Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

(blog.miguelgrinberg.com)

399 points nomdep | 1 comments | 17 Jun 25 00:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.253s | source

Show context

marssaxman ◴[17 Jun 25 03:44 UTC] No.44295573[source]▶

So far as I can tell, generative AI coding tools make the easy part of the job go faster, without helping with the hard part of the job - in fact, possibly making it harder. Coding just doesn't take that much time, and I don't need help doing it. You could make my coding output 100x faster without materially changing my overall productivity, so I simply don't bother to optimize there.

replies(3): >>44295647 #>>44297849 #>>44299268 #

Jonovono ◴[17 Jun 25 04:01 UTC] No.44295647[source]▶

>>44295573 #

Are you a plumber perhaps?

replies(3): >>44295714 #>>44296394 #>>44300059 #

1. kevinventullo ◴[17 Jun 25 07:01 UTC] No.44296394[source]▶

>>44295647 #

I’m not sure I follow the question. I think of plumbing as being the exact kind of verbose boilerplate that LLM’s are quite good at automating.

In contrast, when I’m trying to do something truly novel, I might spend days with a pen and paper working out exactly what I want to do and maybe under an hour coding up the core logic.

On the latter type of work, I find LLM’s to be high variance with mostly negative ROI. I could probably improve the ROI by developing a better sense of what they are and aren’t good at, but of course that itself is rapidly changing!

↑