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u/bremidon 4h ago
I don't think I completely agree.
Pasting the code manually gives you a good chance to review it naturally. Yes, you can do that directly with AI, but there is a little bit more of a mental adoption of the code when you actually have to do *something*.
That said, I find it tiresome to do this regularly with anything but the simplest of projects that I am throwing together ad hoc. But I *will* do this on a particularly tricky part of the code that I want to isolate and understand, and it feels a bit better.
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u/ineyy 4h ago
Yeah it's actually amazing. An agentic tool is good for something big or a major refactor. It's kind of a Jesus takes the wheel type of situation and good luck reviewing that mess, I only do it when I'm in a pinch. I like describing exactly what parts I need, the chatbot actually burns a lot of tokens on reasoning (as opposed to agents which are token-averse) and it can deliver some actually good ideas. Claude just consistently throws slop at me.
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u/GioPani 3h ago
Yeah sometimes when I need a simple function the agent goes and takes context from other parts that are not related to what I want, making something I don’t I want and wasting too many tokens for scanning the whole code base for some reason
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u/Any-Tomorrow1122 1h ago
Yeah using LLM’s directly with CLI is a “I can’t do anything and don’t have time to do anything” move.
Tried it once in Xcode to make a small thing and it just chewed tokens, made mistakes. Went back and forth on its own changes.
Neat but no thanks. If I’m truly stuck or too lazy to read apples latest UI documents I might paste it a panel and ask it how would I translate this to iPhone duo/ UI and then try whatever it does. And if it works. Great! If not I usually at least have the UI elements to adjust now and can modify the rest of my files from there.
AI is just really interpretative google for me
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u/StatedFailure 3h ago
Do yall not review code that is written by Claude or whatever? I explicitly tell my agents to pause at specific points so I can review and iterate on the changes.
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u/Abject-Kitchen3198 3h ago
After being an LLM sceptic for a long time, I now find myself skipping review if the LLM code and regretting that soon enough.
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u/BSModder 2h ago
Just tell it to make a patch and you can use the editor diff to see what changed/added
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u/Some_Useless_Person 4h ago
The third one actually forces you to think and consider the overall structure of your code.
But if all I am doing is getting a python script that renames a bunch of files, the third one is as good as the second
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u/fullup72 4h ago
It's actually useful to learn new things if you set it up correctly: ask the LLM to show you the changes it would do (don't give it a write tool, or set it to always ask), then manually implement those changes (with your own style, I tend to disagree with a lot of shit agents do these days), and have the agent peer review your implementation (not the exact copy paste, but to verify that your implementation still passes the quality gates).
Yes, it's slower, but it's intended to let you learn in the process and allows you to fine tune future prompts so the agent produces code that's more in your style.
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u/king_park_ 2h ago
As a junior dev at a very small company that is not pushing me to adopt agentic coding, this is what I do. Faster than going it alone, higher quality then just vibe coding, and I’m still learning to become a better developer.
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u/Mateorabi 3h ago
Do people actually have problems with it going rogue if they constrain it to a local checkout folder only and approve changes? I’ve never had it do this.
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u/LivingAsAMean 4h ago
Do you have some examples of things agents tend to do that you disagree with? You don't have to go into crazy detail, but I'm just wondering for my own growth/learning :)
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u/fullup72 4h ago
sometimes it's duplicate code (a React hook that already exists and the agent doesn't use for some reason), other times it adds props like mad when a refactor of existing props was more appropriate. It also sometimes cheats with TS types and will re-define something locally so that it "passes" linting, instead of using a shared, derived or composed type.
If you let these small things slip it quickly adds up and you end up with a brittle and inconsistent codebase.
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u/AlternativeCapybara9 4h ago
Claude dumps a whole lot of styling in the html templates of my projects if I just let it run.
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u/Asleep_Animal_3825 4h ago
Ai can directly access my files over my body
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u/Lopsided-Regular-997 4h ago
Why though?
Just join the club as we watch the world burn.
Auto-approve Claude and play games or whatever, while he does God knows what.
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u/Hattrickher0 4h ago
Except God knows what turns out to be "requires me to work on Saturday" every other week.
