Maybe it's just because both our industry as well as the internet always going to the extrema, but I'd love to see a nuanced take on the subject at some point.
My experience so far is middling; I found that it can be extremely helpful when working on novel things; greenfield projects it can lay a solid foundation for. If I'm learning some new framework it can shit out a first version that helps me understand how the thing works.
However, as soon as things get a bit more complex, they immediately start shitting the bed. Working in existing codebases of more than like 25 files and they become useless. Hell, even asking some models to document a 150 line batch install file made it hallucinate all kinds of stuff that didn't exist.
Furthermore, you really do have to talk to them like they're autistic idiot-savants. Precise steps, boundaries, everything. But even then they often just go off into the deep end. Even when I explicitly tell it to do one thing, one thing only and not change anything else, over 50% of the time it starts changing everything.
It's another tool, and like with all tools you need to know how and when to use it, I guess. As an industry we're not going to finger out the right ways if half the world refuses to use a powerdrill because well gosh darn it, hammers have always been good enough, and the other half swears up and down you don't need cement anymore because you could just as easily screw bricks together.
nopelynopington · 1h ago
I had a fun day with replit yesterday. I signed up to try it out after someone at work mentioned it.
I gave it a really simple challenge: a note taking app. Allow the user to write a sentence of plain text, and add it to an array with a time stamp. Show the text on screen. Save it in local storage.
I could hand code this in about ten minutes.
Replit went off and built a truly impressive UI that looked like something that would take me a couple of evenings to pull together. It was professional and polished, but it didn't work. Hitting enter to add the item did nothing.
I chatted to it and explained. It confidently did a few revisions but didn't fix it.
It started adding logging and asked me to paste in the logs. After each subsequent paste it would say some variation of "ah I see the problem" and revise again.
After the third time, I didn't reply with the console logs and instead suggested we change tack. Replit completely ignored my input and carried on talking as if I was following instructions "yes I see the issue now, ok I've fixed it"
It was just a string of hallucinations, pretending to take user input but it fact not doing so. In the end I started asking it completely off topic questions but it had an imaginary convo with me instead. I gave up.
I've had much more success with non agentic LLMs like Gemini or Claude but they all are great at the initial response and slowly degrade add the conversation continues
Corazon-md · 3h ago
Ok
cranberryturkey · 11h ago
I've been a software engineer for over 30 years and I have to say using AI and vibe coding has made me a 10x programmer. It's all about prompting and debugging, knowing how to fix issues is still a necessary skill and how to build/architect things from a prompt perspective. I've released 8 npm modules in the past 2 weeks alone just for some silly stuff I was using.
pjmlp · 2h ago
Coding since 1986, and what I see is the dream of CASE tooling finally coming true, eventually as AI matures, assuming we aren't getting through yet another AI cycle that will stabilize until the next wave, I see ourselves writing requirements documents in a UML kind of way (in spirit, doesn't need to be boxes and arrows) for AI minions to actually do the work with one third of current team sizes.
The other two thirds can search for something else, just like the factory workers when robots took over most factory roles.
The remaining one third, are the folks doing the jobs robots can't yet do, or doing their maintenance.
Software factories are no different from physical ones, in this regard, a few iluminaries will be able to profit from AI, everyone else needs to re-train themselves.
brvier · 3h ago
Maybe there was no need for 8 more npm modules ... is_odd ...
mmcromp · 3h ago
Finally the treadmill of endlessly reinventing JavaScript frameworks and libraries is available for us Joe Schmoes too.
maksimur · 2h ago
How do you know? I'd have to see those modules first to have an opinion.
anonzzzies · 1h ago
They said 'maybe'. I'm gonna say they are right, because there is no need for 99%+ of npm modules (and indeed, by far most are not used by anyone except the org author). Especially with AI, most npms are trivially generated faster than you can find and install them and usually less influenced/opinionated by the usually terrible star vying programmer that uploaded it in the first place. If AI trivially generates your npm (so you can make 4 per week next to whatever you were doing), why would I need it instead of having AI trivially generating a specific (without the features I don't need) version for what I am doing at the moment?
My experience so far is middling; I found that it can be extremely helpful when working on novel things; greenfield projects it can lay a solid foundation for. If I'm learning some new framework it can shit out a first version that helps me understand how the thing works.
However, as soon as things get a bit more complex, they immediately start shitting the bed. Working in existing codebases of more than like 25 files and they become useless. Hell, even asking some models to document a 150 line batch install file made it hallucinate all kinds of stuff that didn't exist.
Furthermore, you really do have to talk to them like they're autistic idiot-savants. Precise steps, boundaries, everything. But even then they often just go off into the deep end. Even when I explicitly tell it to do one thing, one thing only and not change anything else, over 50% of the time it starts changing everything.
It's another tool, and like with all tools you need to know how and when to use it, I guess. As an industry we're not going to finger out the right ways if half the world refuses to use a powerdrill because well gosh darn it, hammers have always been good enough, and the other half swears up and down you don't need cement anymore because you could just as easily screw bricks together.
I gave it a really simple challenge: a note taking app. Allow the user to write a sentence of plain text, and add it to an array with a time stamp. Show the text on screen. Save it in local storage.
I could hand code this in about ten minutes.
Replit went off and built a truly impressive UI that looked like something that would take me a couple of evenings to pull together. It was professional and polished, but it didn't work. Hitting enter to add the item did nothing.
I chatted to it and explained. It confidently did a few revisions but didn't fix it.
It started adding logging and asked me to paste in the logs. After each subsequent paste it would say some variation of "ah I see the problem" and revise again.
After the third time, I didn't reply with the console logs and instead suggested we change tack. Replit completely ignored my input and carried on talking as if I was following instructions "yes I see the issue now, ok I've fixed it"
It was just a string of hallucinations, pretending to take user input but it fact not doing so. In the end I started asking it completely off topic questions but it had an imaginary convo with me instead. I gave up.
I've had much more success with non agentic LLMs like Gemini or Claude but they all are great at the initial response and slowly degrade add the conversation continues
The other two thirds can search for something else, just like the factory workers when robots took over most factory roles.
The remaining one third, are the folks doing the jobs robots can't yet do, or doing their maintenance.
Software factories are no different from physical ones, in this regard, a few iluminaries will be able to profit from AI, everyone else needs to re-train themselves.