5 ms·
| type errors, scope issues, import resolution, dependencies. I write code myself and use the LLM to find mistakes then fix them manually. I recommend invertin
by michaelchisari 3mo ago
| type errors, scope issues, import resolution, dependencies.
I write code myself and use the LLM to find mistakes then fix them manually. I recommend inverting the conventional wisdom on LLMs:
1. Don't use it to write code. It's a terrible
programmer. But it's an intelligent rubber duck
and a solid analysis tool.
2. Write the code yourself. It'll go faster than
figuring it out as you go along. It's just typing
if you have a plan.
3. Use an LLM to sanity check what you wrote.
It can find potential design issues or future
problems or breaks from convention. Decide based on
your experience how much you want to address these
issues before moving on.
Is this as fast as AI writing the code? Not at first but possibly over time. Maybe faster. Certainly better quality.
Plus you don't lose any of your skills in the process.
You're still doing the gruntwork necessary to keep your skillset.
And the token cost is a small fraction of what it takes to get LLMs to write good code.
- dnadler 3mo ago> Don't use it to write code. It's a terrible programmer. I see this sentiment often, and I’m honestly not sure where this comes from, as it’s really not been my experience. I feel like this must come from people feeling threatened and just moving the goals posts, or not knowing how to use the tools effectively.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- michaelchisari 3mo agoIt's a common enough experience that it shouldn't be dismissed.
- marcosdumay 3mo agoI see your sentiment quite often here on HN¹, I'm honestly not sure what kind of experience you may have had with automatic program writers. LLM code absolutely sucks. 1 - I wonder why my other social circles are so different.
- deterministic 3mo agoI am really curious about this because my experience is completely different. Can you elaborate a bit more on how you use LLM's for coding? Are you doing one-shot coding? Vibe coding (not looking at code)? Small focused one-step-at-a-time with yourself verifying? Anything else?
- purple-leafy 3mo agoI agree. This sentiment is quite tiring and I put it down to one of 3 things: 1) lies and/or cope 2) lack of actual software ability, therefore over evaluating your own skill 3) haven’t actually used LLMs, and want to do a “look at me I’m so unique and different” I roll my eyes whenever someone says “AI bad” “AI sucks” “AI can’t replace me” Yeah. Load of
- bluefirebrand 3mo agoRegarding 2 Isn't it possible that people who think LLMs are awesome at coding are in fact bad at it themselves, leading to them over estimating the LLMs "skill"? To me it feels like people telling on themselves that they aren't very good
- purple-leafy 3mo agoI don’t consider myself an expert, but I’ve been programming for the last 6 years, and of those 6 years I’ve spent almost all my spare time programming during this period except for a 1 year hiatus. This includes personal projects with a decent amount of users, and 1 sold project. I’m not the best programmer, but I wouldn’t say I’m bad at all. Question to you, have you actually used a leading model like Fable when it was available? I did. I was seriously impressed. I’ll be honest I find it hard to take anyone seriously who says they can program better or faster than a model with those capabilities. That has not been my experience. Architecting - yes people are still better overall. LLMs tend to go with the average middle of the road result. But in terms of output, raw speed, and getting something working? No way am I better than an llm. Happy to be enlightened and told I’m completely wrong. Maybe I am an idiot. That is a possibility. But how about I give you a task, and I give Claude that same task, and we compare results against execution speed? I’ll happily be the judge of that.
- bluefirebrand 3mo agoI mean sure. It can get stuff done faster So can just copying from Stack Overflow, or taking from Open Source repos There have always been reasons why we didn't prefer to do that in the past, but I guess laundering it through LLMs is fine. And that's just the tip of the ethical ice berg High volumes of unvetted code is a bad practice. If the code winds up working out fine then congrats you won the slot machine. It's still a bad practice and very, very stupid to become reliant on And by the way, I had been programming for longer than you have before I even graduated high school, if that matters
- rmdashrfv 3mo ago> I see this sentiment often, and I’m honestly not sure where this comes from, as it’s really not been my experience If you see people saying it often, but you are convinced they are just feeling threatened, what AI generated software would point to to say, "Look at this! Definitive evidence that they are just coping!"
- aand16 3mo agoGitHub /s
- dnadler 3mo agoWell, for one thing, I’d point to all the other anecdotes of developers being made 10x more efficient due to LLM use. But really I’m just comparing against my personal experience. Once I learned how to use the tools well, and what to expect (and what not to), I’ve found LLMs to be very powerful.
- munksbeer 3mo ago>If you see people saying it often, but you are convinced they are just feeling threatened, what AI generated software would point to to say, "Look at this! Definitive evidence that they are just coping!" This is a trap. Anyone who answers this will see the goalposts being moved yet again. 95% of our code at a top in market global fintech is now written by agents. We make it write good code, and it does.
- nz 2mo agoThis is very vague. Maybe you could actually name the fintech (or, if that is too sensitive), you can list a few of its competitors?
- Ferret7446 3mo agoI think a lot of the people saying AI code sucks is because the code isn't formatted the way they like, not because the code doesn't work. Basically, the people that leave dozens of bikeshed code review comments. Sure, sometimes I might ask the AI to break out a helper function or structure things differently, but that's the same as working with another dev
- aarjaneiro 3mo agoI've witnessed SQL executed with a where clause be wrapped in a function which then iterates over the result to re-enforce the where clause. People need to read the slop they're throwing at reviewers.
- asp_hornet 3mo agoI think language, frameworks, domain and style can all influence the quality of the output. I think it’s hard to compare experiences.
- deterministic 3mo agoI agree. Claude Code (for example) writes excellent code as long as the prompt is focused and clear.
- lelanthran 3mo agoHave you seen how poor the Claude Code codename is? If that's what the token providers themselves can get out of their SOTA models, imagine how bad it is for other companies.
- bulbar 3mo agoIt's a mistake to let AI write code unsupervised by a human. I tend to let it write code and then iterate on it. Sometimes myself (because explaining would take longer than actually doing it) sometimes I prompt the AI to improve specific points.
- nsingh2 3mo ago> Don't use it to write code One of the things I've started doing is to write the high level scaffold myself, create stubs (with comments) and have it fill out the details. I haven't done this for long, but I feel like my mental model of the code rots less, and I can review code faster. I used to do this in the past, when these models were not all that capable, now there is a huge temptation to leave everything to the model. But long term I lose track of whats going on, and have a hard time even communicating with the model about the changes I want. Just a total decay of my mental model of the system, and it's really hard to recover from that state.
- dkersten 3mo agoI like to start out by creating the overall structure of my application: the module structure, high level components, feature boundaries. That way these decisions are already made for the LLM, and it can focus on filling in logic within the structure provided. It works quite well for me, a lot better than when the LLM makes these decisions.
- airport_barfly 3mo agoDefinitely agree. And once you factor in the review time + time spent fixing LLM bugs, I'm pretty sure this inverted process is actually faster than using the LLM to write code