AI coding "assistants"

[Kosmik]

Okay so that makes you the most experienced in the room. What keeps you secure in your role, or rather, how is the allure of “replace humans with AI that doesn’t take sick days, time off, or slack and can do the job faster” not a topic amongst your superiors

Maybe its differant for me but our company has a fuller concept of enhancing with AI vs replacing. Some items where "good enough" are for more side roles like graphics design etc, we don't have full employees and used to outsource now and then, it works well. But as we are a cloud first focused SAAS provider across multiple disciplines of backend, web and native mobile development and a mature eco system, its hard enough to even outsource specific modules of code, never mind having it run as a separate side project developed purely by ai agents. I think Microsoft had the right idea, a developer may have ai code agents that do or tackle work but the human developer takes a higher role in ensuring overall design, architecture and solution.

Btw, also a dev fossil here with 20+.

 

[Analog Revenant]

Maybe its differant for me but our company has a fuller concept of enhancing with AI vs replacing. Some items where "good enough" are for more side roles like graphics design etc, we don't have full employees and used to outsource now and then, it works well. But as we are a cloud first focused SAAS provider across multiple disciplines of backend, web and native mobile development and a mature eco system, its hard enough to even outsource specific modules of code, never mind having it run as a separate side project developed purely by ai agents. I think Microsoft had the right idea, a developer may have ai code agents that do or tackle work but the human developer takes a higher role in ensuring overall design, architecture and solution.

Btw, also a dev fossil here with 20+.

urrrggg, that moment when some wise @ss person in business says - 'why don't you just quickly outsource that part?'

On a serious note though, on smaller/mid size projects with good context files, it's a breeze to get changes done and new features implemented - the code quality itself has been getting better. I use Claude Code (Opus 4.1 and Sonnet 4) extensively and are on the Max plan. On Max I get access to bigger context windows and more output.

I'm not really worried about a decline in critical thinking yet personally - but I see the point. In my mind I'm talking to and instructing an actual junior dev with specific tasks to do. Then the review is pretty much the same as I would have done with a freelance dev on the other side of the world. So yes, we are one of the businesses (small startup though) who have replaced a freelance dev with Claude Code successfully. We've also cut our UX Designer's paid time to a 1/3 of what it was.

I understand and respect everyone's comments on this, although from what I've seen using AI for coding - the dangerous part would not to use it at all. The models are getting better and faster. For some reason, my favorite models are those from Anthropic, the others just don't really come close imho. Although keeping an eye on Grok with grok-code-fast-1 model.

Btw - I don't have any AI activated in my IDEs - I treat them as external agents/employees, in the IDE they feel like flies that I want to whack.

I'm a recovering programmer who made the mistake at age 16 to install Turbo Pascal on my computer in 1998.

 

[Kosmik]

I'm a recovering programmer who made the mistake at age 16 to install Turbo Pascal on my computer in 1998.

Nothing wrong with Turbo Pascal but would have hoped you moved to Delphi shortly after but TP was the first "language" I learnt from a "teacher" source , i.e.: high school. Basic\GWBasic\QBasic and scripting before that was all self taught.

And I will never forget being "forced" to learn DBASEIII in my first job ( text flle and folder database system ). Now there was some custom code written by the owner and another that was already decades old and I was a proper freshie.

 

[donal]

Very interesting seeing the different perspectives here, as many encompass what so many of us are going through.

While I see merit in many of the opinions that the tools are great for some problems and not for others, I increasingly see the crux of it as are you using it and learning how to leverage its best attributes, or are you turning the other way... (and possibly not using anything)?

As some have said, it's just a tool. How we use a tool defines our progress in our field. Our work is evolving and changing, and if we're open to change with it, that mindset will see us prosper.
For instance I now put a lot more effort into crafting the right prompts. That has seen a change in the results I get, with less rubbish to sift through.

What I feel will become a very valuable skill is the know how and ability to orchestrate and plan using AI and agents: i.e. actually having deep understanding of the problem you're solving and all its nuances. And I still think only humans can do that.

 

[Kosmik]

Very interesting seeing the different perspectives here, as many encompass what so many of us are going through.

