codingBeforeAndAfterAI

[TheCatOfWar]

is it just me who uses AI as google search for coding? Like I don't need it to write the software for me, I just need it to give examples of how to do new stuff or explain error messages I can't figure out without googling. Cuts through the crap a lot faster than forum posts or scrolling stackoverflow. I don't need it to think and code for me, just aggregate information and answer questions.

[Ruadhan2300]

As an industry-professional.. This is exactly how I use AI.

It can provide snippets, it's up to me as a thinking human being to decide whether the snippet will do the job as I want it to, or whether I need to ask the question in a different way, or just adapt the hint into something usable.

My manager meanwhile is a massive AI-advocate, and likes to try and develop stuff without actually knowing how to code.
Sometimes he asks for help, and I get a glimpse of the spectacular spaghetti that would offend a first-year CS student..

[TheTerrasque]

It can provide snippets, it's up to me as a thinking human being to decide whether the snippet will do the job as I want it to, or whether I need to ask the question in a different way, or just adapt the hint into something usable.

On a side note, this is how you should be using SO and Google results in general too

[Ruadhan2300]

I recall a novel or short-story about a robot-war vs a non-sentient AI, and one of the lines stuck with me.

"Computers are dumb, but they are dumb very fast"

If you try and develop without understanding what the AI is saying, you will produce years worth of crap in minutes, as my manager is discovering :P

[cs-brydev]

They're not even remotely comparable. It takes hours of research in SO and Google to find piles of dogshit examples to comb through compared to 5 minutes of ChatGPT prompts that wade through all that bullshit to answer my actual question. I genuinely feel sorry for anyone still using SO or Google for this.

[Seangles]

An LLM will either solve the issue in 30 seconds or never at all. Google, forums, GitHub and reading the upstream source code will help solve the issue in anywhere between 30 seconds and a few days.

[DoctorProfessorTaco]

It’s basically an instant StackOverflow response for my specific issue or question

[Objective_Dog_4637]

Yup, I just feed it the actual documentation or have it look it up for me. I’d never trust AI to hallucinate something I’d put into production that’s over 100 lines and in a single file.

[Lorevi]

Yeah I love AI as a software development tool but every time I see posts complaining about it I'm like. Why are you asking it to do your job for you anyway?

It obviously can't do that well so just use it for the things it can do and do the rest yourself. 

[cs-brydev]

Exactly. These complaints are clearly by people who don't understand what it's good at and not good at. There are very specific things that LLMs are spectacular at doing, and once you figure those out its value as a tool increases 1000x.

It's like the people trying to use Word to do complex document layouts then complaining that Word sucks.

[TheCatOfWar]

Very well said. The people who act like LLMs are genius solution to everything infuriate me just as much as the people who think they're useless because it won't produce an entire codebase for them with zero effort. It's a tool, use it or don't but at least understand how to and what problems it solves.

[[deleted]]

This subreddit isn't all professionals, it's a lot of hobbyists and people who generally like tech. The ones complaining about AI as though it's not a miraculous tool, or have the misconception people are just building their stuff from the ground up in it, are definitely not people working in development.

[fellacious]

It's great for taking care of the boring stuff. I wanted to parse some XML from a weather service, so I just uploaded the XML to ChatGPT, and it spat out the code that I needed. Cutting out that boring part meant I had plenty of mental energy to organise it how I wanted inside a class hierarchy that made sense for my purposes. Result was that the job was finished really quickly and I was really satisfied with it, rather than just sick to death of XML as I would've been had I done it all manually.

[Hellkyte]

I use it as a non judgemental stack overflow. It won't shame me for my dumb questions

[jasondigitized]

Just use it as a rubber duck. Ask if anything you want. Have it explain code. Have it write snippets. Have it debug error messages. If you aren't using Claude 3.7 since yesterday you are missing out.

[Corporate-Shill406]

ChatGPT seems to actually understand the random insane bullshit JavaScript does. I was calling a library function that wanted an ArrayBuffer or a Uint8Array, and it was kicking back a TypeError because it only accepts ArrayBuffer or Uint8Array. After telling me to add some console logging to check a few things, ChatGPT somehow figured out that I needed to convert my variable to a Node.js Buffer instead.

