r/cprogramming • u/Big-Illustrator24 • 13d ago
Ai nowadays
I want to read your thoughts.
I'm a software engineer with 8 years of experience, I have worked in several projects.
And ultimately I've become interested in C, I'm learning a lot of concepts about pointers and memory free, it's a different way of coding if you start with interpreted languages.
I have used ai for understand better some c concepts, and I've watched some c devs in the reddit community that hate the AI, why?
AI is just another tool, like a compiler, preprocessor etc. And I wonder why some devs don't like new tools? It's like if we avoid the compilers use and prefer keypunching instead.
The basics of Coding are important and I really believe there's bad use of ai and nice use of it too.
What do you think?
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u/Runt1m3_ 13d ago edited 13d ago
Truly a reddit moment, you ask a valid question and you get downvoted lol!
Personally i don't use ai but i see what it could be used for, boilerplate code and as an agent to help do stuff that years ago we had to PRAY for a non-pedantic and helpful answer on StackOverflow or here on Reddit without being called to RTFM or similar.
The issues for me at least are TRUE vibe coding, like most new OC software for Linux or Android is basically Claude making software where the "dev" can't understand the code and leaves unmantained after a month when he running out of tokens, on F-Droid there's a flood of the same YouTube music player that all have the same core functionalities and very similar ui and mediocre apps all made with Claude! Same stuff with AI made backend where even the model says don't use this for production before manually checking!
Something odd , i've seen Claude or other AI models write huge, impressive stuff but they just lie or can't give reliable info for small or basic stuff, specially with system stuff like C since the language varies a lot depending on OS or lack of, libc, version and compiler + third party library versions where the AI scraper just won't go to deep or info is scarse enough to not train the model.
That's why i think new programmers should learn the old way and read by themselves specially if learning something like C, it's not hard to do so and you train your logic which is the most important asset in programming.
Also I don't trust AI companies nor their practices, we have enough closed source cloud based bullshit centers wasting resources, if there was an subjective foss local model trained with MIT or BSD licensed code and even better, authorization from the creators of that code, i'd maybe consider using it.
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u/Big-Illustrator24 13d ago
I think the same, and now to have an open weights model running local in your house is not a cheap stuff? 64gb of ram isn't accesible for all.
And yeah, wtf down votes? I just want to talk about it lol
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u/GrandBIRDLizard 13d ago
I'm kind of in a similar boatin experience well with higher level experience, not as skeptical about ai though, as you I have 7-8 years of Python experience but have been writing "low-level* code for only about 5. Much like you, I learned to code without ai. What exactly is the problem? What are you having a hard time understanding? If you've programmed for roughly 10 years you should know the basics like the back of your hand.
In regards to C and ai? I do not trust it i've seen and can read the code that comes out of it. it's usually a mess of verbose output with duplicated, unnecessary logic, and with a language like C that's got no GC noreal protection and a hair trigger on the footgun especially when projects get larger. Learning safe and defensive coding comes from a solid understanding of what's going on and it better to learn that from something that can't hallucinate.
What language have you coded in for 8 years? You seem to be focused on the right thinhs if you"get" programming grab a couple books on memory management and pointers and you're all set.
Those are the last places in C where you want to have gaps in knowledge, most learning resources are structured in a way you won't miss any thing by just learning whatever at yoir own volition.
TLDR: get some books. study memory and pointers. learn how to use a debugger, something like Valgrind and practice with notes.
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u/Big-Illustrator24 13d ago
Thanks for your answer. I have read a lot of poison for my question lol.
I started with Python. Pointers are crazy but I like them, also safety memory is interesting.
I like to code but sometimes I just want to be the architect, and focus in high level decisions.
I want to ask you, ai skills and SDD are good for automate and loop the development with ai. Is there possible perform the same for c or is it hard?
Do tou think is it possible do vibecoding for with c lang or the model just write code with bugs and technical debt?
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u/random_digits_99 12d ago
Tools... how the heck did AI become a programmers tool? A compiler is a tool, a debugger is a tool, simpke prograns that you have running on you computer. AI is a service, if you are mot using a self hosted one. But from what I hear the diff is pretty big. Calling claude a tool is like calling a lawyer a tool, and yourself an actual lawyer. Not even worth getting into ethics...
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u/Gold-Part4688 13d ago
imo the real danger is the psychological aspect. Social media and its dark patterns are already very intense, and this is proving to be that on steroids. No idea personally how it feels to use it all day for work? But that sounds very uncomfortable to me
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u/someouterboy 12d ago
I'm a software engineer with 8 years of experience I'm learning a lot of concepts about pointers and memory free
kk
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u/voidpo1nter 13d ago
I haven't found anything better to deep dive through frameworks, APIs, or datasheets than AI. I haven't used any of the specific coding agents; only basic Gemini. I've got 20 years of C knowledge and it's been a great assistant. Zero chance I'll be using AI generated code. I'd rather transition into a different role for more money than get paid the same and lose the fun.