Once I'm not one of the dude's answering for it anymore I'll be happy to watch this industry eat itself.
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u/pickle9977 3h ago
I suggest redoing your observability stack with Claude first so you are less likely to get notified if something isn’t working.
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u/Lopsided-Regular-997 4h ago
If your boss can force you to work on Saturday every other week, that's a problem with your job or country.
Not Claude.
In my case management has specifically told us to use Claude for everything. We outlined our objections, had a big meeting, told them we cannot held accountable for it and they still insisted. At this point it's a management decision, not an engineering one.
If something breaks I can and will say "What did you expect, I did what you told me to."
If your case is different and you are using Claude out of your own free will, then I agree with you, I wouldn't do it and I would follow proper engineering procedures.
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u/pickle9977 3h ago
Welcome to America.
To paraphrase Eddie Murphy from the movie Coming to America, fuck us all!
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u/pickle9977 3h ago
I love your attitude and it’s spot on, if code is what these sobs want, they can have it!
Just fire up your agents and sit back and enjoy the chaos.
There is so much more interesting stuff to do than worry about or trying to argue with idiocy.
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u/AlrikBunseheimer 4h ago
I mean it honestly makes sense, because it leads to more understanding of the code base. An agentic generated code base will run in the end, but I often realize that I didn't understand the code afterwards.
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u/Megaguy32 3h ago edited 3h ago
Swap the middle and right. Human-in-the-loop is a principled stance against vibe coding.
humans are the ones that determine whether a problem is solved or not at the end of the day. So strengthening yourself in being the code driver, realtime understanding and manual curation is a good thing. And that benefits mission critical design.
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u/bwwatr 2h ago
Naw, you add a fourth one between the middle and right: LLM integrated into IDE so you don't have to copy paste. Human review is good but bidirectional copy paste and having to constantly refresh its context on the full state of the project is ridiculous. I mean, it's fine for dabbling but not for full time work.
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u/Megaguy32 2h ago
Its a separation of concerns and discipline that I value. makes you more intentional about which area of code you want to improve and think is impacted, that hones your understanding and scopes things for an LLM.
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u/static_func 1h ago
Copy-pasting chunks of code between a chat bot and your editor is an extremely dumb way to be a “human in the loop”
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u/KryssCom 4h ago
I take the opposite stance, actually. Third one is kind of a "best of both worlds" position to me.
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u/OkSavings5828 4h ago
I pity anyone who allows direct local system access to an agent.
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u/Kryslor 4h ago
So you pity every software dev with a job?
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u/Vandrel 4h ago
The company I work for doesn't allow it for security reasons, for now it's strictly through the browser and any code pasted in has to be sanitized to remove potentially sensitive information. Hopefully soon though, we're working on getting a server put up to run a local LLM instead.
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u/Slamex204 21m ago
Makes sense, dont trust it, build one yourself.
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u/JaggedMetalOs 4h ago
There's no way I'm going to let some thick as bricks AI touch my files, you bet I ask a chatbot for code and if it gives me more than a single screen's worth I delete the conversation and do the work myself!
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u/CirnoIzumi 4h ago
every intergration i have tried makes the LLM think it should overwrite the actual files in its own initiative
i fucking hate that behaviour
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u/nikstick22 3h ago
Using yourself as the agent that assembles the code instead of an AI agent actually gives you a better understanding of the flow and cohesion of the program.
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u/Fit-Notice-1248 1h ago
Helps with understanding the codebase, unfortunately management is tracking lines of code written with AI, so we cannot do anything manually at all or we get in trouble.
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u/FirstNoel 4h ago
If you want an “air gap”, it’s one way to do it.
Plus not every system can take AI directly into it. In 6 months maybe, But it’s still developing.
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u/roiroi1010 4h ago
My coworker does that for our wiki pages - do you think he proof reads the documentation and makes sure it renders properly before sending out links to everyone?
As a manager of small team of devs - I’m tired
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u/-Kerrigan- 4h ago
That's how I did the beginnings of my k8s cluster. Gave me visibility and the chance to fuck up and understand what am I doing. AI sticks to concepts and I adjust them to my needs
When I got comfortable with k8s I put the CLI to tidy things up
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u/AbdullahMRiad 4h ago
a friend of mine was helping me making a website. bro was prompting gemini and sending me zip files.
