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There seems to be a disconnect, with some people claiming they don't write code any more, only specs, and me trying to get Copilot to fix a stupid sizing bug in

There seems to be a disconnect, with some people claiming they don't write code any more, only specs, and me trying to get Copilot to fix a stupid sizing bug in our layout engine and it Not Getting It. Is this because the guys claiming success are working in popular, known, more limited areas like Javascript in web pages, and the people outside those, with more complex systems, don't get the same results ? I also note that most of the "Don't code any more" guys have AI tools of their own to promote...

nazgu1 6mo ago
In my opinion these guys just don't give a sh** on "stupid sizing bugs". Those who cares about how they software behaves and looks like realises after a while that most of AI claims are scam.
- rtmx 6mo ago
  TBH, I'd say we were there long before LLMs came to 'help'. Software world was in a dreadful state for a decade or so, maybe longer, I'd say — devs get powerful machines not like normal users, everyone is 'just doing their job', software tested in isolated environments so no one cares about installing a couple of their own 'background services in NodeJS' on a user machine — not a big deal, yeah? And so on... At the same time, I see the future being brighter with the help of these coding LLMs — I personally was not building software for years, focusing on management-like work. Serious coding during 'free time' was just too heavy to lift — you need time to sleep, eat and do some IRL things too... Now, having experience in building software and caring of what I create and why I can do this far more quickly with LLMs and it kinda opens possibilities I could only dream of before. Like get a few spare $$$ millions and hire a team to build something before = pay $20 to Cursor/Claude and spend a few days guiding it like if it was a team of junior outsource devs: it's painful sometimes, but if you really know what you're doing and why — it works. And no one stops you from tweaking pixels when the majority of work is done — you'll even have a will to, as opposed to writing it all by yourself and spending all your mental energy on routine stuff. So... if people learn to use this hammer properly — I suppose the future might be brighter than the past. And also those who actually care but didn't have time to do things they're passionate about now can do things on their own.
MichaelRazum 6mo ago
Maybe try claude. Also people are orchestrating AI for example with ralph. I think it is possible to write pretty decent, test driven, code with AI
eudamoniac 6mo ago
> Is this because the guys claiming success are working in popular, known, more limited areas like Javascript in web pages Nope because this is all I do and the AI doesn't do it right either
foldr 6mo ago
AI tools can certainly fail to fix bugs, but if you’re consistently finding them of minimal use for debugging, I’d say that you’re either working in a fairly niche domain or that you’re maybe not fully exploiting the capabilities of the tool.
gdulli 6mo ago
Don't forget how many people here (and elsewhere, but especially here) need you to think this stuff works better than it does because they're selling it or otherwise benefit from its success.
drrob 6mo ago
Indeed, there's quite the echo-chamber of agentic encouragement going on, but the overwhelming feeling is that everyone's shilling and no one's buying.
wuzzle 6mo ago
I'm one of those don't-code-anymore guys, but I'm not trying to promote it as "the way", it just happens to be the tool that works best for me. I'm not sure what the difference is between your situation and mine. Many vibers try to say you're not doing it right, but I think people forget what an incredible diversity of use-cases are out there, and how many are bound to fall outside the norm. The "blame the user" attitude is irksome IMO. I do a lot of greenfield coding. AI is easier to use in that situation - code bases are smaller and you can orient the project from the ground up. So that could be a difference. When I take over an existing project, I have a bootstrap phase to get it working well with AI. I have the AI write a lot of documentation, and at the end of every coding session I have it update the documentation based on the code diff. When using AI to code, documentation is code to the AI, so it's important to keep it up to date, but thankfully AI can take care of that. In the case of a bug that takes repeated attempts to get right like the sizing bug you describe, I stop and assess - ask the AI to describe the algorithm, point out that it's error prone and ask why, ask it to come up with ideas for simplifying the code. AI is amazing at insights, not so much at decision making, so I try to have it summarize and feed me information and direct it from there. Also, feedback loops are incredibly important - the ability for the AI to self-test its work is paramount. Without that it just stabs at hard problems randomly hoping that the fix works. Nearly every difficult AI-can't-do-this problem I've worked through has involved setting up a mechanism for it to self-test. Sometimes I do have to crack open the code to look at it, but that's increasingly rare. I can't remember the last time, TBH. I gave up using VSC and copilot long ago, FWIW. Claude code on the command line in a sandbox and let it rip. I don't think it's possible to get the same level of automation in the VSC environment. Dunno if this is helpful at all, and I'm not pushing you to use AI. I'll just say that that my experience with it is amazing and it's an incredible time saver. Keeps me focused on product level issues rather than micro-managing code issues. (And, to be clear, I have no AI tools that I try to promote. Just a contractor doing work for other people.)

