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What could go wrong with coding and AI usage, right? (jeferson.me)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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Few weeks ago I wrote about a side project that I'm using to learn, this is my reviewing what I missed on the project, the main issues after a few dozen games in the platform with friends. And what I learned in the process.

All comments, feedback is appreciated.

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[–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I'm not a big fan of "agentic" coding. Don't get me wrong, I am trying to create a process by which agentic programming is more reliable, but it's piling AI artifacts on top of AI artifacts. The error rate compounds and by the time it's working on the 5th story everything is garbage. You have to review everything at every step to find and fix those errors to keep everything on track.

I have a lot more success giving it one story at a time — each one targeted toward small, incremental steps. It does well. Then clear the context out and start another small story. I don't trust agentic programming.

I have an AI to help do production support when I'm in meetings or whatever. It comes to the dumbest conclusions about the root cause and the resolution path. But the logs and queries it pulls for me are very helpful. And sometimes it's analysis holds a bit of useful insight.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    Interesting. Most other people seem to use coding agents. I mean I also tried the polar opposite end of the spectrum. Copy-paste snippets into ChatGPT and back. I think that's how a lot of people got started. But it's tedious, still makes me let the AI do things which I later regret in the design. And I tracked my time once or twice for similar tasks. And I was slower than just typing it down myself without any AI assistance. Guess I still have to figure out what to do to get some proper use out of it.

    What kind of tools do you use for your workflow? Some IDE plugin or "agent" so it has access to the entire project files, but then give it stories of a size it can tackle in one shot? Or subdivide?
    I mean I also tried to subdivide tasks into chunks and hand those out. But that also has some tendency the AI doesn't really get what it's supposed to do because it's missing the broader picture. That was kind of the reason for me to try agents, so it has a plan, knows what's next in line so it doesn't write code which doesn't integrate (as is) into the next step to do.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago*

    I use Claude code. I have access to do full on agentic shit, but mostly all it does is fan out an agent or two to read code and documentation. My process is describe specifically what I want sort of like a story. If it takes more than a paragraph or ten bullets to explain in exact detail, it's too big. Generate an implementation plan from a template. Look the plan over. Make any changes. It writes the code, then writes the tests, then updates documentation. I review everything at each step.

    The implementation plan is critical because you'll see if it wants to do something like create an enum to hold a single value or refactor the name of a method for no particular reason.

    We have extensive documentation of standards and practices, and generally how we structure code. I have templates for things like writing up the implementation plan. Questions that need to be answered. Important context. It has all the information to build it, but you have to double check that it's from the instructions.

    I generally have a "smart" model do the planning and a dumber one do the implementation. I make use of skills. I watch it talk to itself and if I see it going off the rails I interrupt it and correct it.

    It's not the sexy 10x productivity boost people claim when doing prototyping, but it's clearly faster than doing without. I can get 3 or 4 stories done in an evening after meetings and such. If I have five minutes between meetings I can see what it has done and set it in it's next step.

    Last night I had an instance of Claude collecting information for a production support ticket while I had another one work on a ticket in one app and a third working on another app. Every time one got going I'd go over to another and see what was going on.

    I tried to create a set of 11 stories to build an entire feature in one go. It was a mess. Yeah I got 11 stories done in two days, but then code review on one would require changes and rebasing dependent stories. I've done more rebasing in the past ten days than the rest of my career. That was a mistake.

    My boss is all gung ho about me doing it that way, but I just can't seem to make it work.

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