[HN Gopher] Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches
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Use AI code tools as collaborators, not crutches
Author : adityaoberai1
Score : 65 points
Date : 2025-05-30 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsletter.oberai.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.oberai.dev)
| adityaoberai1 wrote:
| Frustrated with the generated code slop being heralded by tech
| social media as the next "coming" for developers, I've written a
| piece on my frustrations with "vibe coding" and what steps
| beginners in tech should take in a world of AI-assisted software
| development.
| quantadev wrote:
| Experienced senior developers can spot and fix the slop
| instantly, while still getting a 30x productivity gain, while
| entry level or junior devs basically only have one "Filter" by
| which they determine code quality which is: "Does the code seem
| to work?".
|
| Unfortunately "Slop" will appear to work enough of the time to
| fool a Junior.
|
| Also the reason Junior devs get "slop" is because their prompts
| are "slop". They don't know all the right terminologies for
| things, nor do they even have the writing/language skills
| necessary for good prompting.
|
| EDIT: Due to everyone checking my math I corrected this to 30x,
| as what's provable, from past experience.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Whenever I can't just sit down and bash out code, it's because
| the design is wrong. These models are bad at design. I don't
| see where your 30x-50x could possibly come from.
| skydhash wrote:
| Most of the times, the only reason I have the code open is to
| read it. If not for the huge amount of code, I could just
| print it out and go on my sofa.
|
| If I'm dealing with a difficult to implement algorithm, a
| whiteboard is a better help than bashing out code.
| khuey wrote:
| I've worked with some pretty smart people in my career and I've
| never met anyone who could do "instant" code review.
| skydhash wrote:
| Actual code review is very slow. More often than not, you
| just looking for glaring mistakes, not that the code actually
| respect the specifications. Which results in the LGTM
| comment. Because you trust the other person's experience. In
| very critical system, change is very slow to get in.
| dambi0 wrote:
| Ruling out or refining an approach on the grounds it's
| unlikely to lead to a suitable outcome (fixing and removing
| slop) is not the same as saying this code or approach
| represents a good enough outcome given what we currently know
| about the constraints of the problem (code review)
| quantadev wrote:
| The "instant" to which you refer was meaning that I can tell
| instantly if the LLM generated what I wanted or not.
|
| That doesn't mean it's reviewed, it means I'm accepting it to
| _BE_ what I go with and ultimately review.
| solumunus wrote:
| > getting a 30x to 50x productivity gain
|
| That is an absurd claim.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| If you get a 30x gain then you're a 0.05x developer.
|
| a 50x gain would literally mean you could get a year's worth
| of work done in a week. Preposterous.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| Bad/dumb developers don't get much of a boost in my
| experience working with a plethora of shitty contractors.
| Good developers aren't getting a 30x boost I don't think,
| but they are getting more out of the tooling than bad
| developers.
|
| The bottleneck is still finding good developers, even with
| the current generation of AI tooling in play.
| quantadev wrote:
| One good prompt into Github Copilot 'Agent Mode' (running
| Claude 4) asking for a new feature can often result in up
| to 5 to 7 files being generated, and a total of 1000 lines
| of code being written. Your math is wrong. That's hours of
| work I didn't do, that only took me the time of describing
| the new feature with a paragraph of text.
| prmph wrote:
| It's ridiculous to equate lines of code to amount of
| engineering work or value.
|
| A massive amount of valuable work can result in a few
| lines of code. Conversely a millions lines of code can be
| useless or even have negative value.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| 30x productivity gain? gtfo of here.
|
| Most things I try to use it for, it has so many problems with
| its output that at most I get a 50% productivity gain after
| fixing everything.
|
| I'm already super efficient at editing text with neovim so
| honestly for some tasks I end up with a productivity loss.
| quantadev wrote:
| I can easily get a month of work done in a single day yes. So
| probably the 30x is about the current max, and 50x was
| hyperbole, because I didn't add it up before doing that post.
| prmph wrote:
| I just don't believe this. It's weird; I just don't know
| where folks are getting these extreme productivity gains
| from.
|
| For example, the other day I asked a major LLMs to generate
| a simple markdown viewer with automatic section indentation
| for me in Node.js. The basic code worked after a few
| additional prompts from me.
|
| Now I wanted folding. That was also done by the LLM. And
| then when I tried to add a few additional simples features,
| things fell apart. There were one or two seemingly simple
| runtime errors that the LLM was unable to fix after almost
| 10 tries.
|
| I could fix it if I started digging inside the code, but
| then the productivity gains would start to slip away.
| codr7 wrote:
| 30x-50x :)
|
| Right, if you're getting that, experienced senior is a pretty
| wild stretch.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >while entry level or junior devs basically only have one
| "Filter" by which they determine code quality which is: "Does
| the code seem to work?".