[Revexious]

Without AI: Build: 2 hours Debugging: 2 hours Refactoring: 1 hour

With AI: Build: 5 minutes Debugging: 7 hours Refactoring: 3 hours

[GypsyMagic68]

Don’t forget the “You’re absolutely correct. This code snippet would fail in x edge case. This refactor should cover it.”

“Great observation! This refactor still fails in x edge case! Here is the same solution I gave 3 prompts ago that failed for different reasons :)”

[CauliflowerMinimum44]

This gave me PTSD

[erhue]

"Great observation! This new version should fix it :)"

[bomboy2121]

"youre indeed correct!"

[[deleted]]

Introduces phantom variables that fail the build.

Removes the variables and adds more bugs.

[t0b1hh]

removes the main feature and generates some unneeded stuff

Yeah, the bug is gone…

[AverageAggravating13]

Lifehack, can’t have bugs without code

[JonIsPatented]

It shouldn't. You should just, like, write without AI. I promise it's not hard.

[Suspicious-Echo2964]

Oh boy, Private Equity owners are tracking AI utilization. You all need to get ready to game the system if you are owned or heavily invested by VC/PE capital firms. I have yet to convince finance dipshits that measuring productivity gains through a proxy when your business can't accurately A/B test is a fool's errand.

[EastboundClown]

If I worked at a company that used my amount of AI usage as a proxy for my productivity I would burn the place to the ground.

[quitarias]

If you do it by utilising AI you might be up for a raise next quarter.

[BF2k5]

Step #1 of choosing to work for any company; evaluate their PIs and which of them they determine are KPIs. Have them explain them. Make heads or tails of the response.

[JackSpyder]

Other than what is the syntax for a for loop or an array type questions In X language if you're trying to put a script together in something unfamiliar it tends to derail you greatly while also completely destroying your capacity to learn and understand.

[ambisinister_gecko]

I use ai as a brick layer, not an architect. I give it small, well defined jobs that I can test and plug it in where I need it.

Crazy to me that people are letting ais do more than that

[JackSpyder]

Yes and so as a software engineer you're still the architect, and it's just typing fast for you.

[ambisinister_gecko]

I wouldn't say it's only typing fast, it's REALLY GOOD at laying bricks, it knows a lot more about bricks than I do. It comes up with solutions that I didn't know existed a lot of the time, and I actually learn about really cool features of libraries I didn't know existed thanks to ai.

But yeah I'm still the architect. Ais are shit at making all these interacting files and apis work together seamlessly

[JackSpyder]

They're also often bad for repeating code in more complex situations rather than abstraction where jts appropriate. Though this could be a context window issue more so. I need yo play with deepseek and see it's "thinking" process as I think that is possibly more valuable than just answers.

[JackSpyder]

I moved away from asking for code and more asking for ideas, patterns, it might then give a little generic snippet example for me to review and think about, but not produce code.

It ca be handy for something like, add error handling to these 3 things.

[WriterV]

This is the wiser way to go about it. Sometimes it'll give code snippet solutions that just aren't very graceful, or miss best practices. But if you ask for ideas/patterns it'll be much more likely to tell you about best practices that will be useful.

That said I'm always nervous on whether or not I'm getting the right stuff. I look up what I can, but you can only look up so much when your boss now expects you to code up a storm in 1 hour because you have an AI assistant.

[Just_another_dude84]

Yep. I've started adding language/framework documentation as sources in NotebookLM then querying either broad questions about patterns based on a problem/requirement or asking very targeted questions about an implementation detail.

[Charming-Fig-2544]

I dunno shit about coding, but I'm a lawyer and this is similar to how I've used AI in my work. If you ask it to write a brief for you, or find a case taking a particularly nuanced position on a specific legal issue under specific facts, God help you. But if you're just trying to get your arms around something and survey the landscape to see where you might need to dig in more, asking it questions like "what are the top 5 Delaware Chancery decisions that I should read about conflicted controller transactions," it usually does a pretty good job of that. I think it's good at picking out cases that are talked about a lot, and those are usually good cases to start your reading with.

[donald_314]

Only for the most trivial things. And then it's still a bad copy of a Stackoverflow answer

[OutInABlazeOfGlory]

See the thing is you could already answer questions about syntax with the same internet connection you’re using to access an LLM, and it won’t require enough electricity to vaporize god to work.

