[yodsanklai]

Because code isn't free.

I can see it in my team. We've all been using Claude a lot for the last 6 months. It's hard to measure the impact, but I can tell our systems are as buggy as ever. AI isn't a silver bullet.

[reconnecting]

And after 12 months, most probably no one from your team will understand what the result of half of those bugs is.

When devs outsource their thinking to AI, they lose the mental map, and without it, control over the entire system.

[collinvandyck76]

I think about this a lot, and do everything I can to avoid having Claude write production code while keeping the expected tempo up. To date, this has mostly ended up having me use it to write project plans, generate walkthroughs, and write unit and integration tests. The terrifying scenario for me is getting paged and then not being able to actually reason about what is happening.

[XenophileJKO]

I find this such a weird stance to take. Every system I work on and bug I fix has broad sets of code that I didn't write in it. Often I didn't write any of the code I am debugging. You have to be able to build a mental map as you go even without ai.

[zarzavat]

I agree, but you don't have to outsource your thinking to AI in order to benefit from AI.

Use AI as a sanity check on your thinking. Use it to search for bugs. Use it to fill in the holes in your knowledge. Use it to automate grunt work, free your mind and increase your focus.

There are so many ways that AI can be beneficial while staying in full control.

I went through an experimental period of using Claude for everything. It's fun but ultimately the code it generates is garbage. I'm back to hand writing 90% of code (not including autocomplete).

You can still find effective ways to use this technology while keeping in mind its limitations.

[jimmaswell]

The better the code is, the less detailed a mental map is required. It's a bad sign if you need too much deep knowledge of multiple subsystems and their implementation details to fix one bug without breaking everything. Conversely, if drive-by contributors can quickly figure out a bug they're facing and write a fix by only examining the place it happens with minimal global context, you've succeeded at keeping your code loosely-coupled with clear naming and minimal surprises.

[qudat]

100% agree. I’ve seen it with my own sessions with code agents. You gain speed in the beginning but lose all context on the implementation which forces you to use agents more.

It’s easy to see the immediate speed boost, it’s much harder to see how much worse maintaining this code will be over time.

What happens when everyone in a meeting about implementing a feature has to say “I don’t know we need to consult CC”. That has a negative impact on planning and coordination.

[Dig1t]

Only if they are supremely lazy. It’s possible to use these tools in a diligent way, where you maintain understanding and control of the system but outsource the implementation of tasks to the LLM.

An engineer should be code reviewing every line written by an LLM, in the same way that every line is normally code reviewed when written by a human.

Maybe this changes the original argument from software being “free”, but we could just change that to mean “super cheap”.

[broast]

Don't they eventually become managers and tech leads anyway and outsource to their staff?

[AceJohnny2]

I'm reminded of the viral comic "I'm stupid faster" (2019?) by Shen

https://imgur.com/gallery/i-m-stupid-faster-u8crXcq

(sorry for Imgur link, but Shen's web presence is a mess and it's hard to find a canonical source)

I'm not saying this is completely the case for AI coding agents, whose capabilities and trustworthiness have seen a meteoric rise in the past year.

[XenophileJKO]

I love the fact that we just got a model really capable of doing sustained coding (let me check my notes here...) 3 months ago, with a significant bump 15 days ago.

And now the comments are "If it is so great why isn't everything already written from scratch with it?"

[kavok]

I feel like people have been saying AI was great for years now?

[hyperpape]

Ah, so it's free, but you still have to wait 3 months. Just a question...what are you waiting for?

Of course the answer is all the things that aren't free, refinement, testing, bug fixes, etc, like the parent post and the article suggested.

[Sateeshm]

Well the company keeps saying coding is a solved problem.

[LtWorf]

And you presume they are being completely honest about their capabilities why?

[rubenflamshep]

People are getting caught up in the "fast (but slow) diffusion)" that Dario has spoken to. Adoption of these tools has been fast but not instant but people will poke holes via "well, it hasn't done x yet".

For my own work I've focused on using the agents to help clean up our CICD and make it more robust, specifically because the rest of the company is using agents more broadly. Seems like a way to leverage the technology in a non-slop oriented way

[OsrsNeedsf2P]

Why isn't Claude doing QA testing for you?

[PunchyHamster]

Why isn't it doing it for Anthropic ?

[slopinthebag]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm, but if not, you cant rely on the thing that produced invalid output to validate it's own output. That is fundementally insufficient, despite it potentially catching some errors.

[neal_jones]

Dude, I blame all bugs on ai at this point. I suspect one could roughly identify AI’s entry into the game based on some metric of large system outages. Assume someone has already done this but…probably doesn’t matter.