Comment by raw_anon_1111

Comment by raw_anon_1111 5 hours ago

Telling a bunch of agents to do stuff is like treating it as a senior developer who you trust to take an ambiguous business requirement and letting them use their best judgment and them asking you if they have a question .

But doing that with AI feels like hiring an outsourcing firm for a project and they come back with an unmaintable mess that’s hard to reason through 5 weeks later.

I very much micro manage my AI agents and test and validate its output. I treat it like a mid level ticket taker code monkey.

bonesss 5 hours ago

My experience with good outsourcing firms is that they come back with heavily-documented solutions that are 95% of what you actually wanted, leaving you uncomfortably wondering if doing it yourself woulda been better.

I’m not fully sure what’s worse, something close to garbage with a short shelf life anyone can see, or something so close to usable that it can fully bite me in the ass…

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strongpigeon 5 hours ago

I fully believe that if I didn’t review its output and ask it to clean it up it would become unmaintainable real quick. The trick I’ve found though is to be detailed enough in the design from both a technical and non-technical level, sometimes iterating a few time on it with the agent before telling it to go for it (which can easily take 30 minutes)

That’s how I used to deal with L4, except codex codes much faster (but sometimes in the wrong direction)

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raw_anon_1111 4 hours ago

It’s funny over the years I went from
1. I like being hands on keyboard and picking up a slice of work I can do by myself with a clean interface that others can use - a ticket taking code monkey.
2. I like being a team lead /architect where my vision can be larger than what I can do in 40 hours a week even if I hate the communication and coordination overhead of dealing with two or three other people
3. I love being able to do large projects by myself including dealing with the customer where the AI can do the grunt work I use to have to depend on ticket taking code monkeys to do.
Moral of the story: if you are a ticket taking “I codez real gud” developer - you are going to be screwed no matter how many b trees you can reverse on the whiteboard

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- AloysB 3 hours ago
  
  Moral of your story.
  Each and everyone of us is able to write their own story, and come up with their own 'Moral'.
  Settling for less (if AI is a productivity booster, which is debatable) doesn't equal being screwed. There is wisdom in reaching your 'enough' point.
  
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  raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago
  
  If you look at the current hiring trends and how much longer it is taking developers to get jobs these days, a mid level ticket taker is definitely screwed between a flooded market, layoffs and AI.
  By definition, this is the worse AI coding will ever be and it’s pretty good now.
  
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  AloysB an hour ago
  
  I am really not convinced yet.
  From all the data I have seen, the software industry is poised for a lot more growth in the foreseeable future.
  I wonder if we are experiencing a local minima, on a longer upward trend.
  Those that do find a job in a few days aren't online to write about it, so based on what is online we are lead to believe that it's all doom and gloom.
  We also come out of a silly growth period where anyone who could sort a list and build a button in React would get hired.
  My point is not that AI-coding is to be avoided at all costs, it's more about taming the fear-mongering of "you must use AI or will fall behind". I believe it's unfounded - use it as much or as little as you feel the need to.
  P.S.: I do think that for juniors it's currently harder and require intentional efforts to land that first job - but that is the case in many other industries. It's not impossible, but it won't come on a silver plate like it did 5-7 years ago.
  
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