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> I have said repeatedly that when AI eliminates the need for human creativity and work Yeah, this is not happening anytime soon. Have you even looked at AI-g

> I have said repeatedly that when AI eliminates the need for human creativity and work Yeah, this is not happening anytime soon. Have you even looked at AI-generated code or text? AI is just a dumb parrot, it's no match for human effort and creativity even in these "easy" domains. The business case for AI generation is just being able to generate huge amounts of unusable slop for next to nothing. For skilled workers it's a minor advantage in that they get a sloppy first draft that they can start the real work on - it makes their work a bit more creative than it used to be, by getting rid of the most tedious stuff.

thunky 7mo ago
> AI is just a dumb parrot You really need to look again. If you're still manually writing code you have your head in the sand. AI can produce better code than most devs produce. This is true for easy stuff like crud apps and even more true for harder problems that require knowledge of external domains.
- moi2388 7mo ago
  It can produce better code than most devs in the hands of a good dev. The bullshit code I see coming from juniors using AI..
  - mapontosevenths 7mo ago
    I view it as a force multiplier, like a lever. In good hands it produces outsized gains. In the wrong hands it produces outsized losses. It just makes you MORE of whatever it was you already were.
    - thunky 7mo ago
      I partially agree. I can see the before and after difference in colleague's code. It's night and day. They're doing things now that they either flat out could not do before, or if they did it would be an giant mess (I realize they still can't really do it now, AI is doing it for them).
- prmph 7mo ago
  Well "most" devs is doing a lot of work here. I'm not sure about other devs, or even their number, but AI can most definitely NOT produce better code than I can. I use it after I have done the hard architectural work: defining complex types and interfaces, figuring out code organization, solving thorny issues. When these are done, it's now time to hand over to the agent to apply stuff everywhere following my patterns. And even there SOTA model like Opus make silly mistakes, you need to watch them carefully. Sometimes it loses track of the big picture. I also use them to check my code and to write bash scripts. They are useful for all these.
  - thunky 7mo ago
    What you're describing is using it to do something you already can do at an expert level, and you already know exactly what you want the result to look like amd won't accept anything that deviates from what's already in your head. So like a code autocomplete. You don't really want the "intelligence" part, you want a mule. That's fine, and useful, but you're really putting a ceiling on it's potential. Try using it for something that you aren't already an expert in. That's where most devs live. Even expert coder antirez says "writing the code yourself is no longer sensible". https://antirez.com/news/158 https://antirez.com/news/158
    - mibsl 7mo ago
      AFAIU antirez is mostly writing in C, a verbose language where "create a hashtable of x->y" turns into a wall of boilerplate. In high level languages the length diffrence between a precise specification and the actual code is much smaller.
      - thunky 7mo ago
        He also mentions using it for Python which is minimal boilerplate. And he didn't limit his take to just C code. He said: state of the art LLMs are able to complete large subtasks or medium size projects alone, almost unassisted, given a good set of hints about what the end result should be.
    - 7mo ago
- throwaway613746 7mo ago
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- SpicyLemonZest 7mo ago
  You’re equating two things that aren’t the same. I’m not still manually writing code, but it’s not at all because Claude can produce better code than me. It’s worse at CRUD apps and a lot worse at domain specific bits. But it’s more parallelizable, so if I drive it well I can focus my skill on the small subset of problems that actually require it and achieve increased throughput.
goekjclo 7mo ago
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thunky 7mo ago

> AI is just a dumb parrot You really need to look again. If you're still manually writing code you have your head in the sand. AI can produce better code than most devs produce. This is true for easy stuff like crud apps and even more true for harder problems that require knowledge of external domains.

moi2388 7mo ago
It can produce better code than most devs in the hands of a good dev. The bullshit code I see coming from juniors using AI..
- mapontosevenths 7mo ago
  I view it as a force multiplier, like a lever. In good hands it produces outsized gains. In the wrong hands it produces outsized losses. It just makes you MORE of whatever it was you already were.
  - thunky 7mo ago
    I partially agree. I can see the before and after difference in colleague's code. It's night and day. They're doing things now that they either flat out could not do before, or if they did it would be an giant mess (I realize they still can't really do it now, AI is doing it for them).
prmph 7mo ago
Well "most" devs is doing a lot of work here. I'm not sure about other devs, or even their number, but AI can most definitely NOT produce better code than I can. I use it after I have done the hard architectural work: defining complex types and interfaces, figuring out code organization, solving thorny issues. When these are done, it's now time to hand over to the agent to apply stuff everywhere following my patterns. And even there SOTA model like Opus make silly mistakes, you need to watch them carefully. Sometimes it loses track of the big picture. I also use them to check my code and to write bash scripts. They are useful for all these.
- thunky 7mo ago
  What you're describing is using it to do something you already can do at an expert level, and you already know exactly what you want the result to look like amd won't accept anything that deviates from what's already in your head. So like a code autocomplete. You don't really want the "intelligence" part, you want a mule. That's fine, and useful, but you're really putting a ceiling on it's potential. Try using it for something that you aren't already an expert in. That's where most devs live. Even expert coder antirez says "writing the code yourself is no longer sensible". https://antirez.com/news/158 https://antirez.com/news/158
  - mibsl 7mo ago
    AFAIU antirez is mostly writing in C, a verbose language where "create a hashtable of x->y" turns into a wall of boilerplate. In high level languages the length diffrence between a precise specification and the actual code is much smaller.
    - thunky 7mo ago
      He also mentions using it for Python which is minimal boilerplate. And he didn't limit his take to just C code. He said: state of the art LLMs are able to complete large subtasks or medium size projects alone, almost unassisted, given a good set of hints about what the end result should be.
  - 7mo ago
throwaway613746 7mo ago
[dead]
SpicyLemonZest 7mo ago
You’re equating two things that aren’t the same. I’m not still manually writing code, but it’s not at all because Claude can produce better code than me. It’s worse at CRUD apps and a lot worse at domain specific bits. But it’s more parallelizable, so if I drive it well I can focus my skill on the small subset of problems that actually require it and achieve increased throughput.

goekjclo 7mo ago

[dead]