field, mostly due to changes in browsers, also due to the "JS culture". Code from 5 years ago is outdated, but Spring code from 5 years ago is still valid.
Bridged7756 10mo ago
I'm really dubious of such claims. Even if true, I think they're not seeing the whole picture. Sure, I could churn out code 10x as fast, but I still have to review it. I still have to think of the implementation. I still have to think of the test cases and write them. Now, adding the prerequisites for LLMs, I have to word this in a way the AI can understand it, which is extra mental load. I have to review code sometimes multiple times if it gets something wrong, and I have to re-generate, or make corrections, or sometimes end up fixing entire sections it generated, when I decide it just won't get this task right. Overally, while the typing, researching dependency docs (sometimes), time is saved, I still face the same cognitive load as ever, if not more, due to having extra code to review, having to think of prompting, I'm still limited by the same thing at the end of the day: my mental energy. I can write the code myself and it's if anything a bit slower. I still need to know my dependencies, I still need to know my codebase and all its gripes, even if the AI generates code correctly. Overally, the net complexity of my codebase is the same, and I don't buy the crap, also because I've never heard of stories about reducing complexity (refactoring), only about generating code and fixing codebases with testing and comments/docs (bad practice imo, unlikely the shallow docs generated will say anything more than what the code already makes evident). Anyways, I'm not a believer, I only use LLMs for scaffolding, rote tasks.

llmslave2 10mo ago

Yeah this is the key point. Part of me wonders if it's just 0.1x devs somehow reaching 1.0x productivity...

bonesss 10mo ago
Also the terrible code bases and orgs that are out there… the amount of churn bad JavaScript solutions with eight frontend frameworks might necessitate and how tight systems code works are very different.
- nosianu 10mo ago
  This has nothing to do with JS! I wish that idea would die. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 It's not just about them (link, Oracle), there is terrible code all over the place. Games, business software, everything. It has nothing to do with the language! Anyone who claims that may be part of the problem, since they don't understand the problem and concentrate on superficial things. Also, what looks terrible may not be so. I once had to work on an in-house JS app (for internal cost reporting and control). It used two GUI frameworks - because they had started switching to another one, but then stopped the transition. Sounds bad, yes? But, I worked on the code of the company I linked above, and that "terrible" JS app was easy mode all the way! Even if it used two GUI frameworks at once, understanding the code, adding new features, debugging, everything was still very easy and doable with just half a brain active. I never had to ask my predecessor anything either, everything was clear with one look at the code. Because everything was well isolated and modular, among other things. Making changes did not affect other places in unexpected ways (as is common in biology). I found some enlightenment - what seems to be very bad at first glance may not actually matter nearly as much as deeper things.
- Bridged7756 10mo ago
  Speaking from ignorance or speaking from ego or both? There's only three major players, React, Vue or Angular. Angular is batteries included. The other two have their lib ecosystem and if not you can easily wrap stuff around regular js libs. That's about it. The JS ecosystem sees many newcomers, it's only natural that some of the codebases were written poorly or that the FOTM mentality gets a lot of steam, against proper engineering principles. Anecdotally the worst code I've ever seen was in a PHP codebase, which to me, would be the predecessor of JavaScript in this regard, bolstering many junior programmers maintaining legacy (or writing Greenfield ) systems due to cheap businesses being cheap. Anyways, thousands long LoC files, with broken indentation and newlines, interspersed JS and CSS here and there. Truly madness, but that's another story. Point is JavaScript is JavaScript, and other fields like systems and backend, mainly backend, act conceited and talk about JS as if it was the devil, when things like C++, Java, aren't necessarily known for having pretty codebases.

zo1 10mo ago

I'm a "backend" dev, so you could say that I am very very unfamiliar, have mostly-basic and high-level knowledge of frontend development. Getting this thing to spit out screens and components and adjust them as I see fit has got to be some sort of super-power and definitely 20x'd my frontend development for hobby projects. Previous to this, my team was giving me wild "1 week" estimates to code simple CRUD screens (plus 1 week for "api integration") and those estimates always smelled funny to me. Now that I've seen what the AI/agents can do, those estimates definitely reek, and the frontend "senior" javascript dev's days are numbered. Especially for CRUD screens, which lets face it, make up most screens these days and should absolutely be churned out like in an assembly line instead of being delicate "hand crafted" precious works of art that allows 0.1x devs to waste our time because they are the only ones who supposedly know the ancient and arcane 'npm install, npm etc, npm angular component create" spells. Look at the recent Tailwind team layoffs, they're definitely seeing the impact of this as are many team-leads and managers in most companies in our industry. Especially "javascript senior dev" heavy shops in the VC space, which many people are realizing they have an over-abundance of because those devs bullshitted entire teams and companies into thinking simple CRUD screens take weeks to develop. It was like a giant cartel, with them all padding and confirming the other "engineer's" estimates and essentially slow-devving their own screens to validate the ridiculous padding.

vitaflo 10mo ago
One of the more ignorant comments I’ve read on HN.
Bridged7756 10mo ago
Your UIs are likely still ass. Pre-made websites/designs were always a thing, in fact, it's (at least to me) common to just copy the design of another place as "inspiration". When you have 0 knowledge of design everything looks the greatest, it's something you kind of have to get a feel for. Frontend engineers do more than just churning out code. Still have to do proper tests using Cypress/Playwright, deal with performance, a11y/accessibility, component tests, if any, deal with front end observability (more complex than backend, out of virtue of different clients and conditions the code is run on), deal with dependencies (in large places it's all in-house libraries or there's private repos to maintain), deal with CI/CD, etc, I'm probably missing more. Twcs layoffs were due to AI cannibalizing their business model by reducing traffic to the site. And what makes you think the backend is safe? As if churning out endpoints and services or whatever gospel by some thought leader would make it harder for an AI to do. The frontend has one core benefit, it's pretty varied, and it's an ever moving field, mostly due to changes in browsers, also due to the "JS culture". Code from 5 years ago is outdated, but Spring code from 5 years ago is still valid.

Bridged7756 10mo ago

I'm really dubious of such claims. Even if true, I think they're not seeing the whole picture. Sure, I could churn out code 10x as fast, but I still have to review it. I still have to think of the implementation. I still have to think of the test cases and write them. Now, adding the prerequisites for LLMs, I have to word this in a way the AI can understand it, which is extra mental load. I have to review code sometimes multiple times if it gets something wrong, and I have to re-generate, or make corrections, or sometimes end up fixing entire sections it generated, when I decide it just won't get this task right. Overally, while the typing, researching dependency docs (sometimes), time is saved, I still face the same cognitive load as ever, if not more, due to having extra code to review, having to think of prompting, I'm still limited by the same thing at the end of the day: my mental energy. I can write the code myself and it's if anything a bit slower. I still need to know my dependencies, I still need to know my codebase and all its gripes, even if the AI generates code correctly. Overally, the net complexity of my codebase is the same, and I don't buy the crap, also because I've never heard of stories about reducing complexity (refactoring), only about generating code and fixing codebases with testing and comments/docs (bad practice imo, unlikely the shallow docs generated will say anything more than what the code already makes evident). Anyways, I'm not a believer, I only use LLMs for scaffolding, rote tasks.