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Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

(blog.miguelgrinberg.com)
399 points nomdep | 5 comments | 17 Jun 25 00:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.61s | source
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waprin ◴[17 Jun 25 01:48 UTC] No.44295040[source]▶
To some degree, traditional coding and AI coding are not the same thing, so it's not surprising that some people are better at one than the other. The author is basically saying that he's much better at coding than AI coding.

But it's important to realize that AI coding is itself a skill that you can develop. It's not just , pick the best tool and let it go. Managing prompts and managing context has a much higher skill ceiling than many people realize. You might prefer manual coding, but you might just be bad at AI coding and you might prefer it if you improved at it.

With that said, I'm still very skeptical of letting the AI drive the majority of the software work, despite meeting people who swear it works. I personally am currently preferring "let the AI do most of the grunt work but get good at managing it and shepherding the high level software design".

It's a tiny bit like drawing vs photography and if you look through that lens it's obvious that many drawers might not like photography.

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dingnuts ◴[17 Jun 25 02:01 UTC] No.44295112[source]▶
> You might prefer manual coding, but you might just be bad at AI coding and you might prefer it if you improved at it.

ok but how much am I supposed to spend before I supposedly just "get good"? Because based on the free trials and the pocket change I've spent, I don't consider the ROI worth it.

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stray ◴[17 Jun 25 02:10 UTC] No.44295163[source]▶
You're going to spend a little over $1k to ramp up your skills with AI-aided coding. It's dirt cheap in the grand scheme of things.
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asciimov ◴[17 Jun 25 03:22 UTC] No.44295456[source]▶
How are those without that kind of scratch supposed to keep up with those that do?
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1. throwawaysleep ◴[17 Jun 25 03:40 UTC] No.44295553[source]▶
If you lack "that kind of scratch", you are at the learning stage for software development, not the keeping up stage. Either that or horribly underpaid.
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2. 15123123 ◴[17 Jun 25 03:50 UTC] No.44295601[source]▶
$100 per month for a SaaS is quite a lot outside of Western countries. People are not even spending that much on VPN or Password Manager.
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3. ◴[17 Jun 25 04:21 UTC] No.44295740[source]▶
4. bevr1337 ◴[17 Jun 25 04:26 UTC] No.44295762[source]▶
I recently had a coworker tell me he liked his last workplace because "we all spoke the same language." It was incredible how much he revealed about himself with what he thought was a simple fact about engineer culture. Your comment reminds me of that exchange.

- Employers, not employees, should provide workplace equipment or compensation for equipment. Don't buy bits for the shop, nails for the foreman, or Cursor for the tech lead.

- the workplace is not a meritocracy. People are not defined by their wealth.

- If $1,000 does not represent an appreciable amount of someone's assets, they are doing well in life. Approximately half of US citizens cannot afford rent if they lose a paycheck.

- Sometimes the money needs to go somewhere else. Got kids? Sick and in the hospital? Loan sharks? A pool full of sharks and they need a lot of food?

- Folks can have different priorities and it's as simple as that

We're (my employer) still unsure if new dev tooling is improving productivity. If we find out it was unhelpful, I'll be very glad I didn't lose my own money.

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5. swader999 ◴[18 Jun 25 00:14 UTC] No.44305389[source]▶
I agree with all this but the simple fact is that if you don't keep up you'll be out of a job faster than the rest of us. My strategy for being replaced by AI is to replace the company that replaces me. Software is getting trivial to implement, especially if you know how to specify it.