|
| Based on my general experience with software over the last...30
| years, most places must only have entry level and junior devs.
| Somehow despite 30 years of hardware improvement, basic
| software apps are still as clunky and slow as their '90s
| counterparts.
| quantadev wrote:
| The only thing more reckless than a junior is an LLM-
| empowered junior.
| marcusestes wrote:
| Appreciate this. But.
|
| Do whatever you want. That's an option too.
|
| Make a dumb thing, take your hands off the wheel, have fun. It's
| your computer.
| ianpenney wrote:
| The problem experienced folks are worried about is not
| concerning what kids do in their basement with the 'puter they
| got for Christmas.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| that's clearly not the danger. make a dumb thing that takes
| user input (including PII or maybe other protected data), then
| put it online and charge people to use it without vetting it
| for security? No, let's not encourage that.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Unfortunately, no, not when you are dealing with user data. You
| don't own that and you don't deserve to be reckless with it
| just because you're paying for the hardware and bandwidth.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Make a dumb thing, take your hands off the wheel, have fun
|
| This is why we need licensing for software developers:
|
| When you're building a service that has actual users, with
| actual data, and tangible consequences when it fails, "take
| your hands off the wheel, have fun" is fundamentally dangerous.
|
| Or, to put it differently: It's totally fine for some kids to
| build a treehouse. They might even get hurt. But, when it comes
| to dams and bridges, there is a reason why the people who
| design those need to get a license.
| jajko wrote:
| Projects just for you or some very, very limited set of lets
| say your close friends? Sure, who cares.
|
| For folks actually workibg in companies handling various data
| that dont belong to them? Oh god, please no, thats a horrible
| advice.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| I like how every reply to you is the same, nuance doesn't
| exist, and we're all working on missile guidance systems and
| pacemaker firmware.
|
| There's such a wide range of software. There's plenty of space
| for an amateur to do some creative vibe coding. What's the
| point of the scolding and hand wringing?
| dlivingston wrote:
| People are conflating vibe coding for personal/hobbyist
| projects and vibe coding for production.
|
| Evergreen tweet: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2659979-no-
| bitch-dats-a-whol...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Given the fact that the post mentions an actual company
| with actual users that was seemingly vibe coded, I don't
| think anyone pointing out that this is reckless is
| conflating anything here. It seems like some are better
| than others at reading from context though, clearly.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Much like taking your hands off the wheel in a car, it's all
| fun and games and your choice until you crash into someone
| else.
| blablablerg wrote:
| Nice vibe writing.
| Animats wrote:
| Articles like this make one think of John Henry vs. the steam
| drill. John Henry beat the steam drill, once, and died. Soon,
| there was a better steam drill.
|
| "Vibe coding" is only a few months old. ChatGPT was released less
| than three years ago. The singularity is just getting started.
|
| History of computer chess:
|
| - 1957 - early programs that played chess very badly. Excessive
| optimism
|
| - 1967 - programs that play amateur chess
|
| - 1976 - first tournament win
|
| - 1980s - top programs not much stronger, but now running on PCs.
|
| - 1996 - first win against grandmaster
|
| - 2005 - last lose by top program against grandmaster
|
| - 2025 - all the good programs can trounce any human.
|
| LLMs are probably at the 1996 level now.
| skydhash wrote:
| Did 1957 level plays a wrong move according to the rules of the
| games? Like moving a bishop horizontally? And randomly?
|
| Don't forget that in, 1957, computer's performance was much
| lower than today's. I wonder how a 1957 approach would fare on
| today's computer after removing limitations based on past
| limitations?
| prmph wrote:
| Chess is a bad example. Even a "stupid" computer that is
| sufficiently powerful can just brute-force-search its way to a
| win. There's nothing special here, it's basically just deeper
| and deeper search. Put another way. the limitation was always
| about sufficiently powerful hardware.
|
| I'm not sure the same can be said about LLMs.
| hadlock wrote:
| It seems a bit presumptuous that software and hardware would
| not evolve past May 2025 to improve watts/token over time, or
| whatever metric you choose. Consumer-grade GPUs didn't really
| arrive until 1995, and industry didn't really standardize
| OpenGL until the early 90s, consumer-grade GPUs didn't have
| OpenGL support until much later. Vulkan didn't come along
| until 2016. It's mostly an artificial limit that I can't buy
| a 4070 with 1TB of memory at Best Buy for $1200, or will be,
| in a year or two. I would expect watts/token to decrease by
| at least half by the end of the decade.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| > This is not innovation. This is a security breach waiting to
| happen.
|
| No, it is innovation. The problem is that innovation is _often
| bad_.
