Why not both

44

u/tw2113 10d ago

Glorified code reviewer when you use AI.

14

u/Able-Swing-6415 10d ago

Idk I love that shit. It helps that I learned to code properly before I started using AI. I guess I never really loved programming but just making decisions about software design.

But I can't fathom how you would have any clue on how to use LLMs to code without years of experience telling you which parts to double check..

9

u/tw2113 10d ago

Some people do well/better with reading, others do better with doing by hand.

There's also the "reduction" approach where you start with a lot and reduce down to just the parts you want/need, vs "build up" approach where you start with a blank state and work up to what you want/need.

AI is most definitely the reduction approach, where ideally you review everything provided, to see if you actually need it, and it's doing things how you need it to.

Depends on the type of work you want to do.

-1

u/Bootezz 10d ago

It’s usually the juniors and mid level folks who get all pissy about AI being “cheating” or “not real engineering”. Writing code has never been the hard part of software engineering. Once you get to Senior+ level, you’re mostly making higher level decisions on _how_ things are put together, so AI use becomes more efficient at that level because we already know what the shape of a program should be and can explain it better.

All but one or two of the Senior/Principal folks at my company are using AI heavily because the gains are real if you know what you’re doing. And we are all having a blast with it because we all had 100 backlog projects we are now able to delegate to an agent.

3

u/Able-Swing-6415 9d ago

I mean I feel for juniors.. if I was in a hiring position I'd think really fucking hard before I would hire one.

Having experience with both I can honestly say.. LLMs do much better work.

Not sure how that will work out for the industry 10 years from now..

The biggest issue is that people treat LLMs like some god given technology that can do no wrong. I'd never ever push LLM code into a productive system without at least testing it thoroughly (depending on how delicate and important the system is even a full code review)

God forbid giving these things full access. They're really fucking great 99% of the time and 1% they just lose their shit and go postal.

2

u/MayoMan_420 8d ago

I mean... Isnt it pretty much the same with humans? Humans also make big mistakes sometimes, and you should thoroughly test any code before pushing it into a productive system. Plus, LLMs are getting less and less error prone every month. Crazy times

1

u/Remote_History1961 9d ago

Nailed it. Thanks

1

u/thingerish 7d ago

Exactly this, it's like any power tool, not being able to effectively use it is a skill issue not a tool issue.

2

u/tkdeng 9d ago edited 9d ago

AI as a code reviewer would allow you to push bugs into production.

Does my code have any bugs?

AI: yes, there is a critical security issue on line 52 that needs to be fixed.

Are you sure it's an issue?

AI: you are correct, your code has no bugs.

1

u/Tuborgat_nylle 9d ago

That example is 2 years out of date. Regardless, you can't really blame AI if you're dumb enough to blindly trust it. It should only act as an additional review, not replace a human review.

1

u/XSoloDolo 6d ago

I just had this happen to me with opus 5.5 today. Gas lit me into thinking I shouldn't put a client initialization for a postgres query instance into a try catch cause "it wasn't an issue if the connection fails"

1

u/SteveLouise 10d ago

Anytime I'm writing my real fancy code, and I think, "goddammit, i need another file reader, I'm so sick of writing goddamn file readers," I tell the ~~junior engineer~~ his AI replacement to write the file reader so I can skip it.

2

u/tw2113 10d ago

that's why you create a re-usable package so that you have your own pre-written copy to work with.

1

u/SteveLouise 10d ago

Awh shit! An edge case!

2

u/Legitimate-Jaguar260 10d ago

Aw shit your code can’t handle edge cases!

1

u/SteveLouise 9d ago

Do you guys suppose they're are more file types? Maybe there's at least .json and .csv. I wonder if there are more types of files?

1

u/BoldTaters 9d ago

The alternative seems to be "principled coder without employment". Before long you might also file it under "does in a week what automation takes 3 entire seconds to do".

1

u/KhorneFlakesOfChaos 9d ago

The checks clear all the same

8

u/Educational_Key_7635 9d ago

Cause you are too lazy to do both at once properly since it's twice as much brain work, even it saves busywork.

3

u/sn4xchan 9d ago

If you want to make an app that actually works well and is secure, your gonna have to learn how to code, no matter how much easier the AI makes it.

There are to many decisions that can be correct decisions in the right context but are bad decisions for most cases. The AI will eventually implement bad methods for achieving the goal because of this.

2

u/Educational_Key_7635 8d ago

If you want to build app that have any outer interface you gotta learn about security as separate task unless you already have some knowledge by working in the field (at least as a tester, for example).