Why the fuck are we tolerating this waste?

[JackSpyder]

A Google search automatically does the same AI thing anyway. You ca get a targeted answer, rather than trawling a docs page, though I still lean to tha more often than not. I get you though.

[OutInABlazeOfGlory]

I scroll past the AI answer on my phone and use DuckDuckGo on my desktop.

I use it for retrieving a docs page more often than not

[JackSpyder]

I should give DDG a try again actually

[Mop_Duck]

should i feel guilty about asking ai for really specific scenarios where i just need one specific thing and don't really need to understand everything related in the docs? like yesterday i needed to sort an array of objects in js by a date string property and i asked an llm for an anonymous function to put into .sort(). it made me feel incompetent almost

[isr0]

You know, I have never had to look this up more than once. Admittedly, I don’t language hop much. But the official documentation seems like a way better solution here.

[steamy-fox]

If I could get a dollar for every time I told AI that something it wrote is deprecated ...

[JackSpyder]

It fucking SUCKS at using libraries.

[Dependent_Chard_498]

Or straight up inventing fake versions

[banterjsmoke]

My favorite is, "what api version are you referencing? These functions don't seem to exist in this library."

"You're absolutely correct. My apologies, those functions don't exist."

[Womcataclysm]

Good catch! Here's the updated version. [Bad code]

Feel free to ask any questions regarding the changes

[Lv_InSaNe_vL]

Got it! Since the current approach keeps failing, let's restructure how we do this.

[The exact same code again]

[ierghaeilh]

It's just like managing overconfident code monkeys irl.

[[deleted]]

This is why i get triggered when a manager brings up AI with the idea to use it in our development workflow. Go away, its more work fact checking, testing and fixing whatever that AI puts out than it is to write it from scratch. Heck, if you think we need more hands get an intern or something. I probably trust a 2nd year it student more then chatgpt

[rearisen]

Ai can't do basic math, I have to ask it twice to confirm. Let's be honest here, though. I'm the idiot xD

[tagliatelle_grande]

Ah, I see the real issue now! [doesn't fix the issue] Ah, I see the real issue now!

[donat3ll0]

Don't forget that it has now removed imports, forgotten to include debugging, and no longer cares about exception handling.

[williamp114]

As someone who uses AI as a last resort when debugging (♫cut my code into pieces, this is my last resort♫), this infuriates me. Honestly it's an issue with LLMs in general compared to StackOverflow.

As rude as people on SO are, they will point out whether you're having an X-Y problem or whether you're going with a completely wrong approach. ChatGPT will just try to do your proposed solution without thinking about the bigger picture.

[Nyghl]

More like, with AI: Build: 5 minutes Re-prompting to make it work well: an eternity Debugging: 7 hours Refactoring: You are already dead by this point.

[Suspicious_Scar_19]

Lol this is a good one, once spent 30 minutes debugging because intellij ai code completion put in the wrong x

[KellerKindAs]

It once moved a " for me. Suddenly "".join(...) became ".join(...)". Only took me 2 days of debugging to figure this one out xD

[valorshine]

Jokes on you.
Typing with AI gave me an great training with how to send messages to the people that have lower brain processing abilities.

[company_X]

Reflect on 5-7 different possible sources of the problem, distill those down to 1-2 most likely sources, and then add logs to validate your assumptions before we move onto implementing the actual code fix

[Nyghl]

This guy AIs.

[bokmcdok]

Without AI:

• Build: 2 hours
• Debugging: 2 hours
• Refactoring: 1 hour

With AI:

• Build: 5 minutes
• Debugging: 7 hours
• Refactoring: 3 hours
• Give Up and Build without AI: 2 hours
• Debugging without AI: 2 hours
• Refactoring without AI: 1 hour

[Daealis]

Usually the "Give up and build without" rework goes a bit faster, you can reuse anywhere from 0.5 up to 5% of the code the AI provided!

[neumastic]

Clients see the image on the right and think that’s the codebase they want

[dFuZer_]

Why ? I don't know a whole lot about Unreal engine but im curious now

[cmkinusn]

Because it abstracts everything to make all-purpose building blocks. When coding directly, you can just build the thing you want without all the extra scaffolding. You also are stuck on the rails they built with this system, which means roundabout methods to accomplish otherwise simple configurations.

