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Comment by skydhash | Hacker News Reader

> you should propose the change first and ask the AI about a good, detailed plan for implementing

Why ask though?

If I’m familiar with a project, more often than not, I usually have a very good idea of the code I have to write within minutes of reading the ticket. Most of the time taken is finding the impact of the change, especially with dependencies that are present in the business domain, but are not reflected in the code.

I don’t need to ask what to code. I can deduce it as easily as doing 2+2. What I’m seeking is a reason not to write it the way I envisioned it. And if those reasons are technical, it’s not often a matter of code.

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Because that's how you ensure that the AI has the right idea about what to do. If the proposed plan has problems, you work with the AI to fix them before setting it to work. AI is not as smart as you, so it needs to be told how to go about doing things.

Any change that I’ve done which resulted in more than a a 10 lines diff are done with tools (copy-paste, vim-fu, refactor tools or script, snippets, code generators,…) Why would I spend time babysitting an LLM when I could have just done it myself? The purpose of automation is to lighten my workload, not to add to it.

An LLM is also a code generator. There is a scale of changes where using one is just not worthwhile (quite possibly around the 10 lines mark, as you said) but other than that, why would you want to write code yourself line-by-line that you could just generate?

Who even write their code line by line?

Snippets and other code generation tool has been here for decades. If you’re writing Java in IDEA, it’s basically a tab-fest with completion. And if you’re fluent in your editor, you do much more complex than editing lines.

>> Why would I spend time babysitting an LLM when I could have just done it myself

Exactly this. From what I understand an LLM has a limited context and will get that context wrong anyway and that context is on the edge of a knife and can easily be lost.

I'd rather mentor developers and build a team of living, breathing, thinking, compassionate humans who then in turn can mentor other living, breathing, thinking, compassionate humans.

If we're honest - you are not being stopped from mentoring developers. You're saying you'd want to do it on time paid for by others, and competing with teams not doing that.

So the actual pain point is compensation, and IMO we should directly call that out and address it.

> I don’t need to ask what to code. I can deduce it as easily as doing 2+2.

in those cases you wouldn't use an agent. It's not an xor thing, you use the tool where it works and not where it doesn't.

I admire your confidence. Must feel good to know you've perfected the craft.

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