zlacker

So we replace the task of writing tedious boilerplate with the task of reading the AI's tedious boilerplate. Which takes just as long. And leaves you with less understanding. And is more boring.

>>bloat+(OP)
You are either a very fast producer or a very slow reader. Claude and Gemini are much faster at producing code than I am, and reviewing their code - twice over, even - still takes less time than writing it myself.

>>Philpa+91
But you definitely don't understand it nearly as well as if you wrote it. And you're the one that needs to take responsibility for adding it to your codebase.

>>Philpa+91
Are you, though? Reading code is harder, potentially much harder.[1]

And I suspect the act of writing it yourself imparts some lower level knowledge you don't get by skimming the output of an AI.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/26/reading-code-is-li...

>>bloat+(OP)
> Which takes just as long.

This has never once been my experience. Its definitely less fun but it takes way less time.

>>oblio+f2
I think he is specifically referring to boilerplate code. It is not hard to understand boilerplate code.

>>bloat+(OP)
Indeed, instead of writing code to shave a Yak, we're now instead reviewing how the Yak was (most-shittily) shaved.

>>Philpa+91
Reviewing code is often slower than writing it. You don't have to be an exceptionally fast coder or slow reviewer for that to be true.

>>bloat+(OP)
and probably results in a greater net energy consumption/carbon output

>>seadan+W4
If this was the case, regular code review as a practice would be entirely unworkable.

>>bloat+(OP)
All of these people advocating for AI software dev are effectively saying they would prefer to review code instead of write it. To each their own I guess but that just sounds like torture to me.

>>seadan+W4
The amount of time I spend going back and forth between the implementation and the test cases to verify that the tests actually fully cover the possible failure cases alone can easily exceed the time spent writing it, and that's assuming I don't pull the branch locally and start stepping through it in the debugger.

The idea that AI will make development faster because it eliminates the boring stuff seems quite bold because until we have AGI, someone still needs to verify the output, and code review tends to be even more tedious than writing boilerplate unless you're speed-reading through reviews.

>>thegeo+9b
Interesting point! I'd like to explore this a bit more.

Would you mind going into a bit more specifics/details on why regular code review practice would become unworkable, like which specific part(s) of it?

>>mostly+ab
well said!

>>Philpa+91
then you are a terribly sloppy reviewer

>>thegeo+9b
"regular" code review is indeed a total theater, a travesty, a farce.

Real, meticulous code review takes absolutely forever.

>>mostly+ab
It's because these people don't know how to write it, think they know how to review it. Ship a todo list app in a day, and then write blog posts about how they are changing the world.

>>mostly+ab
I'm not familiar with the author's work. What % of their time is spent writing code?

>>bloat+(OP)
>So we replace the task of writing tedious boilerplate with the task of reading the AI's tedious boilerplate. Which takes just as long. And leaves you with less understanding. And is more boring.

These all sound like your projected assumptions. No, it generally does not take longer to review sizable code changes than it does to write it. This is further alleviated if the code passes tests, either existing or new ones created by the ai.

>>Mofpof+tk
This speaks to the low quality assurance bar that most of the software industry lives by.

If you're programming for a plane's avionics, as an example, the quality assurance bar is much, much higher. To the point where any time-saving benefits of using an LLM are most likely dwarfed by the time it takes to review and test the code.

It's easy to say LLM is a game-changer when there are no lives at stake, and therefore the cost of any errors is extremely low, and little to no QA occurs prior to being pushed to production.

>>Philpa+91
In this thread, we pretend that the difficult and time-consuming part of a code review is all the reading you have to do.

>>mostly+ab
The thought alone makes me want to hang up my (professional) keyboard and open a nursery/gardening center.

>>thegeo+9b
Huh? Why? How? Say the code takes one day to write, and two days to review. What about that is unworkable?