this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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Programming

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[–] allo@sh.itjust.works -2 points 5 days ago

no. you're trash.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 32 points 1 week ago

in other news, the North Pole is colder than the Indonesian rainforest

[–] curious_dolphin@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder how long until the curves cross.

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

it'll be when there's no one left to point out the bugs.

[–] SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Bad article, the number of issues aren't normalized to anything other than PRs. I expect AI authorized PRs to be somewhat bigger than a fully human authorized one.

[–] reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Ideally they'd compare time to write + time to fix. My experience is that if you use test driven development, LLM isn't too bad. No worse than an intern.

I think it comes down to who is using the LLM. I had a junior dev once "presumably" AI gen a ton of code (broken trash). Then to fix it, they wrapped each function in a try catch block that dropped the error. Unit tests were mocked out to the extent they didn't test anything.

When I use an LLM, I have tests and hard constraints on the LLM. It isn't good enough to do everything, but it can generate about 80% of a simple app

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago

no worse than an intern

Why would I voluntarily subject myself to constantly working with a virtual intern. The only reason to work with someone of that level is because they grow into someone more useful

[–] Repelle@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

While I can get speedups for rapid prototypes where the code doesn’t need to be good, just mostly working, to get actually good code it’s inevitably significantly faster for me to write everything than to fix what an LLM starts.

[–] bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For LLM generated code, it can also take a whole to read and understand. When I write code myself, I understand the intention, architecture, and so on. Machine written code is very different. I need to understand how it works. There’s often extraneous stuff in there or weird patterns.

[–] reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I find that it basically can't do decent architecture. My last attempt to use it ended with it using casbin, but then rewriting it's own authorization framework and trying to use both at the same time 😶.

I think there is a lot of power here, but it needs very heavy guidance and handholding to do it well. Otherwise it makes very stupid intern level decisions

A friend has had good results using AIDD as an agent framework. It’s basically a built in project/product/scrum master that creates tickets and with that constraints.

Have you tried something like this?

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I fully concur with the intern metaphor. That's what an LLM is - an intern with VAST amounts of lexical knowledge but little understanding of large scale system design, or generally, experience.

LLM generated code is mostly okay. You do have to review it, like you would an intern's contributions, but generally, it's good quality code and well documented.

[–] VoterFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah I don't think we should be pushing to have LLMs generate code unsupervised. It's an unrealistic standard. It's not even a standard most companies would entrust their most capable programmers with. Everything needs to be reviewed.

But just because it's not working alone doesn't mean it's useless. I wrote like 5 lines of code this week by hand. But I committed thousands of lines. And I reviewed and tweaked and tended to every one of them. That's how it should be.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why would you expect that?

[–] SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

Because an LLM can generate a lot of (garbage?) code quickly.

[–] VoterFrog@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Kinda funny the juxtaposition between the programmers' reaction to this compared to the "techies" reaction on the crosspost.

Maybe we're still early yet so I'll write the difference right now for posterity: Programming post is generally critical of the article and has several suggestions on how to improve the quality of agent-assisted code.

Technology post is pretty much just "REEEEEEEEEEE AI BAD"

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I bet if you get in a hot tub that's a bit too warm you'll go "Ooh, that's a bit to warm".

And I bet if you jump into a boiling tub you'll scream "REEEEEEE HOOOOOT".

It's a matter of degrees, you see?

[–] VoterFrog@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I'm not sure I get your analogy. This is more to me like two people got into a bath and one went "Ooh, that's a bit too warm" while the other screamed "REEEEEEE HOOOOOT”. The degree is the same. The response is not.

[–] curious_dolphin@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This article does not show as cross posted to any other community in the Voyager app.

EDIT: When I open the post in a web browser, the cross posts are visible. 🤷‍♂️

[–] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago

I seem to have missed those comments, could you point any out?