nazgu1 6mo ago

In my opinion these guys just don't give a sh** on "stupid sizing bugs". Those who cares about how they software behaves and looks like realises after a while that most of AI claims are scam.

rtmx 6mo ago
TBH, I'd say we were there long before LLMs came to 'help'. Software world was in a dreadful state for a decade or so, maybe longer, I'd say — devs get powerful machines not like normal users, everyone is 'just doing their job', software tested in isolated environments so no one cares about installing a couple of their own 'background services in NodeJS' on a user machine — not a big deal, yeah? And so on... At the same time, I see the future being brighter with the help of these coding LLMs — I personally was not building software for years, focusing on management-like work. Serious coding during 'free time' was just too heavy to lift — you need time to sleep, eat and do some IRL things too... Now, having experience in building software and caring of what I create and why I can do this far more quickly with LLMs and it kinda opens possibilities I could only dream of before. Like get a few spare $$$ millions and hire a team to build something before = pay $20 to Cursor/Claude and spend a few days guiding it like if it was a team of junior outsource devs: it's painful sometimes, but if you really know what you're doing and why — it works. And no one stops you from tweaking pixels when the majority of work is done — you'll even have a will to, as opposed to writing it all by yourself and spending all your mental energy on routine stuff. So... if people learn to use this hammer properly — I suppose the future might be brighter than the past. And also those who actually care but didn't have time to do things they're passionate about now can do things on their own.

MichaelRazum 6mo ago

Maybe try claude. Also people are orchestrating AI for example with ralph. I think it is possible to write pretty decent, test driven, code with AI

eudamoniac 6mo ago

> Is this because the guys claiming success are working in popular, known, more limited areas like Javascript in web pages Nope because this is all I do and the AI doesn't do it right either

foldr 6mo ago

AI tools can certainly fail to fix bugs, but if you’re consistently finding them of minimal use for debugging, I’d say that you’re either working in a fairly niche domain or that you’re maybe not fully exploiting the capabilities of the tool.

gdulli 6mo ago

Don't forget how many people here (and elsewhere, but especially here) need you to think this stuff works better than it does because they're selling it or otherwise benefit from its success.

drrob 6mo ago

Indeed, there's quite the echo-chamber of agentic encouragement going on, but the overwhelming feeling is that everyone's shilling and no one's buying.

wuzzle 6mo ago

I'm one of those don't-code-anymore guys, but I'm not trying to promote it as "the way", it just happens to be the tool that works best for me. I'm not sure what the difference is between your situation and mine. Many vibers try to say you're not doing it right, but I think people forget what an incredible diversity of use-cases are out there, and how many are bound to fall outside the norm. The "blame the user" attitude is irksome IMO. I do a lot of greenfield coding. AI is easier to use in that situation - code bases are smaller and you can orient the project from the ground up. So that could be a difference. When I take over an existing project, I have a bootstrap phase to get it working well with AI. I have the AI write a lot of documentation, and at the end of every coding session I have it update the documentation based on the code diff. When using AI to code, documentation is code to the AI, so it's important to keep it up to date, but thankfully AI can take care of that. In the case of a bug that takes repeated attempts to get right like the sizing bug you describe, I stop and assess - ask the AI to describe the algorithm, point out that it's error prone and ask why, ask it to come up with ideas for simplifying the code. AI is amazing at insights, not so much at decision making, so I try to have it summarize and feed me information and direct it from there. Also, feedback loops are incredibly important - the ability for the AI to self-test its work is paramount. Without that it just stabs at hard problems randomly hoping that the fix works. Nearly every difficult AI-can't-do-this problem I've worked through has involved setting up a mechanism for it to self-test. Sometimes I do have to crack open the code to look at it, but that's increasingly rare. I can't remember the last time, TBH. I gave up using VSC and copilot long ago, FWIW. Claude code on the command line in a sandbox and let it rip. I don't think it's possible to get the same level of automation in the VSC environment. Dunno if this is helpful at all, and I'm not pushing you to use AI. I'll just say that that my experience with it is amazing and it's an incredible time saver. Keeps me focused on product level issues rather than micro-managing code issues. (And, to be clear, I have no AI tools that I try to promote. Just a contractor doing work for other people.)