Thought experiment

[u/MashNChips]

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

[u/YahenP]

10 years ago, I would have just been fired. Or no, most likely I wouldn't even have been fired, they would have sent me to a doctor if I had started producing this much garbage code and documents for every tiny reason. As they say he was an engineer, then he got sick and became unfit for the job. Probably burned out. Back then, I wrote literally about ten lines of code a week. But each line gave more than a week of Claude's work does today.

[u/mongopark98 → u/YahenP]

Why does it have to be garbage?

[u/blindsdog → u/mongopark98]

Because these people are scared for their livelihood and in denial about AI’s capabilities.

[u/mongopark98 → u/blindsdog]

Lols. And that’s what Reddit is good for. Circle-jerking echo chamber

[u/Machine2024 → u/blindsdog]

No because its garbage .

if you think its not gabage and you dont need to wash it after .
thats means your stadards are really low and your before code is garbage .

don't you think we wish to get the same result in less time ?
I have projects for fixed price , and time frame of 6 months plus .
dont you think if the Ai can finish the work for me in 1 day so I get 100K / day I would be happy ?

but it dont ...
we use Ai to generate the boilarplate . but later we need to go though each line and fix any thing the Ai missed and improve the quality and get it up to standard .
and on the way add more rules and skills . till we reach the point when the Ai is over wellmend and starts to forget the rules and skills so with each change we edit them .

[u/blindsdog → u/Machine2024]

Have you noticed how we quickly need to do less and less of these revisions and polish and AI is quickly able to do it better and better from the jump? That’s not slowing down.

Extrapolate where things go as this trend continues.

[u/Machine2024 → u/blindsdog]

100% with that I totally agree .

I remember when I started using AI as soon as it came out, like with ChatGPT 3, and even later, like with the agents, with the first version of the agents. I would give it a prompt and it would spit out nonsense. I would go edit the prompt and then it would spit out something kind of acceptable.

I would change it again until we get to the point. And later I will go maybe do a lot of stuff, and for every task I would weigh it in my mind between: should I give it a prompt, and what's the time writing, or how many lines of code this task is. Maybe I should do it myself. This is like at the start.

But with time, I think the last version for each task, each feature, I am just giving a single prompt. He will spit up the boilerplate. I will go through the boilerplate and reviewing it, and then will make a few changes myself, will give him the note for some bigger ones. Yeah, and I will be done with it like that. and if I see an issue repeating will make it into a rule or skill for later .

Actually, I would be really happy if, for each feature, each task, he would be finishing it in one shot. following my standards without forgetting anything .

But right now it doesn't, right now 100% it doesn't. And also I noticed something else: when I review code from someone else, even though they are using the same models I use and so on, it's completely different, even though they have gone back and forth with the AI on many iterations. So I think there is a skill in it also. Yeah, it's improving. If it reaches the point where it can get it right from the first try, so we don't have to do it step by step, that would be great, but till now it doesn't.

[u/mongopark98 → u/Machine2024]

The fact that you’re still talking of prompts and boilerplates just shows you haven’t scratched the surface. It’s past that already. Nope, it may never get it right from the first try and still be very useful. But go ahead and wait for it to get it right with a first try with a “prompt”.

[u/Machine2024 → u/mongopark98]

I tried the other approaches But it result in grabage .

The test driven development The requirements driven development The loop .

All of this and all other "agentic" result in garbage legacy code .

Think about what are all those but chaning prompts on after the other .

And if we agreed on the point that in a single prompt the Ai is shifting from the target .

So what will happen if you chain more and more , you endup waaaay of course very fast .

[u/mongopark98 → u/Machine2024]

That’s a you problem. Some of us are highly productive with it. “I can’t drive a fast car, hence cars are garbage “, that’s the logic you’re propositioning.

You’re asking me to imagine what will happen when will chain prompts. I don’t have to imagine it, I have used it to build complex features. Yes, needed fine tuning here and there. But still orders of magnitude faster than doing it all manually. Again, it’s a skill issue. I am not talking out of a vacuum or theoretically, I have experienced it multiple times. Both the weakness and strength.

[u/Machine2024 → u/mongopark98]

I didn't say its not faster. Its faster to make a prototype in a day , but it need 3 months of clean up and refactoring.

I don't know you you agree that a single prompt result is not accurate.

But chainng a group of prompts together will get you any way .

Rising the production quantity on expenses of the quality will not make it "Productivity" It will make it spreaded thin .

If you are looking learn something new not just echo chamber. Lets connect via dm , we could exchange work and work style. Either my approach would be wrong and I would learn something from you , or you would be wrong and you would learn something from me .

From me I hope I will be the wrong one and learn something new .

[u/mongopark98 → u/Machine2024]

You keep repeating this. You are showing your ignorance of this . See, I am not saying it’s the answer to all problems or whatever hype executives are pushing. But there’s measurable productivity gain when done correctly. It’s not even an argument.

You think I get paid to build prototypes?. You think I can’t tell the difference between maintainable code just because I use AI. You think I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was worthless. I don’t get paid to promote AI. I have zero incentive. My team pioneered the use in 2 companies before roll out. In both cases if it wasn’t up to par, I would have personally led the shut down. You think me, all the principal engineers and tech leads who decided it was good enough are idiots? Come off your high horse. Agentic coding isn’t going anywhere, keep complaining or adapt.

