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serious question: do you program in machine code or assembler or use a higher level language? do you use design patterns and functional approaches? metaprogra

serious question: do you program in machine code or assembler or use a higher level language? do you use design patterns and functional approaches? metaprogramming, code generation, templating, app frameworks? Each tool, abstraction, language feature elevates coding to get more done with less (more concisely). Programming is a social activity, since source code is meant to be read by humans (at least historically) even if it is just yourself later. I'm not trying to talk you into using AI coding agents, but explain why I find them fun, and I've written a lot of code by hand over decades, from spaghetti assembler code to structureed programming to object oriented to functional, etc. Each advance in the industry has been a new and diiferent kind of fun for me.

cake-rusk 17d ago
> serious question: do you program in machine code or assembler Sometimes yes. > or use a higher level language? do you use design patterns and functional approaches? metaprogramming, code generation, templating, app frameworks? Most of the time. > Each tool, abstraction, language feature elevates coding to get more done with less (more concisely) Sure. I hope you understand AI is fundamentally different. It's nothing like the things you listed above.
- softwarewright 17d ago
  Are you saying that AI coding agents cannot produce working code? Or are you saying that it produces something that cannot be explained or understood? If I used a macro to generate code that gets compiled and linked to code someone else provided, how is that different from asking a coding agent to generate similar code and linking to other coding agent code? Is your concern that the output is probabilistic vs. a macro or code generator producing code deterministically? I apply engineering practices to ensure the results are suitable. I do understand that AI is fundamentally different (and I've been studying ML in depth for more than a year). My comparison was in terms of tools increasing productivity, not how they do that. I was a "10x programmer" on several projects and I am 10x more productive now than I was then (at least). I can create in a few days by myself (with agents) what used to take months (with a team of people). Maybe I'm producing what some consider "AI slop" but the things I've built this year work to my satisfaction, are fun to make, and I am constantly learning new things. And I am doing this for fun but also to learn by teaching, so I build educational, visual things to share with others.

cake-rusk 17d ago

> serious question: do you program in machine code or assembler Sometimes yes. > or use a higher level language? do you use design patterns and functional approaches? metaprogramming, code generation, templating, app frameworks? Most of the time. > Each tool, abstraction, language feature elevates coding to get more done with less (more concisely) Sure. I hope you understand AI is fundamentally different. It's nothing like the things you listed above.

softwarewright 17d ago
Are you saying that AI coding agents cannot produce working code? Or are you saying that it produces something that cannot be explained or understood? If I used a macro to generate code that gets compiled and linked to code someone else provided, how is that different from asking a coding agent to generate similar code and linking to other coding agent code? Is your concern that the output is probabilistic vs. a macro or code generator producing code deterministically? I apply engineering practices to ensure the results are suitable. I do understand that AI is fundamentally different (and I've been studying ML in depth for more than a year). My comparison was in terms of tools increasing productivity, not how they do that. I was a "10x programmer" on several projects and I am 10x more productive now than I was then (at least). I can create in a few days by myself (with agents) what used to take months (with a team of people). Maybe I'm producing what some consider "AI slop" but the things I've built this year work to my satisfaction, are fun to make, and I am constantly learning new things. And I am doing this for fun but also to learn by teaching, so I build educational, visual things to share with others.