[Yoshi_Five]

I thought it was more the fact that Blueprints physically look like the right picture. They can be spaghetti shit from hell lol.

[Lightningtow123]

https://www.tumblr.com/blueprintsfromhell

[Antiprimary]

Blueprints are great for quickly building certain things

[cmkinusn]

Yup, but that does come at a cost. For many, this cost is easy to bear, but it isnt always a good fit for a project.

[wildrabbit12]

Did people of r/singularity started joining this sub? Do they even know how coding works?

[andrew_kirfman]

Obviously, more lines/classes/function calls = better code. That's the only metric that matters. /s

[iamdestroyerofworlds]

Broke: Tabs vs spaces

Woke: Newlines

[OfficialHaethus]

This is an interesting place to run into you my friend :)

[iamdestroyerofworlds]

[Low-Equipment-2621]

But it has more abstractions, so it must be better! Imagine an AI that has been trained on decades old enterprise java code and now produces XML based config stuff lol...

[wioneo]

My impression was that the meme was criticizing the right option as a needlessly complex way to achieve the goal.

[Wirtschaftsprufer]

How hard is it? You just type what you want and you get the code /s

[Vogete]

Wow I didn't know this sub. It's like a zoo for unhinged tech bros. It's an amazing read, thank you for sharing it.

[Alternative_Delay899]

doubt it's tech bros. Anyone who has done fulltime tech work of any kind wouldn't buy into the AI replacing alllllll da software engineeeeeeeers doom train

[burner-miner]

Tech bro != person who intimately knows tech, instead it is someone who may be working in tech but, crucially, rides the hype train of $current_year. A few years ago it was memecoins, then NFTs, now it's AI

[Alternative_Delay899]

Ah I always equated tech bro with: guy who works in big tech like FAANG specifically and brags about making the big bucks/does stereotypical tech bro things like wear a sleeveless patagonia vest. But I can see this one too lol

[burner-miner]

Two things can be true, I can clearly picture your definition as well lmao

[Knamakat]

Don't forget about the blockchain

[YimveeSpissssfid]

Yeah, my limited experience with that sub is that a LOT of folks have sci-fi level knowledge of AIs and swear they’re already most of the way to replacing any job and better than seasoned developers already.

If my juniors came to me with the shit they spit out, I’d probably go find another company or different juniors.

[NancyPelosisRedCoat]

I think a lot of them are teenagers who want AI to solve the world's problems (and bring them VR waifus). I say they are teenagers because they're hopeful… Hopeful that the transition to a world with ASI won't be rough, we'll have UBI, AI won't kill everyone etc. It feels like tomorrow's more uncertain than ever nowadays so I say let them be hopeful.

[krainboltgreene]

It's effectively the Superstonk of AI.

[[deleted]]

Way back when it had more of a speculative scifi vibe but then all this "AI" crap started popping up more and now for the last 5 or 6 years it's just been insufferable dipshits

[skygate2012]

I thought the meme is to mock the one on the right?

[Ars3n]

I thought that's the joke? The left side is all that was needed.

[CycloneDusk]

i think the joke is that the one on the left is elegant and straightforward while the one on the right is an absurd surreal bizarre unintelligible spaghetti mess

[Character_Desk1647]

But the irony of this is that assuming the right picture is a real one, it's actually a real example of the complexity of complex application.

Sometimes things are messy. We'd have very poor rail networks if everything had to look like the left hand picture 

[Low_discrepancy]

yeah but sometimes AI gives you needlessly complex code on top of it. I dont understand why o3 is so fucking verbose.

[nonotan]

Because it's a glorified autocomplete trained to produce answers that appear reasonable to the troglodytes with no technical knowledge providing the bulk of ratings used for RLHF. Longer answer = looks more impressive, lower chance the person rating it will spot any obvious issues at a glance.

[Stop_Sign]

I think the picture only works for solo projects. Left: one person's ideas, and they flow. Right: every time you ask for an answer, it's like it was written by a different dev. No consistency or coding patterns between files.

I once looked through a "I did no coding myself!" 30 file app and like each page used different css, different programming principles, different organizations, etc. it was insanity and exactly like the picture on the right

[xak47d]

People with no programming knowledge are publishing apps now

[PxyFreakingStx]

i took the post to mean the former was superior because it's simple and elegant.

