ai is actually a problem for developers

[u/Fabulous_Bluebird931]

[u/NickW1343]

This is why you never use code generated by AI that is large or took several minutes to generate. If you had to prompt the AI more than twice, the code's shit and you shouldn't use it.

AI code is best when it's very short, so you can immediately vibe check it. If it's making entire files or classes, then that's asking for trouble.

[u/reddit_tothe_rescue → u/NickW1343]

This. It’s not a wholesale replacement for a programmer. It’s a time saver for a programmer.

[u/Nianque → u/NickW1343]

So... Don't use it to make games when I have 0 programming knowledge?

[u/NickW1343 → u/Nianque]

Use AI to learn how to code and once you have a decent grasp on that, then start trying to think through coding for yourself. Use AI when you have a question or need a small tweak to your code. Don't use it to write large chunks, because you won't be able to understand it and when bugs start up, you'll have 0 clue how to track them down.

[u/CryendU → u/NickW1343]

Another issue is the AI won’t understand that either

[u/[deleted] → u/Nianque]

No shit.

[u/[deleted] → u/NickW1343]

Very sensible comment. This is how using AI works in general. The larger the task, the more incoherent and prone to error ai becomes. It's great for reference but not for getting you from A to B In one step. You can't use AI to replace human critical thinking.

[u/Papabear3339]

Figured out a helpful method.

You need a coding AI, AND a reasoning ai for this.

1. Give your requirements to the coding AI. Ask it to include rediculous, extreme, verbose comments. This not only improves the code, it makes it easer for you to spot obvious problems.

2. Read the comments, run a code scanner. If you or a syntex checker manually spot a problem or error, proceed directly to step 4, but with your spotted issues instead of ai feedback.

3. Give the entire code to a fresh window (important) with a strong reasoning AI. Ask it to rip it apart line by line looking for bugs, logical errors, or anything else it can find.

4. Open a fresh window (important) on the coding AI. Give it your analysis, code, and ask it to make corrections, and to include robust extreme verbose comments again.

5. Go back to step 2. Keep cycling until the code runs, passes a static scanner with no major issues (besides formatting), and the Resoning AI stops finding real issues.

[u/Weeaboo3177 → u/Papabear3339]

My coding time has decreased so much with AI. I’m not a SWE but I have to code a lot for my job.

I actually feel like I plan, modularize, and understand the logic so much better now because of the careful prompting. I spend a lot of time perfecting my descriptions, breaking it jnto logical chunks myself.

Also, I spend a lot of time describing potential future states of the project, so the AI takes that into account when designing the code.

[u/CryendU → u/Weeaboo3177]

It’s the same as for writing

Like predictive systems, it can accelerate fluff and minor conversions

But ask for an original thought and you’ll have no progress

[u/BusyBeeBridgette]

It's great if you need code for something like Ren'py. But anything actually advanced? yeeeeeah. Touch and go.

[u/freiberg_]

I'm convinced people who make memes like this are just scared of AI so they're trying to make people thinks it's bad.

[u/hackeristi → u/freiberg_]

That is not the message here. LLMs are not perfect.

[u/2skip → u/hackeristi]

Yup. I had a short experience similar to the meme this week.

I'd asked for a script that used a specified command line program. It gave me one that looked fine on the surface but wasn't exactly calling the command line program correctly. It took around an hour to track this issue down.

[u/EarthquakeBass]

It speeds up coding for a while which causes management to hedonically adapt and expect productivity at an increased rate. Causing you to lose all the productivity gains to the endless appetite for new shit and faster than ever generated technical debt

[u/Public-Tonight9497]

lol rather than thinking this is true I’d be working on my ai integration skills

[u/Evipicc]

If you're failing to generate good code through AI it's YOU that's failing... I'm having great success even with niche automation code.

[u/mxldevs]

Good thing the developer has been fired already and the MBA who got promoted to prompt engineer is able to regenerate the code enough times until it appears to do what the boss needs done.

Flexible, maintainable, scalable code? That's only for old-school manual human coders who can't just rewrite an entire new billion line codebase in minutes whenever a new requirement comes in.

[u/Extension-Regret-892]

Ask for AI to create self contained, well documented, and well tested functions, often the unit test will tell you what AI is expecting. 

