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0 pointsotabdeveloper47mo ago0 comments

I dunno, man. I think you could have spent that time, you know, learning to code instead.

0 comments

Sure. But it happens that I have 20 years of experience, and I know quite well how to code. Everything the LLM does for me I can do myself. But the LLM does that 100 times faster than me. Most of the days nowadays I push thousands of lines of code. And it's not garbage code, the LLMs write quite high quality code. Of course, I still have to go through the code and make sure it all makes sense. So I am still the bottleneck. At some point I will probably grown to trust the LLM, but I'm not quite there yet.

blks7mo ago

> Most of the days nowadays I push thousands of lines of code

Insane stuff. It’s clear you can’t review so much changes in a day, so you’re just flooding your code base with code that you barely read.

Or is your job just re-doing the same boilerplate over and over again?

credit_guy7mo ago

You are a bit quick to jump to conclusions. With LLMs, test driven development becomes both a necessity and a pleasure. The actual functional code I push in a day is probably in the low hundreds LOC’s. But I push a lot of tests too. And sure, lots of that is boilerplate. But the tests run, pass, and if anything have better coverage than when I was writing all the code myself.

otabdeveloper4OP7mo ago

If you have 20 years of experience, then you know that number of lines of codes is always inversely proportional to code quality.

> ...thousands of lines of code ... quite high quality

A contradiction in terms.

credit_guy7mo ago

Here’s an experiment for the two of us: we should both bookmark this page and revisit it one year from now. It is likely that at least one of us will see the world in a different way, or even both.

8note7mo ago

it is, mind you, exactly the same experience as working on a team with lots of junior engineers, and delegating work to them

gexla7mo ago

Wait a minute, you didn't just claim that we have reached AGI, right? I mean, that's what it would mean to delegate work to junior engineers, right? You're delegating work to human level intelligence. That's not what we have with LLMs.

credit_guy7mo ago

Yes and no. With junior developers you need to educate them. You need to do that with LLMs too. Maybe you need to break down the problem in smaller chunks, but you get to this after a while. But once the LLM understands the task, you get a few hundred lines of code in a mater of minutes. With a junior developer you are lucky if they come back the same day. The iteration speed with AI is simply in a different league.

Edit: it is Sunday. As I am relaxing, and spending time writing answers on HN, I keep a lazy eye on the progress of an LLM at work too. I got stuff done that would have taken me a few days of work by just clicking a "Continue" button now and then.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

credit_guy7mo ago

blks7mo ago

> Most of the days nowadays I push thousands of lines of code

Insane stuff. It’s clear you can’t review so much changes in a day, so you’re just flooding your code base with code that you barely read.

Or is your job just re-doing the same boilerplate over and over again?

credit_guy7mo ago

otabdeveloper4OP7mo ago

If you have 20 years of experience, then you know that number of lines of codes is always inversely proportional to code quality.

> ...thousands of lines of code ... quite high quality

A contradiction in terms.

credit_guy7mo ago

Here’s an experiment for the two of us: we should both bookmark this page and revisit it one year from now. It is likely that at least one of us will see the world in a different way, or even both.

8note7mo ago

it is, mind you, exactly the same experience as working on a team with lots of junior engineers, and delegating work to them

gexla7mo ago

credit_guy7mo ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse