5 ms·

I disagree this is the source of the polarization. Maybe it's part of it. I have been coding since about 1983 or so. I shipped high quality products that have

by YZF 5mo ago

I disagree this is the source of the polarization. Maybe it's part of it. I have been coding since about 1983 or so. I shipped high quality products that have been used by millions of people. From embedded software to desktop applications to distributed systems. I don't think I'm in the "don't understand what code should look like camp" (I mean you never know but the evidence seems to show that I do know what I'm doing). I use AI as a tool and it helps me be more productive. I don't "one shot things that would take me days to do". I use it to help me automate things that I could do manually where it is faster and more effective. I review every step and if I don't like something I adjust. There are some specific situations where it basically does as good a job as I would do in running some experiments, doing some analysis or writing some small amount of code. I still know what the changes need to look like broadly, where to make them, and what patterns to follow. It just automates the work and sometimes does have some additional insight that can complement my views. Unlike me it is all knowing about everything in terms of access to "knowledge". It knows all the details of how a certain runtime manages memory, Linux internals and various open source software. I could go look it up myself (which I'd do before AI) but I don't hold it all in my head like AI basically does. It is also "all knowing" in the code base I work in (more so than me, it's a huge code base, I have an outline and a high level picture in my head but not every single code line) where again I can dive into the code but it helps me extract the relevant information faster. I think the polarization is more on the how you use the tool, what situations you use the tool for, which domain are you operating in (languages, applications etc.). You can also one-shot simple tools and helpers that are not the production software which is another way to accelerate your workflow.

ruszki 5mo ago
I’ve seen people coding for 4 decades, thinking the same as you about themselves, and were bad coders. Unfortunately, nobody can tell you whether you’re good or bad without seeing your code. Your claims means nothing on the internet.
- lukan 5mo ago
  What about the buisness side of things that does not care for shiny code, but shipping things to make money? That simple arcade game (without in game transactions) needs to be fun, that website that needs to attract visitors (but not sell them anything or handle sensitive data)? They don't care about abstract code quality, they care if it works and useful. So a good coder here means he or she could get to working results according to what the client wants fast. And those things likely make up the vast majority of written code. So no wonder AI gets adopted as it is a powerful tool here to be even faster. Not all code runs in airplanes, handles financial transaction or sensitive user data - for this you need the best code possible and nothing vibe coded or quick and dirty hacks. And oh wonder, it is possible to combine both. Because yes, websites often include financial transactions nowdays, but that part can and should be handled with care. People who move slow and check things. And then those who are quick to build things on top of it. But I strongly object to dividing programmers absolutely in good and bad programmers, when the field is so big and the requirements not the same. Some optimize in speed, some in quality. And yes, some are just bad in both. And some can do both - but they are very rare, in my experience.
  - ruszki 5mo ago
    > And some can do both - but they are very rare, in my experience. As far as I know basically all of the successful software companies had these quite early. Of course, you need other kinds of people too. And not everybody needs to be like that. But you absolutely need those kind of people. But if you give me a few examples where this was not the case, and not recently, or during the dot com boom, where hype overwrote everything, then I’ll change my mind.
- ted_bunny 5mo ago
  That's why they mentioned that their software was successful, it wasn't intended as idle bragging.
  - ruszki 5mo ago
    That can still easily mean that they didn’t give any value or minuscule amount of value to the project which caused their success. The most successful projects which I’ve seen closely, all of them had only a few people who mattered, everybody else could be replaced at any given time basically, without a real impact. All of the failing ones were those in which those people didn’t exist, or were too few of them. This is exponentially more important in early phases of projects.
    - YZF 5mo ago
      fwiw I wrote key features/pieces of pretty much everything I worked on. I was more or less the technical lead (and later engineering manager) on all the software I shipped. It seems people really want to not believe AI can be useful for strong developers. That's fine. I don't really have a bone in this game, I'm anonymous here, and people can think whatever they choose to ;)
      - ruszki 5mo ago
        Anonymity is a two way thing. Maybe, I don't need to use "more or less". Maybe, I'm an ultra heavy user of AI. It's even possible that I'm magnitudes better developer in every single aspects. Maybe not. I'm just waiting for somebody who send me code, which was generated by AI, not overwritten almost completely, and it's not shit. The funny thing is that some people here were so convinced that AI is great, that they recorded how they work with AI. And two things: - They were slower than manual copy pasting - They still somehow introduced bugs, and very suboptimal solutions... Also, it would be good, that anybody could show me anything, that shows, how people became not terrible with code review suddenly. Because before AI, it was a common knowledge, that almost everybody was bad with it, and people rarely did it properly, because it was considered annoying, and not because they were useless. There were jokes about rewriting things, exactly because of the same reasons, and they heavily based on reality. And suddenly, we pretend that this changed. And somehow you should really would need to convince me that the 100s of thousands of lines of code which I generated with AI in the past years, somehow, it's better than what it is. But I'm sure, that it's easier to assume that I didn't try something, than showing only once what "good" means in this case. Unfortunately, there is nothing similar here, than for example "Groovy is a great programming language", which is a dead giveaway that whoever said that is not just bad developer, but somebody who I would fire immediately from every single project to which I'm related to. Especially if they are tech lead. But there are such people, and some of them would claim the same thing as you. // Obviously interns and juniors can think whatever they want. They are labeled as such, because they cannot know yet.
- YZF 5mo ago
  I'm just trying to provide useful context. I can claim anything and you don't know me either way. Last I checked other than your peers (which you can imagine I've had) there is no subjective "stamp" for good vs. bad. Many people who have shipped nothing and have no experience think they're great coders as well.