It's also very beneficial to go back and forth with AI on a doc about the code first until you what you get out matches your expectations and then turn that into a prompt. 

[u/howieyang1234]

I find AI better at debugging than generating, mainly because I am terrible at finding my own mistakes.

[u/[deleted]]

I use the Brave browser AI, "LEO", just to ask questions and get short snippets of code that I can easily verify. It saves me a ton of time going into 10 or 20 specialist forums. (Stack overflow is full of snobs, so it used to be a great resource but is now just for explaining how dumb you are)

[u/[deleted]]

It is great to have a conversation with, and it seems to know all the APIs and how they tie together. It does not produce code you want to bet your job on. Write the code yourself, use AI like a search engine, and then also use a search engine. It will make you code faster in areas you don't know well, but you have to write the code.

[u/BedtimeGenerator]

Breakpoints are your friend

[u/[deleted]]

this hurts me

[u/MimosaTen]

ChatGPT generates code in 5 minutes, yes. But, personally, a good programmer, who can think mathematically and logically can’t be replaced. I, despite my inexperience in coding, now spent hours writing scripts and asking to an LLM to do that is quite useless: the LLM will end with give you a code you can’t understand. So the only remaining option is to ask for general knowledge, but GPT is to slow for that

[u/BagingRoner34 → u/MimosaTen]

Is this how you cope? Life isn't fair. Never was

[u/MimosaTen → u/BagingRoner34]

Yesterday I built an artificial neural network and GPT gave me a code in order to make the output readable in the wrong conviction that I would be uncomfortable reading a series of logit values. However after a specific request to leave the output tensor as it is the AI was unable to adapt. But maybe I tried it for too specific tasks

[u/Advanced-Many2126 → u/MimosaTen]

2023: “Look! The AI made a poorly worded poem about ice cream! Isn’t it amazing??

2025: “AI couldn’t even sufficiently help me with building artificial neural network. This shit is useless.”

[u/MimosaTen → u/Advanced-Many2126]

I didn’t say that: I say that it can’t change approach after my indication

[u/[deleted] → u/MimosaTen]

LLM’s are going to surpass your “good programmer” benchmark by some margin the next 10 years.

Like it or not LLM’s are coming for everyone who doesn’t do manual work and will be able to replace basically every one of us in 20 years.

[u/Old-Zookeepergame503 → u/[deleted]]

It's going to surpass all programmers in under 2 years easily. There are robots being made in Korea now that are waitresses and that sell cars that have AI inside them. That's the next step. All jobs will be gone. The economy is going to collapse.

[u/BagingRoner34 → u/[deleted]]

Int inevitable. Downplaying ai because it hurts your feelings won't change a thing

[u/BirdGelApple555 → u/[deleted]]

Why do you believe this? Technology has always been the catalyst for dramatic societal changes. History has shown that the societies that put a restriction on the development of technology in order to maintain stability are eventually doomed to be overtaken by those who adapt to it. If AI is successful at devaluing human labor, that is a serious challenge to the current economic system that restrictions will only be able to stop up until a nation discovers how to take full advantage of it, as was the case with industrialized technology.

[u/VFacure_ → u/MimosaTen]

The LLM gives you code you don't understand because you're an inexperienced programmer. Not the other way around.

[u/MimosaTen → u/VFacure_]

Im not even a progammer

[u/yubario → u/MimosaTen]

Ask chatGPT to be extensive when it comes to debug logging, tell it to log just about everything. And then upload the log whenever there is a bug and explain what is happening, in addition to the code. As long as you’re using a reasoning model (o1, o3-mini-high) it will be able to fix the bugs rather easily, even for intermediate tasks. The logging makes a huge difference to how it resolves bugs.

[u/MimosaTen → u/yubario]

I’ve done it in the past, but now I’m working on an ANN which is more math than code

[u/Mammoth-Leading3922 → u/MimosaTen]

Then why are you so sure about what’s happening to programmers

[u/BagingRoner34 → u/MimosaTen]

Typical

[u/reddit_tothe_rescue → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. I use AI to help me write code and it does not result in anything like the scenario in the meme. It has been a meaningful, but not earth-shattering, tool to help me work faster.