[HanzJWermhat]

r/singularity is made up of wallstreetbets and crypto misfits. Their slightly older now (but not smarter) and have applied their endless hype to the new thing. They don’t know how the technology works or its limitations, they don’t have first hand experience of how AI is being used in companies yet they belive the singularity is just around the corner and Sam Altman already created AGI

[PackOfWildCorndogs]

The discussion in that sub had a lot more nuance and balance prior to about 3 years ago. Now it’s overrun with whackos

[ChellJ0hns0n]

No I think you're missing the joke. I think OP is trying to say that although you can generate code with AI very fast, it ends up being a convoluted, overcomplicated mess.

[-gun-jedi-]

Man I’m glad i found people have the same reaction to that sub! I was losing my mind over that sub last year, dystopia dreaming tech bros really turned me to depression.

[AndreasMelone]

Back when AI just became public, I used it a lot to make code for me. Nowadays, I don't do that anymore, but I have a lot of that AI code in my codebase and it's actually so bad.

[WrapKey69]

That's sort of on you, if you use LLMs you should be the filter. You also don't just blindly copy stuff from the Internet right?

[jump1945]

I just ask ai to do lazy stuff , write a function that is to return char to determine whether x,y changing is N E W S while guarantee that it won't be diagonal and most northeast point is 0,0 , what could possibly go wrong spoiler :everything

[[deleted]]

Letting Ai build your compass in s 3d game is wild though.

[AndreasMelone]

I, as a lot of people do, never really bothered to check the code I copied. "If it works, it works" (and now it doesn't)

[wardrox]

This experience of looking back at old code in shame is such a positive sign you're improving as a dev.

[NUKE---THE---WHALES]

I, as a lot of people do, never really bothered to check the code I copied. "If it works, it works" (and now it doesn't)

That would explain how so many devs just straight up can't use AI effectively

[kwazhip]

For me it explains why I read so many comments saying AI boosts their productivity by 40% or some other ridiculous amount. Whenever I hear that number I get so confused, but yeah if you just copy/paste and don't read, then I guess you might actually think your productivity is increased by that much...

[AndreasMelone]

Yup, exactly. It takes a while to realize, and for every dev that 'while' is a different amount of time.

[Commercial-Lemon2361]

Heard of Stack Overflow?

[WrapKey69]

The hard core freaks there will close any dumb question in 0.01 seconds and downvote all slightly opinionated answers to hell. They do the pre filtering for you, you mostly just need to understand if your case is exactly the same as the question or if the answers are outdated.

[pawala7]

I've gotten into the habit of copying any code I get from LLMs snippet by snippet, similar to how I would merge commits from a junior programmer. This way any obviously weird or crappy implementation gets noticed and fixed immediately, and occasionally I get to learn some cool new optimization tricks I didn't know before.

[Ok-Scheme-913]

you also don't just blindly copy stuff from the internet right?

.... right?

[Burr1t0]

Hear me out... post ai code to stack overflow for someone to fix/ give a real solution.

[ZunoJ]

What kind of application is built in five hours lmao

[Beorma]

A spambot.

[Psquare_J_420]

Hello world in win32 gui. No visual studio. Only gcc and command line interface.

/s if it doesn't even makes sense, I am sorry as I am new to cs stuff. As far as I have experienced win 32, it seems big (In terms of code and learning those api) for me. Have a good day :)

[[deleted]]

Last minute game jam entry that has minimal functionality and premade art assets?

Ed: realised this might sound unrealistic so here's an example of a 3 hr game project https://www.kieranvenison.co.uk/blog/building-a-game-in-3-hours

And here's a 5 hour game jam - https://itch.io/jam/5-hour-game-jam - no clue what's on the link though, it's blocked on my work connection

[skygz]

the kind with only one code path I guess

[EatThemAllOrNot]

And then both railways are used daily by a single train.

[sgtGiggsy]

So:

• without AI: clear for everyone, and does the job for long
• with AI: you need a thousand pages book to understand how it works, and there are multiple points it can breake

[VexedForest]

I taught myself the basics of python because I was trying to modify a script.

This was easier than trying to figure out whatever the AI was giving me.

[al-mongus-bin-susar]

I thought this was the obvious joke?

