Comment by voidUpdate
4 days ago
I wonder how many people that use agents actually like "programming", as in coming up with a solution to the problem and then being able to express that in code. It seems like a lot of the work that the agents are doing is removing that and instead making you have to explain what you want in natural language and hope the LLM doesn't introduce bugs
I like writing code, and it definitely isn't satisfying when an LLM can one-shot a parser that I would have had fun building for hours.
But at the same time, building a parser for hours is also a distraction from my higher level ambitions with the project, and I get to focus on those.
I still get to stub out the types and function signatures I want, but the LLM can fill them in and I move on. More likely I'll even have my go at the implementation but then tag in the LLM when it's not fun anymore.
On the other hand, LLMs have helped me focus on the fun of polishing something. Making sweeping changes are no longer in the realm of "it'd be nice but I can't be bothered". Generating a bunch of tests from examples isn't grueling anymore. Syncing code to the readme isn't annoying anymore. Coming up with refactoring/improvement ideas is easy; just ask and tell it to make the case for you. It has let me be far more ambitious or take a weekend project to a whole new level, and that's fun.
It's actually a software-loving builder's paradise if you can tweak your mindset. You can polish more code, release more projects, tackle more nerdsnipes, and aim much higher. But it took me a while to get over what turned out to be some sort of resentment.
I agree, agents have really made programming fun for me again (and I say this as someone who has been coding for more two decades - I'm not a script kiddy using them to make up for lack of skill).
Configuring tools, mindless refactors, boilerplate, basic unit/property testing, all that routine stuff is a thing of the past for me now. It used to be a serious blocker for me with my personal projects! Getting bored before I got anywhere interesting. Much of the time I can stick to writing the fun/critical code now and glue everything else together with LLMs, which is awesome.
Some people obviously like the fiddly stuff though, and more power to them, it's just not for me.
Parsing is an area that I'm interested in. Can you talk more about your experience getting LLMs to one-shot parsers?
From scratch LLMs seem to be completely lost writing parsers. The bleeding edge appears to be able to maybe parse xml, but gives up on programming languages with even the most minimal complexity (an example being C where Gemini refused to even try with macros and then when told to parse C without macros gave an answer with several stubs where I was supposed to fill in the details).
With parsing libraries they seem better, but ultimately that reduces to transform this bnf. Which if I had to I could do deterministically without an LLM.
Also, my best 'successes' have been along the lines of 'parse in this well defined language that just happens to have dozens if not hundreds of verbatim examples on github'. Anytime I try to give examples of a hypothetical language then they return a bunch of regex that would not work in general.
A few weeks ago I gave an LLM (Gemini 2.5 something in Cursor) a bunch of examples of a new language, and asked it to write a recursive descent parser in Ruby. The language was nothing crazy, intentionally reminiscent of C/JS style, but certainly the exact definition was new. I didn’t want to use a parser generator because (a) I’d have to learn a new one for Ruby, and (b) I’ve always found it easier to generate useful error messages with a handwritten recursive descent parser.
IIRC, it went like this: I had it first write out the BNF based on the examples, and tweaked that a bit to match my intention. Then I had it write the lexer, and a bunch of tests for the lexer. I had it rewrite the lexer to use one big regex with named captures per token. Then I told it to write the parser. I told it to try again using a consistent style in the parser functions (when to do lookahead and how to do backtracking) and it rewrote it. I told it to write a bunch of parser tests, which I tweaked and refactored for readability (with LLM doing the grunt work). During this process it fixed most of its own bugs based on looking at failed tests.
Throughout this process I had to monitor every step and fix the occasional stupidity and wrong turn, but it felt like using a power tool, you just have to keep it aimed the right way so it does what you want.
The end result worked just fine, the code is quite readable and maintainable, and I’ve continued with that codebase since. That was a day of work that would have taken me more like a week without the LLM. And there is no parser generator I’m aware of that starts with examples rather than a grammar.
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> I still get to stub out the types and function signatures I want, but the LLM can fill them in and I move on. More likely I'll even have my go at the implementation but then tag in the LLM when it's not fun anymore.
