No offense, but I hate all the comparisons to a "junior dev" that I see out there. This process is just like any dev! I mean, who wouldn't have to tinker around a bit to get some piece of software to work? Is there a human out there who would just magically type all the right things - no errors - first try?
solumos|4 months ago
There are people who don't get blocked waiting for external input in order to get tasks like this done, which I think is the intended comparison. There's a level of intuition that junior devs and LLMs don't have that senior devs do.
the-grump|4 months ago
Sometimes looking at the same type of code and the same infra day in and day out makes you rusty. In my olden days, I did something different every week, and I had more free time to experiment.
conradev|4 months ago
It’s just that when I review the code, I would do things differently because the agent doesn’t have experience with our codebase. Although it is getting better at in-context learning from the existing code, it is still seeing all of it for the “first time”.
It’s not a junior dev, it’s just a dev perpetually in their first week at a new job. A pretty skilled one, at that!
and a lot of things translate. How well do you onboard new engineers? Well written code is easier to read and modify, tests helps maintain correctness while showing examples, etc.
bahmboo|4 months ago
pedrosorio|4 months ago
If they know what they're doing and it's not an exploratory task where the most efficient way to do it is by trial and error? Quite a few. Not always, but often.
That skill seems to have very little value in today's world though.