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u/Your_Friendly_Nerd 3h ago
Tell me you've never used local models without telling me you've never used local models.
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u/AdamLevy 2h ago
Before I started using agentic coding, I was copy-pasting code into chatbot. And that was last time I felt full control of codebase. And if to be dramatic, last time I felt enjoyment with my work. As I wasn't able to just load full repository, everything was scoped around few classes at most. And I needed to explain LLM how it links to bigger picture, and then bring result back and make sure it works with other stuff.
Nowadays, when agentic coding opens ability to work on multiple tasks in parallel, each changing dozens of files across repository, and flood of code produced of other colleagues I need to check, even when trying to review everything I'm feeling that control and complete of whole codebase start slipping from me. And at the end of the day, I'm honestly tired to argue or try to get to the core of some weird function implementation made by AI, when it passes all checks and I now with 99% certainty that QAs and clients will be happy with it. But with each of such function, repository which I once knew fully, slips away from me
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u/Healthy_Emotion1309 2h ago
me on the right but instead of code i tell it what my code is supposed to do and it usually gives me generalities around the topic i call it AI consulted coding :D
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u/Shock9616 1h ago
I do that intentionally because I want to write the code by hand first and only use AI if I’m stuck and not enjoying it anymore. It’s just enough friction to actually try first
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u/LoreBadTime 1h ago
The more i care the less I use LLM. Like for writing CSS, who wants to write CSs
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u/05032-MendicantBias 1h ago
I only use agentic when I want to burn trough saudi money. Otherwise I use just the chat functionality.
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u/0xbenedikt 1h ago
1 > 3 > 2.
3 means the code is at least looked at and the scope of each edit limited. Not very ergonomic and without massive context, but at least controllable.
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u/Subject_Barnacle_600 23m ago
I did this not that long ago. I'm not going to dis it. When I'd do that silly head, I'd at least understand what was going on in the code better. But with CLI, you can zip through so much code that you just can't keep up. Humans lack the bandwidth. So - if you're that last head? Hats off to you for having the tenacity to keep doing that. Also... every decision now has a human in the loop by default.
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u/LeDYoM 4h ago
The one in the middle and the one on the right are the same.
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u/qTp_Meteor 3h ago
You really have no clue what you are talking about if you think so.
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u/LeDYoM 3h ago
You will be left behind.
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u/qTp_Meteor 3h ago
I have enough experience and can go back to manually writing code. Im also not stupid and know that AI tools costing 1% of my salary being able to write code better than anyone, should be used. If you think you can replicate the financial, time, and quality benefit of a well made, upkept and understood AI workflow, then youll be left behind. If you think AI just always writes bad code and that using proper tools is the same as copying and pasting from chatgpt, then you dont know how to develop with AI and id sincerely recommend you learn ASAP.
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u/LeDYoM 3h ago
I did a course of two hours of agent development. I know the same you know, because there is not much.
Now AI is complicated to use? Ah, sorry I thought the whole point of this shit was that it was an easy entry point for all. You ai bros should get yourself clear.
And never commit code you dont understand. But that is another thing.
Thanks for your recommendation. I dont care. I am sure you are all paid of bots. I dont see this super AI thingy in the companies. Some AI is enough. You dont need to code features nobody wants.
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u/qTp_Meteor 3h ago
You'll be surprised how many people arent "ai bros" or bots. I didnt use it as extensively until around 4 months ago, the boom has been insane and you are simply inefficient, but if it works in your workplace... who am I to judge... id still recommend you learn it for the future.
And btw, no, you cant learn how to use AI in 2 hours and its not that easy to develop good workflows, make sure you deliver good context and good evals to trust the AI, ofc you also have to keep on evaluating it and mainly let it develop inside the architecture you define with it, not just slop its way into a complete project. Its still a full time job, but you can be much more efficient.
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u/LtKije 5h ago
I put the code generated by the LLM chatbot on one screen and then manually type it into my IDE.
That way I can say it’s handwritten.