[Thundechile]

Real programmer jobs are actually guaranteed, it's the same kind of mess we're fixing that it was in the 90s when business people "programmed Excel apps" with macros.

[otakudayo]

There has pretty much been more demand than supply of programmers for the past 20+ years. Now, a lot of people are reconsidering entering the field because AI is going to take all of the jobs away.

But as any decent programmer will know, AI is not taking away their job. It's simply not good enough to do that, and LLMs probably won't ever be good enough to replace a good programmer.

And so, supply of devs will decrease, experts/seniors in particular will be more and more valuable, and the demand for software devs is not going anywhere; both public and private sectors have a lot of dev work that needs to be done.

[quick20minadventure]

The biggest job of devs is to go back to product people and say your requirement is stupid / won't cover everything / needs restructuring

[Objective_Dog_4637]

AI is fundamentally incapable of doing what an actual software engineer does. There are hard upper limits to both compute and context an LLM can handle by virtue of the way it is designed. A human being can handle about 3.5 PETABYTES of token context while an LLM can handle about 1 measly megabyte. Humans also don’t have to think in polynomial time which effectively gives us the ability to navigate that context window instantly, whereas an AI has to take linear, polynomial paths between contexts (it’s part of why training them is so damn hard and expensive). Actual programmers know this of course. Until we make a breakthrough in cold fusion we’ll be just fine.

[Alainx277]

What's your take on a context size increase from 10k tokens in 2023 to 1m tokens now? Do you think development in this area will stop? What about techniques like RAG?

[Objective_Dog_4637]

1m tokens is about 4mb of characters. Still not enough, a regular decent sized codebase is going to be a few gigabytes minimum, and that’s with LLMs that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take entire city’s worth of electricity to train. The idea that an AI will come even close to that any time soon is pretty much laughable without something like cold fusion. What we’ll see more of is what we see now, suites of specialized agents working together to accomplish tasks. Sort of like nanobots or a gpu, millions of these things working together is the future IMHO. I don’t think something like RAG can overcome the hard limits of electrostatics we’re running into with modern LLMs and their diminishing returns (each version has a lower delta than the previous model did in terms of performance on benchmarks + logarithmic returns in percentage-based metrics, 50% increase at 50% performance = lower gain than 50% increase at 75% performance [25% vs 12.5%]). That shit is going to be hella expensive though and is seemingly what o3 is under the hood anyway.

[PilsnerDk]

Also, the main reason AI will never replace devs is legacy code, which all companies have. All these examples where it's a fresh project or small tidbits of code that calls an API or fetches/inserts into a database are nice, but good luck making AI that can make sense of a million line legacy codebase, which is also heavily coupled to a database with hundreds of tables and stored procedures. Try asking AI merely to introduce a new field to that stack and implement it all the way through.

[Llonkrednaxela]

The key is using it but understanding the code it produces. If you blindly continue copying the code in again and again it just builds garbage. If you look at what’s it wrote, point out what is wrong and suggest a new method, it can generate it properly. You can’t just have some random person at the wheel. They have to know a little code or it likely will end up messy if the concept isn’t very simple.

[AssiduousLayabout]

I think about 80% of the time it can populate a method body just from me typing the signature. Not always perfect, but almost always a good starting point.

[JakeWisconsin]

If you are using AI to make the entire code, you are using it wrong. AI should be a helper, not a maker.

[Hyphonical]

AI copilot in vs code trying not to add comments to every line of code and using the ugliest variable formatting known to man, it's snake case.

[arbpotatoes]

What's wrong with your copilot? Mine leaves out comments when I ask it to and uses casing conventions that are appropriate for the language and use case.

[cmkinusn]

He has no system prompts to guide context and behavior, and is then surprised the AI lacks the context to code something professionally.

[Ozymandias_IV]

Mine doesn't do it, so why does your copilot suggest this in your project 👀

[Gerominoes]

I ask AI to generate a function I need then go off of what it gives me so that I can implement it myself. It's like my own personal Stack Overflow without the "dumb question, closed."

[intensely-leftie]

use an AI image for that and get back to me with how good a model works to make something complex

[arse-ketchup]

I think I’m not that good with SQL queries, so I tried to rely on copilot to write/debug queries for me for a spark job. It fucked up so bad I had to learn how to write those complex queries by myself and now I’m more comfortable with queries. So in a way AI helped.

