alt Hacker NewsIt feels like everyone's gone mad.
Here I am mostly writing code by hand, with some AI assistant help. I have a Claude subscription but only use it occasionally because it can take more time to review and fix the generated code as it would to hand-write it. Claude only saves me time on a minority of tasks where it's faster to prompt than hand-write.
And then I read about people spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on this stuff. Doesn't that turn your codebase into an unreadable mess?
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I've been thinking about this recently and it seems like the most enthusiastic boosters always suggest difference in results is a skill issue, but I feel like there are 4 factors which multiply out to influence how much value someone gets: - The quality of model output for _your particular domain / tech stack_. Models will always do better with languages and libraries they see a lot of than esoteric or proprietary - The degree to which "works" = "good" in your scenario. For a one off script, "works" is all that matters, for a long lived core library, there are other considerations. - The degree to which "works" can be easily (best yet, automatically) verified. - Techniques, existing code cleanliness, documentation etc.
Boosters tend to lay all different experiences at the feet of this last, yet I'd argue the others are equally significant.
On the other hand, if you want to get the best results you can given the first 3 (which are generally out of one's control) then don't presume there's nothing you can do to improve the 4th.
Why read code when you are getting results fast ? See https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...
I am not kidding. People don't seem to understand what's actually happening in our industry. See https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johubbard_github-eleutherailm...