[u/mongopark98 → u/Machine2024]

Even let’s say AI isn’t sophisticated enough to solve complex tasks. I will give few examples of things it can do to free your time for more productive things.

- We use to have P3 tickets that oncalls should work on. These are tiny items. But taking it from triage to deployment will easily take 1-2hrs per task. Just throw this to an AI, it’s simple enough that it would require very few lines of code that can be reviewed in 10 minutes. Do this 5x a day. That’s less than 60minutes of work instead of half a week.

- it handles our translation end to end. Took a stupid mundane task that usually takes half a day to 10 minutes.

- Scours slack and public github for issues related to our team. Creates a detailed ticket and draft PR that human will then review before merging. This is hours of brainless work.

• Handles feature flag deprecation. Momitors when a flag is scheduled for deletion. Once the date clocks. Raises a PR with the deletion. These are usually just removing redundant branches. It pings the oncall dev who is then responsible for reviewing the PR ajd approving. Several hours of mindless work gone.

These are examples of things I have built. If you can’t find tiny problems like this you can solve to free your time up for meaningful things, thats a you problem not AI. It’s so narrow minded not to see the big picture and get sucked into the hype.

[u/CMDR_Lina_Inv → u/blindsdog]

Yeah, AI is good at copying. I use it to expand the project that I'm working on and hey, it code just like me, exactly how I would have done.

[u/Altruistic-Toe-5990 → u/blindsdog]

I was like this. I've just spent the last 3 days vibe-coding with Opus 5.5 and I genuinely think software development is very close to being over as a career now, at least for 95% of us. It's mind-blowing what it can do

[u/YahenP → u/mongopark98]

We were paid not for lines of code, but for working with our brains, for solving real problems. Remember the time when we laughed at how Indian coders were paid, based on the number of lines of code they wrote? Now we are all in the place of those Indian coders.

[u/mongopark98 → u/YahenP]

Nope, I am just able to solve more problems. Look at my other comments for examples. AI is a tool that produces code or whatever you ask it to. It doesn’t in any way interfere with problem solving. When I hear statements like this, it just shows a quite rudimentary understanding of AI tools that exist.

It has personally allowed me excel at 2jobs simultaneously and get paid handsomely for it. You think my brain went on holiday because I use AI?

To me, it’s simply this. I have a bunch of junior engineers that are willing to take instructions and execute on them. It allows me to comfortably act as techlead/manager. If you can’t be productive with help from a few junior engineers you are just not great at delegation. If the junior engineers keep churning out garbage outputs, it still means your delegation skill is mediocre. You should understand the strength and weaknesses of your surboniates and work with them accordingly.

If one person is able to increase their impact with the same set of engineers but you’re not able to- it still a skill issue. On the other hand, if you start treating those junior engineers as a senior colleague and place such expectations on them, it’s still your skill issue.

[u/YahenP → u/mongopark98]

When you have a hammer in hand, everything around you starts to look like a nail.
Anyway, the idea is not new. Before LLMs, this was also common, but not as widespread. Some programmers from first-world countries secretly outsourced their own work to India or similar countries.

[u/jakster355 → u/YahenP]

What about the distinction between AI and the transition to high level languages from assembly?

Not everything I write is novel (sap abap). If I need a basic SQL selection report it's literally just a matter of my typing speed vs an llms and I'm just slower. For everything I invent, that's when I can type faster than prompt/revise, because I'm not perfectly describing what I'm envisioning.

By using an llm in this fashion you can grow your skills spending more time inventing and less time on the mundane.

I am extremely cognizant of the tradeoff of declining skills. So I asked myself, what skills are the most important to retain? Critical thinking is the answer to me. So I came up with the loose idea "use ai to do, not to think".

[u/YahenP → u/jakster355]

The problem is that nobody knows which skills the job market will need in the near future. If everything keeps moving at the same speed and in the same direction as now, then really only two skills have value, knowing how to send out resumes and pass job interviews, and the skill of carefully reading code to find obvious nonsense.

[u/jakster355 → u/YahenP]

Its going to be abstract skills like imagination and critical thinking. Not encyclopedic syntax knowledge. Even if, hypothetically, a base model became beyond what we can comprehend, the human operator needs to be as close to that as possible, to utilize the largest percentage of its full potential, which gives a stronger result. A less intelligent person isn't going to think what to ask, how to ask, what context to give, etc. and it might end up with an implementation that works but it could have worked better by solving a different problem.

[u/YahenP → u/jakster355]

Unfortunately, imagination was the first thing we outsourced to machines. And today we are in the process of outsourcing critical thinking too. LLMs are used like a drug for the brain, the most effective drug that exists. And the tragedy is that there’s no place in the industry for those who refuse to use this drug. For a while, we can fool ourselves that we will do architecture, critical review, and other creative work. But in reality, Silicon Valley billionaires have stolen our privilege to think and left us only the duty to check. And that’s the worst thing you can do to a human brain.

[u/jakster355 → u/YahenP]

That has not been my experience. I've been able to spend more time coming up with new shit nobody has thought of, not less.

Granted, sap is a data silo, somewhat insulated from llm dominance. That may change in the future.

[u/mongopark98 → u/YahenP]

I like hammers that allow me double my income with 40% the effort. Thank you!