4 ms·

> Now it's weird if an agent isn't writing 99% of your code. It is? Are you sure that this is a representative reading that applies to more than just a tiny b

by hypfer 19d ago

> Now it's weird if an agent isn't writing 99% of your code. It is? Are you sure that this is a representative reading that applies to more than just a tiny bubble?

aurareturn 19d ago
It's probably 99.99%. 99% means I write 1 line for every 100 AI lines. It's probably 1 human line for every 10,000 AI lines right now.
- kakacik 19d ago
  Thats you, don't assume everybody in the IT world works in code sweatshops like that. Your above ultra confident statements are also not correct across much of industry.
  - aurareturn 19d ago
    That's fine. It will be 99.99% for everyone soon except those who identify as an coding artisan. There are still people who ride horses.
    - slopinthebag 19d ago
      you sound like a web developer
    - huijzer 19d ago
      I always write my assembly by hand because nobody appreciates the craft anymore. It’s all hidden by those pesky compilers which generate extremely inadequate code that could easily be improved by some thinking on the programmer side /s I do think a better programmer will be a better prompter just like a better compiler engineer will be a better programmer (when performance matters at least).
    - dakolli 19d ago
      The llm induced dunning krueger from you larper types is really funny. Software isnt all shitty webapps is you vibe coders create and declare software solved. None of the code written for a pacemaker, medical imaging, weapons systems, and thousands of other perf critical domains are written by llms in any meaningful sense. Not everything runs in a browser. Three years ago you asked this lol: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36136015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36136015
      - deleted 19d ago
        [deleted]
- tyeaglet 19d ago
  Thing is, lines of code was never a good metric in software engineering (at least it shouldn’t have been). When people talk about “~% of code” I feel certain dissonance between what they’re measuring and what they’re actually doing. I mean, you certainly want to type less for working code, sure - that’s why programmers develop high level languages. Maybe now we should consider how to code with AI and how well/terrible different approaches are doing. Just saying “99% by AI” doesn’t sound like a good way of saying things are replaced by AI. I mean a lot of things will be replaced by AI, but at least not because of/according to lines of code.
- thesz 19d ago
  What is you are writing, what is the problem domain? What does need tens of thousands of lines of code written each day? Because 100 lines of (debugged, reviewed) code per day is a good speed for seasoned software engineer. I assume that you can produce more than 100 lines of something per day as a prompt. So, what is the problem domain that requires one to write several thousands of lines of code per day?
  - senordevnyc 18d ago
    Did they edit their comment? I don't see anything about "per day".
    - thesz 18d ago
      My comment was to match productivity of human programmer to claimed productivity of their use of LLM. If they write 2 (two) lines of code, the combined output of them with LLM, as I read it now, is 20K SLOC. This is yearly output of human programmer. It is very much possible to write 100 lines of (debugged, reviewed) code per day for human. And these 100 lines of code would result, if we apply their LLM multiplication factor, in 50 (fifty) man-years of work! Even if they write very little code, say, one line per month, after a year of work they will get result of about 6 (six) years of human programmer. SQLite is 155K SLOC, about 8 man-years. And that what raised my question: what is the problem domain that requires so much code?
sothatsit 19d ago
Everyone I have talked to who uses coding agents at all now uses them to write almost all their code. The two people I know who don’t use coding agents work in government, and in a data science company working with government. I’d say if you work at a tech company and agents aren’t writing the majority of your code, that is weird. But if you work at a traditional company that doesn’t have Claude or Codex subscriptions, there it might be pretty normal to still be writing code by hand.
- hypfer 19d ago
  My (arguably not very directly communicated, true) actual point is that "weird" is a term that is not really suited for tool choices like this. "Weird" is a social concept. It's an artifact that has its roots in social cohesion and friction induced by individual nodes to glue the group together. Software development otoh is an engineering discipline (or.. it should be). And Engineering does not use the local social consensus algorithm for determining correctness. (or.. it should not)
  - aurareturn 19d ago
    Software can be an engineering discipline doesn't change whether it's a human doing it or AI doing it. Arguably engineering is something AI should be really good at since you're just trying to compute a working product given constraints, formulas, resources.
    - hypfer 19d ago
      What are you replying to? Evidently not the content of my comment. Where in the comment tree is this supposed to sit?
      - aurareturn 19d ago
        This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708981
  - 19d ago
_zoltan_ 19d ago
Yes, it is a waste of time right now not to use AI to write code. It's the same category of "artisan code" like "artisan cheese": you can do it if you have a ton of free time as a hobby but other than a hobby? Not worth it.
- unclebucknasty 19d ago
  I still have to remind Ai not to use the n+1 pattern in queries, and fight it to stop using inconsistent inline styles vs classes, even within a single page. How are people getting this "waste of time not to use AI" and "generates 99% of my code" level of code quality? I know people's response will likely be something, something, "add instructions to memory to not use n+1", etc. But if the Ai wants to generate code this bad, then it represents an overall quality risk that would require an infinite memory file.
  - rcxdude 19d ago
    Probably the largest part is that this kind of code quality is not that important to a lot of devs and applications. Personally I would not describe the majority of code I work on as particularly hard, the challenge was always in getting what I needed done efficiently as opposed to getting it done at all, and LLMs are extremely helpful for that. Though I think I'm more at 90% LLM-generated code, I still do spend a fair bit of time tidying up layout (and any user-visible prose).
  - WASDx 19d ago
    It works if you neglect code quality and understanding. I've done a few vibe coded projects on my free time but I would feel shame for submitting that kind of code at work where I use LLMs more responsibly.
  - kaoD 19d ago
    > How are people getting this "waste of time not to use AI" and "generates 99% of my code" level of code quality? They don't know what n+1 problem is and they don't know about long-term maintainability.
discreteevent 19d ago
People are using AI to write code. But HN is the wrong place to try to figure out how much they are using it. This site is full of bots and shills and has become a wasteland since AI. You can tell by the way they make short super confident (even ridiculous) statements in order to try to bully the insecure into buying into the hype. It matches exactly the patterns you used to see with crypto. Even the more subtle comments are often lacking in any kind of specifics. Of course there are some genuine AI users also but the point is that the overall volume of comments is completely unrepresentative of reality. The tradgedy is that HN used to be a great place to get honest and well argued opinion and anecdotes about new technologies and the different tradeoffs etc.
- BlobberSnobber 19d ago
  I think the combination of YC being “a place for founders” and the proliferation of useless AI startups, each with its own little weird AI-booster founder, probably has added to this phenomenon as well. I recently saw a video where one of these founders showed their “programming” setup, and it was a cashier’s microphone wherein he whispers sweet nothings to the LLM, because of course he doesn’t write code anymore (who even reads code nowadays, am I right?!). I think this is the type of individual who’s lost in the bubble sauce that ends up writing the most absurd comments around here.
- mancerayder 18d ago
  How do you know these are bots and not Redditors? There's an HN sub on Reddit, and one of the hallmarks of Reddit are the 'mic drop' big pivotal one liner comments that get upvoted or cause lots of replies or engagement. But I do feel, to reply to you, that crypto was a lot more critically received on HN than AI is right now. We're too busy debating humanity's end rather than if this crap actually works. For those of us who actually work with technology (not product managers, executives or salespeople, this stuff doesn't work well at scale. It might in a research department at Google or a hedge fund, less so in the messy corporate world.
  - Chris2048 18d ago
    > one of the hallmarks of Reddit are.. and LLMs are, in turn, trained on reddit content..

