4 ms·

That's my take as well. I've had my unPRed branches grabbed up and blindly merged by an agent twice now. The guy doing it was shocked both times that his PR h

by Verdex 5mo ago

That's my take as well. I've had my unPRed branches grabbed up and blindly merged by an agent twice now. The guy doing it was shocked both times that his PR had my change sets in it. Also one engineer is treating the code as assembly. I've asked some pointed questions about code in his PR and the response was "yeah, I don't know that's what the agent did". Edit: To everyone freaking out about the second guy. Yeah, I think being unable to answer questions about the code you're PRing is ill advised. But requirement gathering, codebase untangling, and acceptance testing are all nontrivial tasks that surround code gen. I'm a bit surprised that having random change sets slurped up into someone else's rubber stamped PR isnt the thing that people are put off by.

esafak 5mo ago
To that last guy, as the manager I would say "What is it that you do here??"
- npongratz 5mo ago
  That's just a straight-shooter with "upper management" written all over him.
- throwup238 5mo ago
  He signs the TPS reports.
- Mistletoe 5mo ago
  “I’m the prompter.”
  - esafak 5mo ago
    I take the prompts to the AI so the manager doesn't have to! I have prompting skills!! I just can't make the joke work. There really are people that think they can get paid to press the agent's on button. How long before their checks stop clearing and it "just works itself out naturally"?
    - storus 5mo ago
      That's literally how some Meta AI jobs looked a few years back - set up a few parameters, push a button, wait until training and evals are finished; repeat if. needed. $500k+/year.
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      What color is your stapler?
    - xienze 5mo ago
      > I take the prompts to the AI so the manager doesn't have to! I have prompting skills!! This is honestly the mindset of the people on here who proudly proclaim that they haven't written a line of code in six months and are excited about what programming is "evolving" into. Naturally, _their_ AI skills aren't something that an "idea guy" can use to build a product without looping in a developer, so _his_ job is safe and will never go away -- "I understand system design, an LLM will never be able to do that!" Sure thing buddy.
      - yunwal 5mo ago
        do you... honestly not believe that system design is real???
        xienze 5mo ago
        That's not what I said. I said system design is not the exclusive domain of humans, so anyone thinking they possess some special knowledge of system design that an LLM isn't capable of obtaining are fooling themselves.
      - Mistletoe 5mo ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1nn7its/do_you_write_your_prompts_or_ask_ai_to_write_them/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1nn7its/do_you_... These comments are hilarious.
  - weirdmantis69 5mo ago
    "I write the prompts"
- misterboo72 5mo ago
  I then just basically space out for a while.
sikozu 5mo ago
So he's being paid and is sitting there letting an AI tool do his work for him? Insanity.
- robotresearcher 5mo ago
  We didn’t mind when typesetting was automated. Or when compilers were invented. Why is this different?
  - mrhottakes 5mo ago
    Do typesetters or compilers write the code for you? Or are you perhaps using a disingenuous analogy?
    - robotresearcher 5mo ago
      A compiler writes the ASM code for you, and the typesetter does the layout for you, yes absolutely. The high level language code is a prompt for the compiler. Consider that there is parsable C code whose behavior is not even defined. There are still bugs in compilers today, where the code produced is not what you intended. And further, modern compilers do lots of work to optimize performance. You usually don’t even look at the resulting code, you just gratefully accept the rewrite for the extra oomph.
  - calmingsolitude 5mo ago
    Because he's paid to deliver code that works. Letting an AI agent do everything would be fine if it didn't make any mistakes, but that's far from reality.
    - robotresearcher 5mo ago
      Compilers and typesetters make mistakes. Fewer as time goes on, but that’s not a categorical difference.
  - vga1 5mo ago
    Resistance to technological change has been a thing since farming was invented. Socrates thought that writing will ruin everyone's memory, and that people who just rely on written word will appear knowledgeable while actually knowing nothing. The only difference is that this is happening to us.
steveBK123 5mo ago
My friend is a CTO at a non-tech company and he's now dealing with code from non-SWEs trying to self serve with LLMs. But it's like a kid running a lemonade stand. Total DIY weekend project quality stuff that they are demanding go live. Hardcoded credentials, no concept of dev/qa/prod environments, no logging, no tests, no source control. I'm not really sure teaching basic SWE practices / SDLC / system design to people whose day job is like.. accounting makes sense compared to just accelerating developer productivity.
- bonesss 5mo ago
  It’s the same dilemma as old: it’s easier to teach a doctor UML than a coder Doctoring. But, critically, that’s about making doctor-facing IT systems not performing their skilled jobs. Bringing code does not help, but a validated user story with flow diagrams, a UI suggestion, and a valid ticket could. That’s the bridge to gap. Were I that CTO I’d explain that code carries liability, SWEs can end up in jail for malfeasance, fines, penalties, and lawsuits are what awaits us for eff-ups. “Coders” get fired if their code doesn’t work. Same speech to the devs, do exactly as much unsolicited Accounting as you wanna get fired for. Talk fences, good neighbours.
  - steveBK123 5mo ago
    The ROI on teaching UML to a doctor is pretty low though right? Non-technical people are not writing tickets, they are just slinging slop. Another anecdote of things I've seen - a non technical person setting up some web scraping monstrosity with 200k lines of code. They beat their chest about how they didn't need the IT org. 1 month goes by and of course it breaks as soon as anything on the website changes and now they have a gun to ITs head to "fix it" and take it over. This outcome for a DIY brittle web scraper is obvious to anyone that's ever written code, but shocking to someone who thinks LLMs are magic.
- swader999 5mo ago
  No, you should have forward deployed engineers sitting and working right beside these traditional non SW roles if you need to fully integrate AI into their mix.

