With proper prompting you can let it do a lot of annoying stuff like refactors reasonably well. With a very strict linter you can avoid the most stupid mistakes and shortcuts. If I work on a more complex PR it can take me a couple days to plan it correctly and the actual implementation of the correct plan will take no time at all.
I think for small bug fixes on a maintainable codebase it works, and it works for writing plans and then implementing them. But I honestly don’t know if it’s any faster than just writing the code myself, it‘s just different.
hmm not in my experience, if you don’t care about code-quality you can quickly prototype slop, and see if it generally works, but maintainable code? I always fall back to manual coding, and often my code is like 30% of the length of what AI generates, more readable, efficient etc.
If you constrain it a lot, it might work reasonably, but then I often think, that instead of writing a multi-paragraph prompt, just writing the code might’ve been more effective (long-term that is).
plan it correctly and the actual implementation of the correct plan will take no time at all.
That’s why I don’t think AI really helps that much, because you still have to think and understand (at least if you value your product/code), and that’s what takes the most time, not typing etc.
it‘s just different.
Yeah it makes you dumber, because you’re tempted to not think into the problem, and reviewing code is less effective in understanding what is going on within code (IME, although I think especially nowadays it’s a valuable skill to be able to review quickly and effectively).
Eh I don’t disagree with you, it’s just the reality for me that I am now expected to work on much more stuff at the same time because of AI, it’s exhausting but at least in my job I have no choice and I try to arrange myself with the situation.
I sure lost a lot of understanding of the details of the codebase but I do read every line of code these LLMs spit out and manually review all PRs for obvious bullshit. I also think code quality got worse despite me doing everything I can to keep it decent.
With proper prompting you can let it do a lot of annoying stuff like refactors reasonably well. With a very strict linter you can avoid the most stupid mistakes and shortcuts. If I work on a more complex PR it can take me a couple days to plan it correctly and the actual implementation of the correct plan will take no time at all.
I think for small bug fixes on a maintainable codebase it works, and it works for writing plans and then implementing them. But I honestly don’t know if it’s any faster than just writing the code myself, it‘s just different.
hmm not in my experience, if you don’t care about code-quality you can quickly prototype slop, and see if it generally works, but maintainable code? I always fall back to manual coding, and often my code is like 30% of the length of what AI generates, more readable, efficient etc.
If you constrain it a lot, it might work reasonably, but then I often think, that instead of writing a multi-paragraph prompt, just writing the code might’ve been more effective (long-term that is).
That’s why I don’t think AI really helps that much, because you still have to think and understand (at least if you value your product/code), and that’s what takes the most time, not typing etc.
Yeah it makes you dumber, because you’re tempted to not think into the problem, and reviewing code is less effective in understanding what is going on within code (IME, although I think especially nowadays it’s a valuable skill to be able to review quickly and effectively).
Eh I don’t disagree with you, it’s just the reality for me that I am now expected to work on much more stuff at the same time because of AI, it’s exhausting but at least in my job I have no choice and I try to arrange myself with the situation.
I sure lost a lot of understanding of the details of the codebase but I do read every line of code these LLMs spit out and manually review all PRs for obvious bullshit. I also think code quality got worse despite me doing everything I can to keep it decent.