How long till you lose the ability to manually write code, you reckon?

What kind of work do you do? Every time I read stuff like this, I find it hard to believe, but maybe the code/languages/frameworks I'm using just aren't as easy for LLMs as what other people are using. The results I've had trying to get it to write C++ have been atrocious.

I'm not against AI code assistance, and I like keeping an open mind. For the moment though, the only success I've had is with using it to explain some feature or API faster than manually looking up the documentation. But actually reading the docs, I've found, helps me remember things better.

I haven't written a line of code in years.

Nevermind that I am not a developer.

My job is 50% coding and 50% delegating/meetings/etc...

We have an issue where we have a VERY proprietary language/system that is very difficult for llms to work with. And the new devs are getting frustrated because copilot keeps trying to push an adjacent language lol. They are ligitimitly having issues coding without llms anymore.

Sounds like you're a technical manager now -- or, at least, most of the way there -- just with LLMs as your reports instead of junior devs...

I still write my code by hand in xed. I'm not exactly anti-AI (my feelings are mixed); I'm just the kind of programmer who wasn't using IDEs even before the LLM craze started...

Unless it's the most rudimentary logic I tend to have to hold the LLM's hand through the entire design. Sometimes that involves breaking the damn thing's fingers.

I mostly use them to write stuff that I can do but hate because the syntax is a faff (argparsers, docstrings, shite like that). There's just too much contextual knowledge needed for them to be much use with the codebase I work with, much of which is not in the codebase so much as in the metatextual knowledge needed. I write a lot of software for testing hardware and there's a needle that has to be threaded - the specifications are not bulletproof, the hardware being tested failing may be the desired outcome (so code that passes on it is inherently wrong), and there are various limitations and priorities that inform test approach.

The actual code I write is fairly minimal but the knowledge needed to write it is extensive.

Occasionally I'll take on side projects at work to get my hands dirty on something more involved but simpler.

I'm currently working on fixing stuff like this as an external consultant. Like OP, people confidently assumed the LLMs could handle writing the code.

Oh boy, were they wrong. As soon as the code was pushed to production, the entire stack collapsed.

Are you forced to do that by your boss or deadlines?

I work in an industry where LLMs aren't helpful. And I've already automated away most of what they might have helped with.

Personally I don't like using LLMs for anything. Hell, I barely tolerate tools like lint. Gimme Notepad++ for my actual development work and I'm happy.

Sounds like you’re easily replaceable.

Dang, lucky. Besides the most boilerplate of stuff I try do I get this set up to work. It gives a 60% but also 10% wrong start most of the times on a new project or feature. Helpful for debugging like 70% of the time. Otherwise I'm stilling monkeying around anytime I need to putter anything

I regularly write code.

My customer gave the go-ahead to use LLM in our project very recently. We'll be trying it out. I'm interested to scope out its use and limitations especially. I'm skeptical it will increase efficiency for me overall. The project is too complex, my/our requirement on quality too high, and I'm thorough to the last var name and code formatting for readability and obviousness. I'm not sure whether I could find it acceptable to compromise on those.

Between customer communication, planning, review-prep, guiding and helping my team members, and doing reviews, and other tasks within the company, time for my own work can be reduced by a lot. Still, I have tasks I work on, and that includes coding.

I often use LLMs to give me code snippets in a language I don't know.

When I started programming (back in the dark days when StackOverflow was helpful), it took me months to learn a language well enough to do what I wanted, and I had several weeks where I would be frustrated that I just couldn't find what I was doing wrong, or what was the name for what I wanted so I could search for it.

AI has allowed me to drastically speed up my learning time for new languages, at the expense of me not really understanding much. I'll accept that compromise if I just want one script, but it's a hard habbit to drop when actual understanding is needed.

Aside from telling me what language features exist, or showing me the correct syntax (exactly what a language model is designed for), I have found AI is mostly just confidently wrong.

I'm curious about your setup. We're a small company trying to up productivity until we can hire more people and so far we've been trying some agents that are very good for some tasks but we're still writing a lot of code.