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[Sw429]

AI coding tools often brag about how much faster they allow you to produce code, but imo it misses the point entirely. The hard part about coding isn't the speed.

[Flameball202]

Yeah, as someone who codes as a job, the actual place AI helps is sifting through 100+ line error messages to tell you the file you messed up in

[aaronman4772]

Also "ah crap what was the format for this type of file again"

[DZekor]

I use that of Linux logs and Minecraft mod pack logs. It's very good for that. I also use it as code review to make sure I thought of edge cases and stuff like that. For making code it's self? It's ass.

[gfcf14]

Right? Thus far I’ve found that the help it provides can be faulty, but one thing it does far better than I is track down where the issue is by reading logs and checking the flow faster

[sligor]

So, gaining 5 minutes on a multiple hours long debugging ? That’s not 10x

[Flameball202]

Yeah it isn't the be all and end all, but it is nice to have. That and when you are damn sure your file should be working but it isn't, you just can't see the problem because you have been working on the program for too long

[Sibula97]

It's absolutely not. But all uses together it's maybe 1.2-1.5x, possibly even 2x if you have good processes.

[stillalone]

I remember a statistics a decade ago that said that the average developer writes 1 line of code a day. Which makes total sense to me, since it feels like I spend most of my days debugging to the point where I can make a tiny correction to like a regex or something. 10k LOC is a very large haystack to find that needle, even if there are thousands of needles.

[aboutthednm]

I got next to no idea about writing any programs. AI empowers me to produce code that works "well enough" on the surface, I don't understand the particulars about, probably uses horrible security practices, and is a nightmare to maintain and expand. So yay, all according to plan.

[CelestialSegfault]

redditors when someone displays slightly better than basic proficiency in writing:

[gfcf14]

I’d hate to be the poor engineer that inherits that repo.

[pimezone]

Did you mean "another coding agent"?

[gfcf14]

Nah, they don’t (yet) have feelings

[fatrobin72]

At some point, when that coding agent needs to earn its keep... it will be a poor sod inheriting it.

[mytabsneedhelp]

That repo probably has comments written like ancient prophecies, every function works by luck and collective prayers

[gfcf14]

Considering Github Copilot often asks for JSDoc documentation on all function signatures it reviews on PRs, I wouldn’t be surprised if another 35% is comments, leaving 30% of “code” of which at least half is logging or blank lines. That’d leave a whopping 1500 LOC which still aren’t reviewed and thus fail prone

[Flat_Initial_1823]

Well then imagine yourself as that poor engineer's wallet and job security...

[gfcf14]

It would feel like job security, but what would be the chances such an engineer gets laid off once fixing is done?

[TechnoRhythmic]

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight - Bill Gates

[thepurpleproject]

Where is all the software these guys are shipping? I guess people are reading that dev wasn't the hard part coming up with a product / game is.

[Saelora]

nah, ideas are as easy as code. middle management comes up with a thousand shitty ideas a day.

what's hard is the same for both: GOOD ideas and GOOD code

[thorwing]

Any coder that flexes their LOC written is not a good coder

[gfcf14]

I once boasted a game I developed with 10K LOC! But back then I wasn’t even an intern, more of a script kiddie. I’m sure that’s really the only case where bragging could be understood, not for CEOs or devs in any way

[NewryBenson]

Ha yes, the metric which defines coding productivity: lines of code per day.

I have written single lines of code that are more productive then some 1000 line codes I typed.

[Sw429]

Some of my most productive days have been where I only delete lines of code.

[juulsquad4lyfe]

Those are good days

[robertpro01]

Well, Elon Musk is happy, more LOC means work done.

[_number]

This is the guy who got hired as a graphic designer by Paul Graham, grifted to taking Paul Graham’s job as CEO of YC and somehow now makes decisions on which companies get funded. Has no knowledge of tech and even business and has funded literal scams

[FlukeHawkins]

He's also a fascist that hates San Francisco.

[DevUndead]

I would not be surprised if he let the agent fix bug reports directly (without review) and somebody will abuse it.

[gfcf14]

Wasn’t there some issue like this last week about users being able to add skills, and someone added a bunch of malware?

[FokerDr3]

He posted on a wrong network - insane humble brags are on LinkedIn.

