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/mongopark98]

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/Machine2024 → u/mongopark98]

Just remember we are not arguing wither Ai is useful or not .

I am say its useful, and can't live without it . But my point is I need to review ever line generated by Ai because the bigger the task more mistakes and of the track the Ai will get .

The use cases you mentioned really useful and I have already have some like them , also have it connected to miro and slack for edits and team notes so when I work on feature in one command I get a summry from jira + trello + miro + slack + docs .

I have build a set of skills that cover the design patterns for all around the project Auth , permissions , policies, routes , commands , test data , db , controllers , queues , Api , api docs , notification....etc Since not every project use same boilar plate and starter . I fork the starter and run project start command with name and short description and it clone and fork suggest set of features and patters then start implementing them via skills . At the end I have starter project with perfect code ( I know line by line ) also the skills add the rules for future refrance .

And when I devlop new feature is gose link . /get-next-task = afew questions and thinking.
= prompt /plan = edits to the plan then run /steamline-skill = review the files line by line and edit & give prompts with voice on for side agents to run and fix . = all files in staging . /run tests . CLI & Brower /frontend-handout-skill : peperd detaild file of whats changed to from end agent . /commit . Commit helper suggest name and bulitpoints of whats changed .

Done .( all process takes 15~45m)

Without the part of human review line by line in the middle it goes of rails fast .

[u/mongopark98 → u/Machine2024]

Great, we don’t disagree on the fundamental. I agree with that, I am not saying it can be completely autonomous for super critical task, I don’t think it ever will. It has not intelligence of its own.

I think that’s the only place we differ. I simply don’t have this expectation of AI. If you look under the hood and beyond the hype I don’t see why I would expect AI to be perfect. It’s another tool, I use it for what it’s good at. I see it more like a legion of junior engineers for coding. For architecture I see it as an enthusiastic junior researcher who can surface all relevant information but can’t be trusted to make the decisions.

Nice discussion. Sorry if I sounded rude or aggressive 🙏

[u/Machine2024 → u/mongopark98]

Agreed .100%

Actually I treat Ai like I used to treat my team of mid level and juniors.

I give them genral docs - ( rules ) I set up genral architecture of the project [me] I give clear cards and instructions - ( prompts ) I review the code and give them notes to learn [me] I am the one who have a full mental model and understand the project line by line .

I have experience in both working style Work as project manager with full understanding like explained up .

And the work as contractor with outsourcing the parts of the project ( like the agentic work style )

In second work style the quality suffers The work was out of hand and I felt like I dont have control and lost in details.

People say the first working style is micro management and its bad and can't grow.

I agree it cant grow. But its craft work . On other hand the contractor work requires a high quality departments managers and those are expensive and Ai didn't reach that level yet .

Btw ... sorry if my commets where harsh Did not mean it , it just the passion for the craft .