> Instead, the right train of thought is: "what would perfect code look like?" and then meticulously describe to the LLM what "perfect" is to shape every line that gets generated.

I think this goes against what a lot of developers want AI to be (not me, to be clear).

▲ forgetfulness 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Also a lot of middle managers. Many organizations enthusiastically adopting AI are doing so because they want to appeal to the authority of the bots and bludgeon colleagues with it.

▲ CharlieDigital 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm looking at it from a team perspective.

With the right docs, I can lift every developer of every skill level up to a minimum "floor" and influence every line of code that gets committed to move it closer to "perfect".

I'm not writing every prompt so there is still some variation, but this approach has given us very high quality PRs with very minimal overhead by getting the initial generation passes as close to "perfect" as reasonably possible.

▲ sodapopcan 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh I agree with you, I'm just saying a lot of developers don't want to use it like that. AI has liberated them from the drudgery of reading and writing code and they won't accept that they should still be doing a bit of both, if not a lot of reading.

▲ aaaronic 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It does amaze me when colleagues refuse to read what I (personally, deliberately) wrote (they ask AI to summarize), but then tell AI to write their response and it's absolutely bloated and full of misconceptions around my original document.

If they aren't willing to read what I put effort into, why should I be expected to read the ill-conceived and verbose response? I really don't want to get into a match of my AI arguing with your AI, but that's what they've told me I should be doing...

▲ switchbak 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've been having ongoing issues with a manager who responds in the form of Claude guided PRs. Undoubtedly driven from confused prompts. Always full of issues, never actually solving the problem, always adding HEAPS of additional nonsense in the process.

There's an asymmetry of effort in the above, and when combined with the power asymmetry - that's a really bad combo, and I don't think I'm alone.

I'm glad to see the appreciation of the enormous costs of complexity on this forum, but I don't think that has ascended to the managerial level.

	▲	CharlieDigital 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`> ...a manager who responds in the form of Claude guided PRs` I think the job of a dev in this coming era is to produce the systems by which non-engineers can build competently and not break prod or produce unmaintainable code. In my current role, I have shifted from lead IC to building the system that is used by other IC's and non-IC's. From my perspective, if I can provide the right guardrails to the agent, then anyone using any agent will produce code that is going to coalesce around a higher baseline of quality. Most of my IC work now is aligned on this directionality.

▲ sodapopcan 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ya, I can't stand that. Asking a question and being hit with "this is what claude said" gives me a new kind of rage.

	▲	Izkata an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, this happened to me recently and the advice could have caused data corruption (yay old systems). I only caught it because they asked before making changes and I had a vague memory of it from having investigated the same thing almost a decade ago (and found the note and explanation with a link to a bugtracker in my personal wiki).

▲ Shorel 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It doesn't matter, one way or the other. The overall market share will decide. In some cases, I think good code will be a decisive factor. Think Steam launcher Vs Epic. Epic doesn't have good code. Their performance suffers in consequence. In other cases the users are so trapped it makes no difference. MS Outlook and Teams is the prime example of this.