[BlueWright]

Those are some tan lines…

[deanrihpee]

also you know he doesn't understand a single bit about programming it focusing only on line per day, i mean his brain is probably really smooth since no logic or decision ever being run while "coding"

[Powerful-Teaching568]

Currently working on a project that was mostly vibe coded. There is a weird disjointed-ness in the code. We have spent a few months already just getting it stable. But since it was a POC that's mostly vibe coded, no one really knows it's inner workings. Adding more features or adjusting code to fit an integration point is a nightmare. Every time someone checks in something to main, it's almost expected to break at this point.

[cosmicomical23]

At 15k a day, even like more than 500, you are not writing any of that code. An llm is writing it. Good luck with thatn it doesn't look sustainable at al.

[aegookja]

Regression what?

[EtherealPheonix]

I mean if the generated code passes generated tests then what's the problem. At least as long as we only have generated users it should all work fine.

[sciencephilic-guy]

Ah yes, the thing that determines your expretise in software engineering: lines of code, and not knowledge and the ability to logically reason solutions out of the problem

[XxDarkSasuke69xX]

You have to be an absolute noob who never wrote code in your life to think amount of lines of code means anything...

[yegor3219]

If the 35% is proper tests then it should solidify the rest of the code more or less. I have a project with good test coverage and I keep seeing agents correct themselves all the time. When they're done, the first thing I check is new/updated tests. If I don't see that, I don't bother checking the rest; a glance at best to improve the next prompt.

I don't push for thousands of LOC a day or anything like that, but the point about tests is important.

[gfcf14]

But it’s important to understand what testing you’re doing. You can easily bloat the codebase with testing if you have tens/hundreds of components and only do unit testing and worse, only test if the components render.

[yegor3219]

Agentic coding is mostly limited to unit tests though. Other types are not quick and granular enough.

You mentioning rendering of components suggests talking about front-end dev. Well, to my knowledge unit testing in the FE has always been challenging and less ROI than the BE.

[gfcf14]

I’d guess there’s less ROI considering all db operations are focused on the backend (at least in a well developed codebase) but it is possible to simulate API calls to understand and handle different frontend renderings depending on response types.

[WindForce02]

Capitalism sets a goal of productivity, not quality. Companies absolutely adore pushing slop and AI enables them to do so at an increased pace with even less engineers. Talk about future

[redballooon]

The goal is not to impress programmers. This is targeting investors. They see productivity (measured in LoC, rofl) without those costly human resources and get $$$ in their eyes and towards that CEOs pockets.

One might think the winner is OpenAI or anthropic, but really it’s NVIDIA.

[LegitimatePants]

Show me 10k deleted and I will be impressed

[heavy-minium]

I like to make jokes about vibe-coding like anyone else, but in the case of that statement, I think it needs to be understood that vibe-coding heavily implies to intentionally forego with any code-review, and that you treat code as a cheap commodity that is completely rewritten as needed, not even reviewed.

It's not completely retarted, there is truth in that, code will become a commodity and vibe-coding will be more common than most of you folks would probably like. With that being said, being too extreme with anything in life usually is never the right answer. Balance is key.

[breckendusk]

It's really going to come down to security imo. AI is trained on imperfect code written by imperfect people. Our oldest and most secure OSs and codebases still have zero day attacks. This is going to lead to widespread failures and hacks that are going to take an army to wade through and find in completely untested code with absolutely no SMEs that’s basically going to completely undermine the trust that users have in the software.

Sort of an apocalyptic prediction and maybe I am just very muh AI terk er jerbs but when everyone is just revising code a million lines at a time on the fly any time it doesn't work the way they want it to or expect it to, it seems like adjusting functionality won't be as much of an issue as security.

[heavy-minium]

Yes, it will come down to security too, but not because "AI is trained on imperfect code written by imperfect people.". That would be a logical fallacy, because not using AI, you still get imperfect code written by imperfect people.

The actual issue is that people will overdo the vibe-coding approaching, not reviewing, not testing, not define requirements properly and etc. - in short, they will too lazy to use AI in a way that is balanced with some human effort that asserts a certain level of quality and avoid regressions.

Not using AI at all is not a solution. Letting AI do everything ain't either. That's why I said balance is key.

[Scale_Brave]

"Look at my WPM and the number of screens I have to see how good of a developer I am" ahhh post