| dlivingston wrote:
| How specifically is innovation often bad? Innovation, like
| scientific discovery, is merely an expansion of the veil of
| knowledge. Specific applications may be good or bad but
| knowledge and processes are neutral.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Innovation usually creates losers, who formerly benefited
| from the less efficient system in place.
| paulcole wrote:
| Love it. We've reached the no-true-scotsman part of the vibe
| coding hype speedrun.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| I'm curious which part of the article led you to that
| conclusion? It seems to make a pretty reasonable distinction
| between vibe coding and general use AI in coding to me. It's
| clearly not hyping up vibe coding, or even presenting it in a
| positive light.
| paulcole wrote:
| There's an article?
| valianteffort wrote:
| Very grateful to have had good self-learning, education, then
| mentoring before LLM's existed. And although they are such a boon
| to productivity I worry what they will do to my ability to think
| on my own long term.
|
| Like reaching for your phone out of habit the moment you are
| bored, I don't want to need an LLM any time I am faced with a
| problem. I want to exercise my own brain. I feel as though my
| ability to reason without them has already began to degrade, my
| mind fogs more these days. I try to curb it by having
| conversations rather than just asking for solutions.
|
| I don't care that the tool isn't going anywhere, but just like
| relying on calculators won't make you better at arithmetic, I
| don't think relying on LLM's will make you a better engineer.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Oh totally agree. These LLMs are like tiktok on my phone in
| terms of addictiveness.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| I think if you are a self directed learner in general, who is
| drawn toward learning, it will magnify that tendency and lower
| the activation energy required to bootstrap new domains of
| knowledge.
|
| But if you don't like learning, and only do it because you have
| to, it will magnify that tendency and provide a way to avoid
| learning altogether.
|
| We are likely to end up with a large subset of the population
| basically being meat puppets doing whatever their favorite
| flavor of LLM tells them to do.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Every time I see someone on HN crowing about how great so-called
| "vibe" coding is, I can't help by think they must be doing the
| lowest, most basic types of coding.
|
| I don't need AI to help me code. What I need AI to do is help me
| figure out new coding solutions. But all AI seems able to do is
| regurgitate things that other people have already done that it's
| ingested from the internet.
|
| I'll ask AI how to do _abc_ , within _xyz_ parameters, with _def_
| available and _ghi_ constraints. I typically get back one of two
| things:
|
| 1. A list of 20 steps to achieve _abc_ that somewhere around the
| middle has a step that 's the equivalent of "Then magic happens"
| or two to three steps that are entirely unrelated to one other or
| the project at hand.
|
| 2. A list of what should be 20 steps that suddenly ends at step
| 7, leaving the problem only half done.
|
| Most frustrating is when the "AI" says to use $tool/$library, but
| $tool/$library is not available on the specified platform, or
| hasn't been updated since 2011 and no longer works. When I tell
| the AI this, it always responds with, "You are right, that tool
| is no longer available. Here's a list of even more broken steps
| you can take to work around it."
|
| So far, for my coding needs, AI seems only able to regurgitate
| what's already been done and published by others. That's great,
| but there are search engines for that. I have novel problems, and
| until AI can actually live up to the "I" part of its name, it is
| worthless to me.
| jajko wrote:
| In my banking megacorp, despite having officially title of
| senior sw engineer, coding is maybe 10% of my time spent. And
| its the best, most creative part I actually enjoy. Why would I
| give up that? No real velocity gained even if all would be 1
| click away in flawless production-ready state.
|
| The real cruft of seniority is: processes, knowing right people
| and their buttons, politics, being there to fix obscure corner
| case production issues and so on. How can llm help me with
| that? It can't.
|
| For code sweatshops they may be a blessing, for corporations
| drowning in regulations and internal abysmal labyrinths of
| their IT, not so much.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Lol, are you me? Also a senior developer at a financial
| institution. I've maybe coded like 1000 lines in the last 2
| months. I just got a ticket recently that required code and
| it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders to finally be
| able to put hands to keyboard again.
| tfandango wrote:
| Dang hello, me too. I recently became tech lead at our
| fintech co, and the few days a month I get to code is like
| vacation for my mind. I still remember the good ol' days
| where nobody talked to me and I solved problems all day
| long.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Ugh I feel like this general topic had been beaten to death,
| every article inevitably references the same viral moments on
| Twitter and draws roughly the same conclusions.
|
| But these articles get posted and upvoted cause we developers
| just eat that shit up (if I'm being honest I do at least, every
| time I see these kinds of posts I always smirk cause I know what
| the comments section is gonna be like).
| codr7 wrote:
| Unfortunately it seems like the more you use AI, the dumber you
| become; I suspect these discussions will get more and more
| dramatic until we have two camps that don't even understand
| what the other side is saying anymore.
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