3d ago

Starting every coding task with a prompt

source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zachlloyd_anyone-else-having-a-hard-time-getting-their-activity-7333511252666662913-RK7g

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32 comments

One of the worst things about coding is having to pick apart someone else broken code.
So why the fuck would I want to accelerate my work to THAT point?
You know why designers and PMs like AI code? Because they don't know what the fuck they are doing, they dont have to try and stitch that junk into 15 years of legacy code and they dont have to debug that shit.
"Actually Darkard, I ran this request into GPT and it came back with this? It's only short and most of it has already been done here, so I think your story point estimate is wrong?"
Fuuuuuck oooooooffffffff
- It's okay, bro. Let it out.
  
  I just need Gareth to stop telling me that he knows how to code when he thinks a git push is what you do when you want grandpa's inheritance early.
- I’d much rather pick apart my own broken code.
- You know why designers and PMs like AI code? Because they don't know what the fuck they are doing,
  I just want to highlight this for any designers or PMs reading along.
  In the same breath, I want to invite my designer colleagues to try out this amazing designing script I wrote. It'll save them a ton of time, I bet. (This is sarcasm.)
  I actually respect the difficultly of designers jobs.
  Even while many of them don't respect the difficultly of mine.
  Oh well. I'll get paid either way, in the end, because this shit all breaks when it's done wrong.
- is having to pick apart someone else broken code.
  I agree, but also I do find that AI's broken code is generally waaay less annoying to pick apart than my colleagues' code. I'm not sure exactly why. Probably partly because it's better at commenting code and naming variables so it's easier to follow?
  I think also partly it's because reviewing other people's code is usually done during code review, where you can't just directly edit the code to fix it - you have to start a conversation convincing them to do it differently. That's quite annoying and doesn't happen with AI generated code.
  
  I still don't understand why we're using humans to review AI code. Shouldn't AIs be reviewing the code?
  We're letting AIs do the fun part (coding) and forcing humans to review (the worst part) reams more janky code.
  
  AI's get the fun part of everything right now. AI gets writing, humans get editing. AIs get drawing, humans get fixing hands and details, etc etc
  
  AI's aren't smart enough yet. But plenty of people are also using them to review code.
  
  What are the results if you take code written by one brand of ai and then have another brand of ai review it? Like use chatgpt to write code, and then ask copilot if the generated code has any errors and will work as intended?
  
  I don't know, if I put my hand in a fan and then put that mutilated hand into another brand of fan, do you think that might fix it?
  
  Interesting idea, I've never tried that. I feel like it wouldn't be a silver bullet but you might get slightly better results I guess.
  
  Huh, I feel the complete opposite. Human-written code follows some sort of causality, for example when you see complex code or a strange detail change, they had a reason to write that and they likely tried other solutions first. With AI-generated code it feels a lot more like I have to rate each changed line in isolation, which is exhausting.
  But yeah, I don't know, we don't typically do code reviews. I've only been in that situation so far, when I had significantly more knowledge of the project and language, so there were rarely discussions beyond trying to teach them.
  
  I'm not a programmer so i don't know if this makes sense, but I wonder if it's easier to retool ai code because ai code is janky in a similar-ish way most of the time, while human code is janky in different ways all the time? Whadda ya think?
  
  I disagree with the premise.
  AI is good at making things that LOOK right. Pictures. Words. Whatever. Actually makes errors harder to find IMO.
  
  Yeah definitely could be. I also think when AI gets things wrong it gets it so obviously wrong you have to delete it and do it yourself (and not worry about offending someone). It rarely seems to make the same kinds of trivial mistakes humans do (like copy/paste errors for example). It either does a pretty decent job that's easy to fix up, or it totally fails and you do it yourself.

32 comments