by hypfer 19d ago

> Now it's weird if an agent isn't writing 99% of your code. It is? Are you sure that this is a representative reading that applies to more than just a tiny bubble?

aurareturn 19d ago

It's probably 99.99%. 99% means I write 1 line for every 100 AI lines. It's probably 1 human line for every 10,000 AI lines right now.

kakacik 19d ago
Thats you, don't assume everybody in the IT world works in code sweatshops like that. Your above ultra confident statements are also not correct across much of industry.
- aurareturn 19d ago
  That's fine. It will be 99.99% for everyone soon except those who identify as an coding artisan. There are still people who ride horses.
  - slopinthebag 19d ago
    you sound like a web developer
  - huijzer 19d ago
    I always write my assembly by hand because nobody appreciates the craft anymore. It’s all hidden by those pesky compilers which generate extremely inadequate code that could easily be improved by some thinking on the programmer side /s I do think a better programmer will be a better prompter just like a better compiler engineer will be a better programmer (when performance matters at least).
  - dakolli 19d ago
    The llm induced dunning krueger from you larper types is really funny. Software isnt all shitty webapps is you vibe coders create and declare software solved. None of the code written for a pacemaker, medical imaging, weapons systems, and thousands of other perf critical domains are written by llms in any meaningful sense. Not everything runs in a browser. Three years ago you asked this lol: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36136015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36136015
    - deleted 19d ago
      [deleted]
tyeaglet 19d ago
Thing is, lines of code was never a good metric in software engineering (at least it shouldn’t have been). When people talk about “~% of code” I feel certain dissonance between what they’re measuring and what they’re actually doing. I mean, you certainly want to type less for working code, sure - that’s why programmers develop high level languages. Maybe now we should consider how to code with AI and how well/terrible different approaches are doing. Just saying “99% by AI” doesn’t sound like a good way of saying things are replaced by AI. I mean a lot of things will be replaced by AI, but at least not because of/according to lines of code.
thesz 19d ago
What is you are writing, what is the problem domain? What does need tens of thousands of lines of code written each day? Because 100 lines of (debugged, reviewed) code per day is a good speed for seasoned software engineer. I assume that you can produce more than 100 lines of something per day as a prompt. So, what is the problem domain that requires one to write several thousands of lines of code per day?
- senordevnyc 18d ago
  Did they edit their comment? I don't see anything about "per day".
  - thesz 18d ago
    My comment was to match productivity of human programmer to claimed productivity of their use of LLM. If they write 2 (two) lines of code, the combined output of them with LLM, as I read it now, is 20K SLOC. This is yearly output of human programmer. It is very much possible to write 100 lines of (debugged, reviewed) code per day for human. And these 100 lines of code would result, if we apply their LLM multiplication factor, in 50 (fifty) man-years of work! Even if they write very little code, say, one line per month, after a year of work they will get result of about 6 (six) years of human programmer. SQLite is 155K SLOC, about 8 man-years. And that what raised my question: what is the problem domain that requires so much code?

sothatsit 19d ago

Everyone I have talked to who uses coding agents at all now uses them to write almost all their code. The two people I know who don’t use coding agents work in government, and in a data science company working with government. I’d say if you work at a tech company and agents aren’t writing the majority of your code, that is weird. But if you work at a traditional company that doesn’t have Claude or Codex subscriptions, there it might be pretty normal to still be writing code by hand.

hypfer 19d ago
My (arguably not very directly communicated, true) actual point is that "weird" is a term that is not really suited for tool choices like this. "Weird" is a social concept. It's an artifact that has its roots in social cohesion and friction induced by individual nodes to glue the group together. Software development otoh is an engineering discipline (or.. it should be). And Engineering does not use the local social consensus algorithm for determining correctness. (or.. it should not)
- aurareturn 19d ago
  Software can be an engineering discipline doesn't change whether it's a human doing it or AI doing it. Arguably engineering is something AI should be really good at since you're just trying to compute a working product given constraints, formulas, resources.
  - hypfer 19d ago
    What are you replying to? Evidently not the content of my comment. Where in the comment tree is this supposed to sit?
    - aurareturn 19d ago
      This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49708981
- 19d ago

_zoltan_ 19d ago

Yes, it is a waste of time right now not to use AI to write code. It's the same category of "artisan code" like "artisan cheese": you can do it if you have a ton of free time as a hobby but other than a hobby? Not worth it.

unclebucknasty 19d ago
I still have to remind Ai not to use the n+1 pattern in queries, and fight it to stop using inconsistent inline styles vs classes, even within a single page. How are people getting this "waste of time not to use AI" and "generates 99% of my code" level of code quality? I know people's response will likely be something, something, "add instructions to memory to not use n+1", etc. But if the Ai wants to generate code this bad, then it represents an overall quality risk that would require an infinite memory file.
- rcxdude 19d ago
  Probably the largest part is that this kind of code quality is not that important to a lot of devs and applications. Personally I would not describe the majority of code I work on as particularly hard, the challenge was always in getting what I needed done efficiently as opposed to getting it done at all, and LLMs are extremely helpful for that. Though I think I'm more at 90% LLM-generated code, I still do spend a fair bit of time tidying up layout (and any user-visible prose).
- WASDx 19d ago
  It works if you neglect code quality and understanding. I've done a few vibe coded projects on my free time but I would feel shame for submitting that kind of code at work where I use LLMs more responsibly.
- kaoD 19d ago
  > How are people getting this "waste of time not to use AI" and "generates 99% of my code" level of code quality? They don't know what n+1 problem is and they don't know about long-term maintainability.

discreteevent 19d ago

People are using AI to write code. But HN is the wrong place to try to figure out how much they are using it. This site is full of bots and shills and has become a wasteland since AI. You can tell by the way they make short super confident (even ridiculous) statements in order to try to bully the insecure into buying into the hype. It matches exactly the patterns you used to see with crypto. Even the more subtle comments are often lacking in any kind of specifics. Of course there are some genuine AI users also but the point is that the overall volume of comments is completely unrepresentative of reality. The tradgedy is that HN used to be a great place to get honest and well argued opinion and anecdotes about new technologies and the different tradeoffs etc.

BlobberSnobber 19d ago
I think the combination of YC being “a place for founders” and the proliferation of useless AI startups, each with its own little weird AI-booster founder, probably has added to this phenomenon as well. I recently saw a video where one of these founders showed their “programming” setup, and it was a cashier’s microphone wherein he whispers sweet nothings to the LLM, because of course he doesn’t write code anymore (who even reads code nowadays, am I right?!). I think this is the type of individual who’s lost in the bubble sauce that ends up writing the most absurd comments around here.
mancerayder 18d ago
How do you know these are bots and not Redditors? There's an HN sub on Reddit, and one of the hallmarks of Reddit are the 'mic drop' big pivotal one liner comments that get upvoted or cause lots of replies or engagement. But I do feel, to reply to you, that crypto was a lot more critically received on HN than AI is right now. We're too busy debating humanity's end rather than if this crap actually works. For those of us who actually work with technology (not product managers, executives or salespeople, this stuff doesn't work well at scale. It might in a research department at Google or a hedge fund, less so in the messy corporate world.
- Chris2048 18d ago
  > one of the hallmarks of Reddit are.. and LLMs are, in turn, trained on reddit content..