Comment by gooodvibes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gooodvibes | Hacker News Reader

> The entire premise of AI coding tools is that they automate the thinking, not just the typing. You're supposed to be able to describe a problem and get a solution without understanding the details.

This isn't accurate.

> So I feel pressure to always, always, start by info dumping the problem description to AI and gamble for a one-shot. Voice transcription for 10 minutes, hit send, hope I get something first try, if not hope I can iterate until something works.

These things have planning modes - you can iterate on a plan all you want, make changes when ready, make changes one at a time etc. I don't know if the "pressure" is your own psychological block or you just haven't considered that you can use these tools differently.

Whether it feels satisfying or not - that's a personal thing, some people will like it, some won't. But what you're describing is just not using your tools correctly.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying I don't know how to use planning modes or iterate on solutions.

Yes, you still decompose problems. But what's the decomposition for? To create sub-problems small enough that the AI can solve them in one shot. That's literally what planning mode does - help you break things down into AI-solvable chunks.

You might say "that's not real thinking, that's just implementation details." Look who came up the the plan in the first place << It's the AI! Plan mode is partial automation of the thinking there too (improving every month)

Claude Code debugs something, it's automating a chain of reasoning: "This error message means execution reached this file. That implies this variable has this value. I can test this theory by sending this HTTP request. The logs show X, so my theory was wrong. Let me try Y instead."

> When I stop the production line to say "wait, let me understand what's happening here," the implicit response is: "Why are you holding up progress? It mostly works. Just ship it. It's not your code anyway."

This is not a technical problem or an AI problem, it’s a cultural problem where you work

We have the opposite - I expect all of our devs to understand and be responsible for AI generated code

> But what's the decomposition for?

To get it done correctly, that's always what it's been about.

I don't feel that code I write without assistance is mine, or some kind of achievement to be proud of, or something that inflates my own sense of how smart I am. So when some of the process is replaced by AI, there isn't anything in me that can be hurt by that, none of this is mine and it never was.

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