While I see merit in many of the opinions that the tools are great for some problems and not for others, I increasingly see the crux of it as are you using it and learning how to leverage its best attributes, or are you turning the other way... (and possibly not using anything)?

As some have said, it's just a tool. How we use a tool defines our progress in our field. Our work is evolving and changing, and if we're open to change with it, that mindset will see us prosper.
For instance I now put a lot more effort into crafting the right prompts. That has seen a change in the results I get, with less rubbish to sift through.

What I feel will become a very valuable skill is the know how and ability to orchestrate and plan using AI and agents: i.e. actually having deep understanding of the problem you're solving and all its nuances. And I still think only humans can do that.

Ignoring it, is totally the wrong thing to do.

 

[Analog Revenant]

Nothing wrong with Turbo Pascal but would have hoped you moved to Delphi shortly after but TP was the first "language" I learnt from a "teacher" source , i.e.: high school. Basic\GWBasic\QBasic and scripting before that was all self taught.

And I will never forget being "forced" to learn DBASEIII in my first job ( text flle and folder database system ). Now there was some custom code written by the owner and another that was already decades old and I was a proper freshie.

those were the days

 

[Jackal65]

I've been using code generation daily for about 3 months now and there are serious ups as well as downs.

+ It works great for seniors who can break down the problem and get it to do the work
- Its terrible in the hands of juniors. They'll generate something and not bother to check it in any way, they don't get to think about the problem and as a result don't learn anything. If you have a junior who's one of the types who you give a problem to, then they come back 30 minutes later and shrug while saying they don't know how to do it; well, now they're going to run it through AI thinking that its working, then its going to be your problem to have to check what the AI did, iterate and fix.

+ Its great at self-contained black box code with very few inputs/outputs (ie. 1 input method, perform calculations and then output something)
+ Its excellent at simple code, CRUD, statements, language features, issues etc.
- Its terrible at understanding how humans call into code, as a result if your generated code has many calling points there will be no clear grouping of endpoints etc., as a result of that unless if you're creating your statements very explicitly you're going to end up with terrible code libraries
- Because it can generate so fast you tend to think less in terms of libraries, you're not saving code that you know is working for re-use etc.

+ If it can one-shot something its usually of decent+ quality
- If it can't and you need to make additions then the quality is going to keep on decreasing with every request
- When you're asking it to generate code there's no cleanup of previous methods etc., so if you're going through several versions/variants then you often end up with a lot of dead code. Its fine if the problem space is simple, but if its not and (like a junior) you don't understand it very well then you'll have no clue what's going on

- I tried Copilot for some time along with suggestions. At first it seems great but you quickly realise that its coming up with a ton of garbage as well. Mentally having to read through all of those takes a toll on you and you're better off without it

Probably the biggest con in my opinion:
For any problem area that's not well understood, while coding us humans build up a mental map of the code, let's call it a directed graph of some kind. While coding we're refining this mental map to figure out the problem, then we're applying that to the code.
When you're delegating to the AI you have no map, so when you're trying to work with the code its as if you're working on some foreign codebase you've just picked up, and as a result your efficiency/output keeps dropping instead of increasing.

I feel flattered now because I honestly build a good product using AI, yes a lot of bugs and yes it cannot design a UI to save itself. But the speed I can work at knowing that I describe the problem in detail, try what AI spits out modify the living sh.. out it and seeing someone actually willing to pay for it was a experience I would like to repeat. Now that I have down time "again health" I am warming up to the idea to build something cool and useful. When I don't feel like that cat half the city drove over I will get into that.

 

[s0lar]

Respect. In other threads on this topic, so many come out with the view of "AI is never better than me, everything it writes is garbage".



Where's the challenge: One level up. More on the design and architecture level. Making sure that services work in the correct way, rather than caring about writing those services. Also, being able to spot when things are suboptimal from an operating perspective.

Same for creativity and creation... I now focus more on creating solutions and making things work, rather than writing code.

To be fair, I do mostly yaml and python stuff, but I don't physically write lines of code any more.

Not to blow smoke up my own arse. I am a pretty damn good developer with deep infrastructure knowledge as this was my passion for many years and still is. Tens of thousands of hours sunk into leveling up. Those that say Claude is a shoddy developer then I have no words. Clearly something is a miss..