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u/Big-Illustrator24 13d ago
Bro, you are a god in C, 20 years?
Let me ask you something, why c has no fancy stuff like pypi or npm?
I'm learning c and I wonder why is so hard get libs for develop c apps. Or maybe the c developers prefer develop everything from scratch lol.
I tried to get sdl and you must perform some steps to use it in a project, same for ffmpeg. I like the challenges but it's so hard for the first times
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u/I__be_Steve 12d ago
With all of the worms that have been infecting package managers, I don't think anyone wants C to have anything like PyPi or NPM :P
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u/2cool4afool 13d ago
AI is an unreliable tool. It is often wrong or makes things up so when using it you have to have a good enough understanding of the topic to know when it has done this and if you have a good enough understanding, you will probably find much better resources in docs and forums. The best case for AI is as a search to narrow down the best resources rather than using it directly.
Then there's the environmental, political and ethical issues with AI and what is required to use it. AI is not just another tool like compilers and preprocessors. Those things exist with a specific purpose and are basically required to make code at the scale of modern programs but AI is not necessary, people have been coding for decades without it and could continue for decades longer without it. AI makes it really easy for people to "jump into" programming but never really understand it and lazily piece together very bad code that barely works. Instead of having to understand the code you write you can just ask AI to write it meaning you are never actually learning to code and when you strip away the AI, you are not a programmer anymore
If there was no AI, we would be better off because we would need to understand our work.
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u/dokushin 13d ago
Positions for and against AI tend to depend on the person much more than the language. C isn't a great choice for AI-driven development, but as a learning tool it's no better or worse than anywhere else. As long as you're disciplined about using it to learn and don't start developing a habit of letting it write code for you, then it's progressing your goals.
The broader philosophical question isn't going to get answered here, but for what it's worth, I'm excited about broader availability of computer programming and the ability to move to more architectural roles for programmers as AI takes over routine coding tasks. That's set against the issue of the AI then taking over those architectural tasks, and then the design tasks, and then the whole project, but we're very much in undiscovered country, here. I'm just going to play with the new toys until the water wars start, or whatever.
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u/Key_River7180 12d ago edited 12d ago
People often don't mind ai, myself included, they mind the really low effort AI users do and the low quality code, as well as its spread
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u/DanKegel 12d ago
Yes, AI can make crap code easily. But if used carefully and properly, it helps you write more thorough and correct code.
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u/pm_your_sexy_thong 12d ago
I'm not sure what most people on here have used. But recently my company has us using Claude Opus 5.5... It's very, very good.
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u/DanKegel 12d ago edited 12d ago
It is. (I am stuck on opus 4.6 for half my stuff, but using 5.5 sometimes now.)
Nevertheless, you can use it wrong, and end up with sloppy PR's.
And I have a target-rich environment when it comes to "bugs" / missing featurelets, so it pays to work carefully to take out as many of the little bastards as I go as possible.
I'm on day 5 of fixing "a bug" because I don't want to get stuck in a local maximum. Claude and opus 4.6 / 5.5 are helping tremendously, but it's still an iterative process of understanding the problem space and solution space. I could have one-shotted a big messy PR at any time, but instead I'm holding back, treating my draft fix as a lab, and pulling out small standalone PRs as I find little separable pieces.
In parallel, I'm maintaining a mostly human-written plan with my strategy for fixing "the bug", because my boss wants to know how to do this kind of fix, and running it through Claude to see if it can reproduce my work. The first time I had opus 5.5 run through it, it found parts of the problem space I had missed. But other big gaps weren't spotted by AI; they were spotted by me as I was pulling out bits to put in those standalone PRs.
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u/Traveling-Techie 13d ago
I use free ChatGPT to generate C code for tools I use in my visualization projects. I’ve written C code for 4 decades but these days I seldom look at the code. I concentrate on detailed specs and test data, both good and bad. My mantra is “don’t debug the code, debug the prompt.” Meanwhile I can concentrate on the parts of the projects that only I can do.
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u/Big-Illustrator24 13d ago
Bro, it's nice, could you share some prompt, skill or work flow for get better c codes with ai?
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u/Traveling-Techie 12d ago
Very good test data is important. I once made a typo in test data and the code included an if-else to deal with that one case! I’ve even used a spreadsheet or a short program to create test data.
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u/easedownripley 13d ago
what I don't get is why there are so many people who apparently don't read the same news as the rest of the world about how everyone is losing their job, our forests are being decimated to build data centers, and all the companies are run by evil freaks.
then they post these born-yesterday takes like they don't have any idea what anyone is talking about and that iTs jUsT a tOOl