My sense is that the code generation is fast, but then you always need to spend several hours making sure the implementation is appropriate, correct, well tested, based on correct assumptions, and doesn't introduce technical debt.

You need to do this when coding manually as well, but the speed at which AI tools can output bad code means it's so much more important.

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ehnto 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well when you write it manually you are doing the review and sanity checking in real time. For some tasks, not all but definitely difficult tasks, the sanity checking is actually the whole task. The code was never the hard part, so I am much more interested in the evolving of AIs real world problem solving skills over code problems.

I think programming is giving people a false impression on how intelligent the models are, programmers are meant to be smart right so being able to code means the AI must be super smart. But programmers also put a huge amount of their output online for free, unlike most disciplines, and it's all text based. When it comes to problem solving I still see them regularly confused by simple stuff, having to reset context to try and straighten it out. It's not a general purpose human replacement just yet.

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LPisGood 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And it’s slower to review because you didn’t do the hard part of understanding the code as it was being written.

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Implicated 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You're holding it wrong.

Set the boundaries and guidelines before it starts working. Don't leave it space to do things you don't understand.

ie: enforce conventions, set specific and measurable/verifiable goals, define skeletons of the resulting solutions if you want/can.

To give an example. I do a lot of image similarity stuff and I wanted to test the Redis VectorSet stuff when it was still in beta and the PHP extension for redis (the fastest one, which is written in C and is a proper language extension not a runtime lib) didn't support the new commands. I cloned the repo, fired up claude code and pointed it to a local copy of the Redis VectorSet documentation I put in the directory root telling it I wanted it to update the extension to provide support for the new commands I would want/need to handle VectorSets. This was, idk, maybe a year ago. So not even Opus. It nailed it. But I chickened out about pushing that into a production environment, so I then told it to just write me a PHP run time client that mirrors the functionality of Predis (pure-php implementation of redis client) but does so via shell commands executed by php (lmao, I know).

Define the boundaries, give it guard rails, use design patterns and examples (where possible) that can be used as reference.

	▲	slopinthebag 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They aren't holding it wrong, it's a fundamental limitation of not writing the code yourself. You can make it easier to understand later when you review it, but you still need to put in that effort.