by Verdex 5mo ago

esafak 5mo ago

To that last guy, as the manager I would say "What is it that you do here??"

npongratz 5mo ago
That's just a straight-shooter with "upper management" written all over him.
throwup238 5mo ago
He signs the TPS reports.
Mistletoe 5mo ago
“I’m the prompter.”
- esafak 5mo ago
  I take the prompts to the AI so the manager doesn't have to! I have prompting skills!! I just can't make the joke work. There really are people that think they can get paid to press the agent's on button. How long before their checks stop clearing and it "just works itself out naturally"?
  - storus 5mo ago
    That's literally how some Meta AI jobs looked a few years back - set up a few parameters, push a button, wait until training and evals are finished; repeat if. needed. $500k+/year.
  - fragmede 5mo ago
    What color is your stapler?
  - xienze 5mo ago
    > I take the prompts to the AI so the manager doesn't have to! I have prompting skills!! This is honestly the mindset of the people on here who proudly proclaim that they haven't written a line of code in six months and are excited about what programming is "evolving" into. Naturally, _their_ AI skills aren't something that an "idea guy" can use to build a product without looping in a developer, so _his_ job is safe and will never go away -- "I understand system design, an LLM will never be able to do that!" Sure thing buddy.
    - yunwal 5mo ago
      do you... honestly not believe that system design is real???
      - xienze 5mo ago
        That's not what I said. I said system design is not the exclusive domain of humans, so anyone thinking they possess some special knowledge of system design that an LLM isn't capable of obtaining are fooling themselves.
    - Mistletoe 5mo ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1nn7its/do_you_write_your_prompts_or_ask_ai_to_write_them/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1nn7its/do_you_... These comments are hilarious.
- weirdmantis69 5mo ago
  "I write the prompts"
misterboo72 5mo ago
I then just basically space out for a while.

sikozu 5mo ago

So he's being paid and is sitting there letting an AI tool do his work for him? Insanity.

robotresearcher 5mo ago
We didn’t mind when typesetting was automated. Or when compilers were invented. Why is this different?
- mrhottakes 5mo ago
  Do typesetters or compilers write the code for you? Or are you perhaps using a disingenuous analogy?
  - robotresearcher 5mo ago
    A compiler writes the ASM code for you, and the typesetter does the layout for you, yes absolutely. The high level language code is a prompt for the compiler. Consider that there is parsable C code whose behavior is not even defined. There are still bugs in compilers today, where the code produced is not what you intended. And further, modern compilers do lots of work to optimize performance. You usually don’t even look at the resulting code, you just gratefully accept the rewrite for the extra oomph.
- calmingsolitude 5mo ago
  Because he's paid to deliver code that works. Letting an AI agent do everything would be fine if it didn't make any mistakes, but that's far from reality.
  - robotresearcher 5mo ago
    Compilers and typesetters make mistakes. Fewer as time goes on, but that’s not a categorical difference.
- vga1 5mo ago
  Resistance to technological change has been a thing since farming was invented. Socrates thought that writing will ruin everyone's memory, and that people who just rely on written word will appear knowledgeable while actually knowing nothing. The only difference is that this is happening to us.

steveBK123 5mo ago

My friend is a CTO at a non-tech company and he's now dealing with code from non-SWEs trying to self serve with LLMs. But it's like a kid running a lemonade stand. Total DIY weekend project quality stuff that they are demanding go live. Hardcoded credentials, no concept of dev/qa/prod environments, no logging, no tests, no source control. I'm not really sure teaching basic SWE practices / SDLC / system design to people whose day job is like.. accounting makes sense compared to just accelerating developer productivity.

bonesss 5mo ago
It’s the same dilemma as old: it’s easier to teach a doctor UML than a coder Doctoring. But, critically, that’s about making doctor-facing IT systems not performing their skilled jobs. Bringing code does not help, but a validated user story with flow diagrams, a UI suggestion, and a valid ticket could. That’s the bridge to gap. Were I that CTO I’d explain that code carries liability, SWEs can end up in jail for malfeasance, fines, penalties, and lawsuits are what awaits us for eff-ups. “Coders” get fired if their code doesn’t work. Same speech to the devs, do exactly as much unsolicited Accounting as you wanna get fired for. Talk fences, good neighbours.
- steveBK123 5mo ago
  The ROI on teaching UML to a doctor is pretty low though right? Non-technical people are not writing tickets, they are just slinging slop. Another anecdote of things I've seen - a non technical person setting up some web scraping monstrosity with 200k lines of code. They beat their chest about how they didn't need the IT org. 1 month goes by and of course it breaks as soon as anything on the website changes and now they have a gun to ITs head to "fix it" and take it over. This outcome for a DIY brittle web scraper is obvious to anyone that's ever written code, but shocking to someone who thinks LLMs are magic.
swader999 5mo ago
No, you should have forward deployed engineers sitting and working right beside these traditional non SW roles if you need to fully integrate AI into their mix.