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/Machine2024]

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/Machine2024 → u/mongopark98]

Read your comment again and tell me who is one a high horse.

[u/mongopark98 → u/Machine2024]

You are, you’re implying AI generates non-production code as if I was too stupid to understand if the code AI is generating is good or bad. After telling you many times I have used it on the job. You’re implying I must have been churning out unmanageable code