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Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

(blog.miguelgrinberg.com)
399 points nomdep | 2 comments | 17 Jun 25 00:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.476s | source
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socalgal2 ◴[17 Jun 25 05:48 UTC] No.44296080[source]▶
> Another common argument I've heard is that Generative AI is helpful when you need to write code in a language or technology you are not familiar with. To me this also makes little sense.

I'm not sure I get this one. When I'm learning new tech I almost always have questions. I used to google them. If I couldn't find an answer I might try posting on stack overflow. Sometimes as I'm typing the question their search would finally kick in and find the answer (similar questions). Other times I'd post the question, if it didn't get closed, maybe I'd get an answer a few hours or days later.

Now I just ask ChatGPT or Gemini and more often than not it gives me the answer. That alone and nothing else (agent modes, AI editing or generating files) is enough to increase my output. I get answers 10x faster than I used to. I'm not sure what that has to do with the point about learning. Getting answers to those question is learning, regardless of where the answer comes from.

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plasticeagle ◴[17 Jun 25 07:06 UTC] No.44296416[source]▶
ChatGPT and Gemini literally only know the answer because they read StackOverflow. Stack Overflow only exists because they have visitors.

What do you think will happen when everyone is using the AI tools to answer their questions? We'll be back in the world of Encyclopedias, in which central authorities spent large amounts of money manually collecting information and publishing it. And then they spent a good amount of time finding ways to sell that information to us, which was only fair because they spent all that time collating it. The internet pretty much destroyed that business model, and in some sense the AI "revolution" is trying to bring it back.

Also, he's specifically talking about having a coding tool write the code for you, he's not talking about using an AI tool to answer a question, so that you can go ahead and write the code yourself. These are different things, and he is treating them differently.

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1. Taylor_OD ◴[17 Jun 25 15:08 UTC] No.44300158[source]▶
> ChatGPT and Gemini literally only know the answer because they read StackOverflow. Stack Overflow only exists because they have visitors.

I mean... They also can read actual documentation. If I'm working on any api work or a language I'm not familiar with, I ask the LLM to include the source they got their answer from and use official documentation when possible.

That lowers the hallucination rate significantly and also lets me ensure said function or code actually does what the llm reports it does.

In theory, all stackoverflow answers are just regurgitated documentation, no?

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2. sothatsit ◴[17 Jun 25 15:40 UTC] No.44300468[source]▶
> I mean... They also can read actual documentation.

This 100%. I use o3 as my primary search engine now. It is brilliant at finding relevant sources, summarising what is relevant from them, and then also providing the links to those sources so I can go read them myself. The release of o3 was a turning point for me where it felt like these models could finally go and fetch information for themselves. 4o with web search always felt inadequate, but o3 does a very good job.

> In theory, all stackoverflow answers are just regurgitated documentation, no?

This is unfair to StackOverflow. There is a lot of debugging and problem solving that has happened on that platform of undocumented bugs or behaviour.