[HN Gopher] I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid
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I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid
Author : mikae1
Score : 45 points
Date : 2025-08-10 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thomasorus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thomasorus.com)
| j45 wrote:
| > "When I tried to fix the security issues, I quickly realized
| how this whole thing was a trap. Since I didn't wrote it, I
| didn't have a good bird's eye view of the code and what it did. I
| couldn't make changes quickly, which started to frustrated me.
| The easiest route was asking the LLM to do the fixes for me, so I
| did. More code was changed and added. It worked, but again I
| could not tell if it was good or not."
|
| Maintaining your own list of issues to look for and how to
| resolve them, or prevent them outright is almost mandatory, and
| also doubles as a handy field reference guide for what gaps exist
| in applying LLM's to your particular use when someone higher up
| asks.
| TheCleric wrote:
| I am so glad someone else has this same experience as me because
| everyone else seems all in and I feel like I'm staring at an
| emperor without clothes.
| CharlesW wrote:
| What were you using? Did you use it for a real project? I ask
| because you're going to have a _vastly_ different experience
| with Cursor than with Claude Code, for example.
| verdverm wrote:
| The truth often lies somewhere in between
|
| My personal experience indicates this, AI enhances me but
| cannot replace me
| rikafurude21 wrote:
| He freely admits that the LLM did his job way faster than he
| could, but then claims that he doesnt believe it could make him
| 10x more productive. He decides that he will not use his new
| "superpower" because the second prompt he sent revealed that the
| code had security issues, which the LLM presumably also fixed
| after finding them. The fact that the LLM didnt consider those
| issues when writing his code puts his mind at rest about the
| possibility of being replaced by the LLM. Did he consider that
| the LLM wouldve done it the right way after the first message if
| prompted correctly? Considering his "personal stance on ai" I
| think he was going into this experience expecting exactly the
| result he got to reinforce his beliefs. Unironically enough thats
| exactly the type of person who would get replaced, because as a
| developer if youre not using these tools youre staying behind
| mockingloris wrote:
| Your last sentence exactly! _With a bit of tonic._
| stavros wrote:
| Eeeh, the LLM wouldn't have done it correctly, though. I use
| LLMs exclusively for programming these days, and you really
| need to tell them the architecture and how to implement the
| features, and then review the output, otherwise it'll be wrong.
|
| They are like an overeager junior, they know how to write the
| code but they don't know how to architect the systems or to
| avoid bugs. Just today I suspected something, asked the LLM to
| critique its own code, paying attention to X Y Z things, and it
| found a bunch of unused code and other brittleness. It fixed
| it, with my guidance, but yeah, you can't let your guard down.
|
| Of course, as you say, these are the tools of the trade now,
| and we'll have to adapt, but they aren't a silver bullet.
| hazek112 wrote:
| Haha I encountered this
|
| But maybe AI is just better than I ever was at front end and
| react
|
| Maybe I should do something else
| cryptoz wrote:
| I really think people are approaching LLMs wrong when it comes to
| code. Just directing an agent to make you something you're
| unfamiliar with is always going to end up with this. It's much
| better to have a few hours chat with the LLM and learn some about
| the topic, multiple times over many days, and then start.
|
| And ask questions and read all the code and modify it yourself;
| and read the compile errors and try to fix then yourself; etc.
| Come back to the LLM when you're stuck.
|
| Having the machine just build you something from a two sentence
| prompt is lazy and you'll feel lazy and bad.
|
| Learn with it and improve with it. You'll end up with more
| knowledge and a code base for a project that you do (at least
| somewhat) understand, and you'll have a project that you wouldn't
| have attempted otherwise.
| zackify wrote:
| Completely agree
| robotbikes wrote:
| X you e you were
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Unfortunately the author is competing with 100% of other devs who
| are using AI and the vast majority of whom are not becoming lazy
| or stupid.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Congratulations, you tried AI and you immediately noticed all the
| same problems that everyone else notices. No-one is claiming the
| technology's perfect.
|
| How many more times is someone going to write this same article?
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