Been an architect at various levels for around ten years. It's good fun taking something from business value to concept to actual realisation. That said AI can do this just by feeding the feature/product requirements from creating the architectural artefacts to full technical implementation. I see myself pushing more into enterprise architecture but solution architecture is my first love so am jaded about it being a meeting/powerpoint jocky. Not incredibly creative, meh.

 

[Jackal65]

Not to blow smoke up my own arse. I am a pretty damn good developer with deep infrastructure knowledge as this was my passion for many years and still is. Tens of thousands of hours sunk into leveling up. Those that say Claude is a shoddy developer then I have no words. Clearly something is a miss..

Been an architect at various levels for around ten years. It's good fun taking something from business value to concept to actual realisation. That said AI can do this just by feeding the feature/product requirements from creating the architectural artefacts to full technical implementation. I see myself pushing more into enterprise architecture but solution architecture is my first love so am jaded about it being a meeting/powerpoint jocky. Not incredibly creative, meh.

I want to talk to a good developer about an idea I am actively building so no "please code this for me BS". I just need to know how to build a standard old school HTML website from early 1990s. I am working on a retro interface I want to host for all stuff. The hosting part I figured out I just haven't figured out the log on system. Why it is hard is I just want to get some modern security bolted on to it. I was thinking to use MyBB but I can't get it to host properly on the device I am planning to use it on.

 

[s0lar]

I want to talk to a good developer about an idea I am actively building so no "please code this for me BS". I just need to know how to build a standard old school HTML website from early 1990s. I am working on a retro interface I want to host for all stuff. The hosting part I figured out I just haven't figured out the log on system. Why it is hard is I just want to get some modern security bolted on to it. I was thinking to use MyBB but I can't get it to host properly on the device I am planning to use it on.

Whats your point? Is English your first language?

 

[Jackal65]

Whats your point? Is English your first language?

No point at all you can keep your skill I will figure it out thanks

And this is why I am ****ing rude to people.

 

[s0lar]

No point at all you can keep your skill I will figure it out thanks

And this is why I am ****ing rude to people.

Shem. Must be really difficult to be so smart and surrounded by idiots. Godspeed mate.

 

[Jackal65]

Shem. Must be really difficult to be so smart and surrounded by idiots. Godspeed mate.

Being smart doesn't fix an engine, being smart doesn't weld your burglar bars. A qualified electrician, plumber and mechanic will still have work 20 years from now. Coders? I doubt they will last another 5 years.

 

[s0lar]

Being smart doesn't fix an engine, being smart doesn't weld your burglar bars. A qualified electrician, plumber and mechanic will still have work 20 years from now. Coders? I doubt they will last another 5 years.

20 years? Optimus would like a word with you.

 

[Jackal65]

20 years? Optimus would like a word with you.

I am on the wrong side of half century with a few decades. car is a car and a engine is a engine nothing changed. Sure I need a laptop every now and again but is not that hard.

 

[aleksandar]

I started using it recently, more in the ask mode than agent and it works quite well.
Some questions that I would ask google now I exclusively use github co-pilot.
Yesterday I posed simple question regarding merging lists and excluding items from other list (c# implementation) I would implement it in one way in c++ and it came up with one c# liner that made perfect sense.

It will offload lots of manual work but also help in cases where you know what needs to be done but have issue implementing it or in my case when you are working in language that you are not as proficient.

Finally it will enable single developer or small team to jump start projects quicker and personally I see value in that.

 

[s0lar]

I am on the wrong side of half century with a few decades. car is a car and a engine is a engine nothing changed. Sure I need a laptop every now and again but is not that hard.

Skies Oom.

 

[Jackal65]

Skies Oom.

sense of humor appreciated

 

[s0lar]

sense of humor appreciated

That and I now see you just a grumpy old man trying to hang with the youngsters. At least got your angle now.

 

[Jackal65]

That and I now see you just a grumpy old man trying to hang with the youngsters. At least got your angle now.

Trying to hang with youngsters Do you even know what 280Km/h looks like? Knowing every beat every sound is your own doing? Nah I love cars, I love speed more. Coding is just a thing I have to do to get what I want.

I would never forget how that engine blew up but man was fun.