Writing reusable code is of no use if the next iteration doesn’t know where it is and rewrites the same (reusable) code again.
It definitely doesn't do a good job of spotting areas ripe of building abstractions, but that is our job. This thing does the boring parts, and I get to use my creativity thinking how to make the code more elegant, which is the part I love.
As far as I can tell, what's not to love about that?
In your example, you mention that you prompt the AI and if it outputs sub-par results you rewrite it yourself. That’s my point: over time, you learn what an LLM is good at and what it isn’t, and just don’t bother with the LLM for the stuff it’s not good at. Thing is, as a senior engineer, most of the stuff you do shouldn’t be stuff that an LLM is good at to begin with. That’s not the LLM replacing you, that’s the LLM augmenting you.
Enjoy your sensible use of LLMs! But LLMs are not the silver bullet the billion dollars of investment desperately want us to believe.
Why are we uniquely capable of doing that, but an LLM isn't? In plan mode I've been seeing them ask for clarifications and gather further requirements
Important business context can be provided to them, also
But don’t take it from me - go compete with me! Can you do my job (which is 90% talking to people to flesh out their unclear business requirements, and only 10% actually writing code)? It so, go right ahead! But since the phone has yet to stop ringing, I assume LLMs are nowhere there yet. Btw, I’m helping people who already use LLM-assisted programming, and reach out to me because they’ve reached their limitations and need an actual human to sanity-check.
This isn’t an argument against LLMs capability. But the burden of proof is on the LLMs’ side.
Your use of the word "should" is pointing to some ideal that doesn't exist anymore.
In current actual reality, you do whatever your employer gives you to do, regardless of your job title.
If you have 40 years of broad development experience but your boss tells you to build more CRUD web apps or start looking for another job in the current ATS hell, then the choice whether to use coding agents seems obvious to me.
That doesn't seem realistic to me.