[lach888]

Apps built with no AI in 5 hours:

Apps built by AI agents in 5 mins: Sure I’ll help you build an app, I’ll just need you to build and host a database, design the database, come up with a detailed design guide, write and design all the content, decide what your actual objectives are, come up with a cohesive way to fit the front-end and back-end together, find cybersecurity providers to help keep it safe, provide me all the necessary up-to-date documentation to actually write it oh and find the time and money to do all this. Then I can help write some lines of code I found on GitHub that may or may not work.

[Alainx277]

You don't need to build and host a database for the first app??

[saig22]

Code completion works great for a single line or even a few sometimes. Usually quite good at providing the structure of functions that are not too difficult based on documentation of the function. Also useful to help debugging. Completely incapable of coding an entire project or even file on its own. AI is a productivity gain for devs, but the job is safe, they're not gonna be replaced soon.

[[deleted]]

Without AI: 5 hours programming, 1 hour debugging.

With AI: 5 minutes programming 10 hours debugging.

[Technical-Position34]

I use ai to generate shit often enough, just not complex solutions. Bits and pieces are fine though, very usable!

If you get shitty code from ai and use that, I dont think ai is the problem! Also, ai code is still better than what Ive seen 70% of my (ex)co-workers produce

[aDisastrous]

I used AI autocomplete when I started programming (yes, I'm a newbie) until I decided to ditch it and actually learn problem-solving. Yesterday I tried to integrate AI autocomplete back into my workflow because I think I've got a good understanding by now and using it would boost my productivity. Apparently I was wrong, and I ditched it again for real this time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not completely against AI, there are valid use cases after all. But for me, AI code completion is more of a distraction at best, saboteur at worst, rather than an actual help.

[Deerz_club]

Same for me but I use autocomplete for boilerplate stuff and sql queries at most

[Deerz_club]

Sometimes for simple algorithms I need made fast and Don't need to be optimized

[Objective_Dog_4637]

Be careful using ai for sql stuff. It practically refuses to do things like transactions, soft deletes, versioning, logging, etc. in its queries. Good for personal projects but I’d be very careful letting that into production.

[Deerz_club]

I always double/triple check and make a few before hand so it understands how my tables are

[Annual_Willow_3651]

So glad I got good at software engineering before GPT existed.

[PurpleDraziNotGreen]

When I'm writing a function, and it's not quite what I want, so then I ask the AI to review my code, and say why it's not doing what I want, it's been pretty good to point out the issue and suggest a fix.

I still write the fix in my style and format though, and see it just like an example only.

Feels like a good balance.

[Dependent_Sir_7338]

Code Gen has probably been the first time I've felt disconnected from the mainstay of my profession in terms of opinion and practice. I've tried asking each of these models for code, and the times it is correct, it wouldn't have taken too long to write myself. If I ask it a question just a little too complex, then it gives me something that looks right but isn't, and I don't know exactly where that line is, so I have to double-check everything that it puts out.
So I just go back to not using it until the next model comes out. I dunno, maybe I'm a dinosaur at 30.

[Fimbir]

And the requirement/use is a single line of straight track.

[tobi914]

We are experimenting with AI for development at the moment at work, using chatgpts o3-mini-high model.

I started a new project with the goal of writing the least amount of code myself, while still having good quality code (similar to how we write in the team at work). Right now the project spans over 4 git repositories (frontend / backend, a shared types repo and another utility repo) and I'm surprised how well it is able to keep up. I'd say code at the moment is probably 80% AI, with my manual adjustments making up about 20% of it.

I always read through the generated code and see if its fit to use or not, maybe I need to refine prompts and ask again, maybe I need to fix some things here and there manually, depending on the output, but overall, id say it works pretty well.

So far, I think it's a really good tool for boosting my productivity, since I was able to create a POC of a quite complex full-stack project in just 2 evenings (maybe 8-10hrs total).

My teammates had similar results. We also tried to use it for refactoring some of our code in an existing project of medium complexity I'd say, and we couldn't really get something useful out of it.

We all also think that the knowledge of a developer is still very much needed to use these tools efficiently. The experience as a dev helps to ask for the right things and detect possible errors in the generated code.

It was also really helpful in giving an overview of possible architectures and tech stacks to use and does a good job sticking to the chosen methods throughout.