by YZF 5mo ago

ruszki 5mo ago

I’ve seen people coding for 4 decades, thinking the same as you about themselves, and were bad coders. Unfortunately, nobody can tell you whether you’re good or bad without seeing your code. Your claims means nothing on the internet.

lukan 5mo ago
What about the buisness side of things that does not care for shiny code, but shipping things to make money? That simple arcade game (without in game transactions) needs to be fun, that website that needs to attract visitors (but not sell them anything or handle sensitive data)? They don't care about abstract code quality, they care if it works and useful. So a good coder here means he or she could get to working results according to what the client wants fast. And those things likely make up the vast majority of written code. So no wonder AI gets adopted as it is a powerful tool here to be even faster. Not all code runs in airplanes, handles financial transaction or sensitive user data - for this you need the best code possible and nothing vibe coded or quick and dirty hacks. And oh wonder, it is possible to combine both. Because yes, websites often include financial transactions nowdays, but that part can and should be handled with care. People who move slow and check things. And then those who are quick to build things on top of it. But I strongly object to dividing programmers absolutely in good and bad programmers, when the field is so big and the requirements not the same. Some optimize in speed, some in quality. And yes, some are just bad in both. And some can do both - but they are very rare, in my experience.
- ruszki 5mo ago
  > And some can do both - but they are very rare, in my experience. As far as I know basically all of the successful software companies had these quite early. Of course, you need other kinds of people too. And not everybody needs to be like that. But you absolutely need those kind of people. But if you give me a few examples where this was not the case, and not recently, or during the dot com boom, where hype overwrote everything, then I’ll change my mind.
ted_bunny 5mo ago
That's why they mentioned that their software was successful, it wasn't intended as idle bragging.
- ruszki 5mo ago
  That can still easily mean that they didn’t give any value or minuscule amount of value to the project which caused their success. The most successful projects which I’ve seen closely, all of them had only a few people who mattered, everybody else could be replaced at any given time basically, without a real impact. All of the failing ones were those in which those people didn’t exist, or were too few of them. This is exponentially more important in early phases of projects.
  - YZF 5mo ago
    fwiw I wrote key features/pieces of pretty much everything I worked on. I was more or less the technical lead (and later engineering manager) on all the software I shipped. It seems people really want to not believe AI can be useful for strong developers. That's fine. I don't really have a bone in this game, I'm anonymous here, and people can think whatever they choose to ;)
    - ruszki 5mo ago
      Anonymity is a two way thing. Maybe, I don't need to use "more or less". Maybe, I'm an ultra heavy user of AI. It's even possible that I'm magnitudes better developer in every single aspects. Maybe not. I'm just waiting for somebody who send me code, which was generated by AI, not overwritten almost completely, and it's not shit. The funny thing is that some people here were so convinced that AI is great, that they recorded how they work with AI. And two things: - They were slower than manual copy pasting - They still somehow introduced bugs, and very suboptimal solutions... Also, it would be good, that anybody could show me anything, that shows, how people became not terrible with code review suddenly. Because before AI, it was a common knowledge, that almost everybody was bad with it, and people rarely did it properly, because it was considered annoying, and not because they were useless. There were jokes about rewriting things, exactly because of the same reasons, and they heavily based on reality. And suddenly, we pretend that this changed. And somehow you should really would need to convince me that the 100s of thousands of lines of code which I generated with AI in the past years, somehow, it's better than what it is. But I'm sure, that it's easier to assume that I didn't try something, than showing only once what "good" means in this case. Unfortunately, there is nothing similar here, than for example "Groovy is a great programming language", which is a dead giveaway that whoever said that is not just bad developer, but somebody who I would fire immediately from every single project to which I'm related to. Especially if they are tech lead. But there are such people, and some of them would claim the same thing as you. // Obviously interns and juniors can think whatever they want. They are labeled as such, because they cannot know yet.
YZF 5mo ago
I'm just trying to provide useful context. I can claim anything and you don't know me either way. Last I checked other than your peers (which you can imagine I've had) there is no subjective "stamp" for good vs. bad. Many people who have shipped nothing and have no experience think they're great coders as well.