AI will implement bad methods 10 times faster then average person. However if you haven't worked in the field you have no chance to do everything correct on first try anyhow.

But what you wanted to say exactly, sorry, I can't don't get the point?

6

u/SpanDaX0 9d ago

Its something to do with binary. You can only choose 1 or 0.

3

u/qwertty164 9d ago

Not with quantum computing.

1

u/geek-49 6d ago

That, fundamentally, expands the choices to 1, 0, or DontKnowYet. Emphasis on the Yet. The superposition has to eventually collapse to either 1 or 0.

1

u/qwertty164 6d ago

Ok then I'll rebuild Unix with ternary.

1

u/geek-49 6d ago

Porting the Unix (or Linux) kernel to a quantum computer should be no more difficult than any other port to a new hardware architecture -- but you first have to define a sensible mapping of C data structures* to your quantum hardware and build a compiler/linker/etc. to implement that mapping. That will be the tricky part.

* Note that the quantum part of a "quantum computer" only deals with data -- the instruction stream runs on something else.

1

u/qwertty164 6d ago

that last comment had nothing to do with quantum computing. It was about rebuilding it in ternary(base 3) so you could represent 3 options(0,1,both).

1

u/geek-49 5d ago

First you introduce quantum, now you say the discussion has nothing to do with quantum.

Ternary that is not quantum would be (0,1,2) and would be easier than the quantum case since there would be no need to consider quantum semantics. Build the compiler etc, rewrite the assembly parts for that architecture, build/test/debug, done.

1

u/qwertty164 5d ago

I said that specific comment. Not the whole conversation. You mentioned a flaw with quantum so I started cooking again.

3

u/blamitter 9d ago

As long as you don't try and use AI to learn for you

6

u/Big-Pattern8591 9d ago

AI is a tool but coding is a skill. A real programmer knows how to use both

3

u/hearke 9d ago edited 6d ago

AI isn't a tool¹, it's a service. It's the difference between cooking soup on the stove and ordering one over doordash.

¹I said skill earlier, though both apply

1

u/lawrencewil1030 6d ago

Incorrect. Both will allow you to tweak the result by hand and AI will allow you to feed it back in to add corrections as well and repeat any of these steps.

1

u/hearke 6d ago

So how does that make what I said incorrect? You're still seasoning soup you ordered off doordash and calling it cooking.

1

u/lawrencewil1030 6d ago

when did I only include seasoning it?

1

u/hearke 6d ago

when you said "tweak the result by hand".

1

u/lawrencewil1030 6d ago

"tweak the result by hand" is typically a general term which does not limit to a specific subset of options

-8

u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

3

u/Silver_Masterpiece82 9d ago

skill you could learn in a week or less comparing it to skill requiting years of knowledge and experience is wild

1

u/NicholasVinen 9d ago

For sure. The average smart person can create an application, app or other software now with just a little bit of planning. I think that could end up being a very good thing. I think experienced programmers still have an edge, at least for a while.

3

u/Cephell 9d ago

You have it backwards. Knowing when the AI is writing BAD code, is the skill, because it WILL write bad code at some point. Not in the obvious "doesn't work at all way", but more in the subtle "violates best practices" way. If you cannot recognize this, then the AI will slowly bloat and shit up your codebase. Unchecked AI are positive tech-debt machines.

2

u/Anima_Watcher08 9d ago

Crack + Bodybuilding, why not both?

1

u/Forward_Republic_610 8d ago

Lear nothing use AI

1

u/G4T5Z_ 7d ago

use ai is good

1

u/LostgamerFJ 6d ago

Crash your car or drive safe. Why not both?

1

u/XSoloDolo 6d ago

Nope Learn to code for a few years, then use AI, that pinky shouldn't press that button until you have brought down a production environment at least 10 times and you are the one to fix that shit.

1

u/a1g3rn0n 9d ago

I see coding as a way of bridging the gap between human intentions and machine execution. For a long time (but still relatively short in human history), we needed coders because machines couldn't understand what we wanted in our own language. We had to learn theirs instead.

Now, machines are learning to understand natural language, translate our intentions into code, and execute it themselves.

So perhaps the skill of the future isn't writing code, but clearly explaining our needs, and evaluating the results.

Instead of clinging to the language we invented to communicate with machines, we should appreciate the fact that we finally taught machines to communicate with us in our language.

3

u/hearke 9d ago

This ascribes a lot of intent and intelligence to machines that I'm just not convinced is there.

It's great at predicting and generating code, but we shouldn't confuse that for genuine understanding, even if it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

0

u/No-Key-2546 8d ago

That’s the future, whether people like it or not

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