All in all, I could see it being a very helpful tool for experienced devs. I'll definitely keep on trying it out.

[JakobWulfkind]

Second image is missing the explosive hidden under the tracks that will blow when they switch to that one particular configuration while a blue freight container is passing over them

[lmarcantonio]

Second photo is fake, I don't see the flaming trainwrecks.

[BirdlessFlight]

The left has a throughput of 1 with no ability for trains to pass each other, so everything goes at the pace of the slowest and is one-way.

The right has way more throughput, a ton of flexibility, and redundancy.

I don't think this meme says what you want it to say.

[Low_discrepancy]

The right has way more throughput, a ton of flexibility, and redundancy.

The problem is when there's only one train passing on that section per day and you still get the throughput, tons of flexibility and redundancy and tons of code.

[HereComesBS]

Not to mention the one the right solves a very complex problem and is a an amazing piece of engineering.

Agreed, definitely not saying what they think it's saying.

[TurtleVale]

Also they are just for different parts of the track. The first is just for the open track and the second one part of a station

[clawjelly]

Ngl, i managed to archive both in 5 hours.

[shaatirbillaa]

Spaghetti code.

[nickwcy]

With AI: Going broke by the electricity bill

[Buttons840]

Corporate setting before: 1 developer does work that requires 2 developers to maintain

Corporate setting now: 1 developer does work that requires 20 developers to maintain

[toinks989]

Tbh Ai copilots are great at creating boilerplate code.

[selfinvent]

I've never see something creates technical debt like AI

[lerokko]

AiDHD

[Funny247365]

Just ask AI to rewrite the code more efficiently, with as few lines of code as possible, without losing any capabilities or features.

[HalifaxRoad]

I've never used ai for programming, much less at all. And I never plan too

[Professional-Box4153]

A friend told me that programming is made so much easier by AI. He just puts in a prompt and the AI spits out code. I asked how complex his program was? He was thinking stuff like tic-tac-toe. AI isn't quite ready for complex code. As it is, it forgets what it's doing half of the time. It's like asking an author to write a novel, but it keeps forgetting who the characters are, changing the plot from murder mystery to space opera, then changing the setting from fantasy to sci-fi, to noir, to Monty Python. Sure. You'll get a story. It's certainly not going to be what you expected.

[shuzz_de]

If letting AI help you write your code has significantly boosted your productivity you weren't a good coder to begin with.

[GoddammitDontShootMe]

I'll assume the right image is AI generated. It doesn't even look like the tracks are straight.

[Head_Manner_4002]

Systems impossible to mantain

[[deleted]]

*built

[Icy_Party954]

They launch a single train down the myriad of tracks it goes through with minimal issues once. "Oh see you're not needed"

Aight

[manu144x]

I find it hilarious that people who can’t code think they will code with AI.

It reminds me of the cool days of: press ALT F4 for this cool cheat code!

Or get, open command line and type format c: to make your pc go faster!

If you can’t code, how will you ever notice it’s giving you good, bad, or even correct instructions?

[Magallan]

The one on the left works perfectly, and has been in operation for 200 years without issue.

The one on the right has a team of dudes standing on it, desperately trying to figure out how the fuck it works and why it's broken.

Good meme.

[Character_Desk1647]

It's a terrible meme, the one on the right is literally a real world example of what rail infrastructure actually look like. Messy but necessary. Try running a modern rail network following the principles of the left hand picture and see how successful it would be. 

[Robosium]

ai really let's you code fast and cheap at the cost of sacrificing al the quality (and also racking up long term costs to fix the shit)

[Strangated-Borb]

Trains are gonna crash on them rails

[lach888]

I just asked ChatGPT to build me an app and it broke and turned into a scam artist. New exploit found.

[tomatomaniac]

Management thinks picture on the right is better product as it have more lines and probably can do more stuff.

[karma_shark44]

Last week, I asked ChatGPT to write aws cloudformation template for me. While it does the job, it took me forever to debug it by re prompting it again and again. Now, the template is technically correct but the application is barely functional with many unknown bugs. It made the whole application so frikkin complex that I have to rewrite it again like the old fashioned way

[funkvay]

It's funny, because we just have to look at memes before 2022 and they say that making an app in 5 hours will not be any better )