This is the best part for me. I can design my program the way I want. Then hack at the implementation, get it close, and then say okay finish it up (fix the current compiler errors, write and run some unit tests etc).
Then when it's time to write some boiler plate / do some boiler plate refactoring it's extract function xxx into a trait. Write a struct that does xxx and implements that trait.
I'm not over the resentment entirely, and if someone were to push me to join a team that coded by creating github issues, and reviewing the PRs I would probably hate that job, I certainly do when I try to do that in my free time.
In wood working you can use hand tools or power tools. I use hand tools when I want to use them either for a particular effect, or just the joy of using them, and I don't resent having to use a circular saw, or orbital sander when that's the tool I want to use, or the job calls for it. To stretch the analogy developing with plain text prompts and reviewing PRs feels more like assembling Ikea furniture. Frustrating and dull. A machine did most of the work cutting out the parts, and now I need to figure out what they want me to do with them.
This is exactly my take as well!
I do really like programming qua programming, and I relate to a lot of the lamentation I see from people in these threads at the devaluation of this skill.
But there are lots of other things that I also enjoy doing, and these tools are opening up so many opportunities now. I have had tons of ideas for things I want to learn how to do or that I want to build that I have abandoned because I concluded they would require too much time. Not all, but many, of those things are now way easier to do. Tons of things are now under the activation energy to make them worthwhile, which were previously well beyond it.
Just as a very narrow example, I've been taking on a lot more large scale refactorings to make little improvements that I've always wanted to make, but which have not previously been worth the effort, but now are.
I have to flip the question, what is it that people like about it? I certainly don't enjoy writing code for problems that have already been solved a thousand times. We reach for a dictionary, we don't write a hash table from scratch every time, that's only fun the first time you do it.
If I could go "give me a working compiler for this language" or "solve this problem using a depth-first search" I wouldn't enjoy programming any less.
About the natural language and also in response to the sibling comment, I agree, natural language is a very poor tool to describe computational processes. It's like doing math in plain English, fine for toy examples, but at a certain level of sophistication it's way too easy to say imprecise or even completely contradictory things. But nobody here advocates using LLMs "blind"! You're still responsible for your own output, whether it was generated or not.
Why do people enjoy going to the gym? Those weights have already been lifted a thousand times.
I enjoy writing code because of the satisfaction that comes from solving a problem, from being able to create a working thing out of my own head, and to hopefully see myself getting better at programming. I could augment my programming abilities with an LLM in the same way you could augment your gym experience with a forklift. I like to do it because I'm doing it. If I could go "give me a working compiler for this language", I wouldn't enjoy it anymore, because I've not gained anything from it. Obviously I don't re-implement a dictionary every time I need one, because its part of the "standard library" of basically everything I code in. And if it isn't, part of the fun is the challenge of either working out another way to do it, or reimplementing it.
We are talking past each other here.
Once I solved an Advent of Code problem, I felt like the problem wasn't general enough, so I solved the more general version as well. I like programming to the point of doing imaginary homework, then writing myself some extra credit and doing that as well. Way too much for my own good.
The point is that solving a new problem is interesting. Solving a problem you already know exactly how to solve isn't interesting and isn't even intellectual exercise. I would gain approximately zero from writing a new hash table from scratch whenever I needed one instead of just using std::map.
Problem solving absolutely is a muscle and it's use it or lose it, but you don't train problem solving by solving the same problem over and over.
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I think this is a good analogy! But I draw a different conclusion from it.
You're right that you wouldn't want to use a forklift to lift the weights at a gym. But then why do forklifts exist? Well, because gyms aren't the only place where people lift heavy things. People also lift and move around big pallets of heavy stuff at their jobs. And even if those people are gym rats, they don't forgo the forklift when they're at work, because it's more efficient, and exercising isn't the goal, at work.
In much the same way, it's would be silly to have an LLM write the solutions while working through the exercises in a book or advent of code or whatever. Those are exercises that are akin to going to the gym.
But it would also be silly to refuse to use the available tools to more efficiently solve problems at work. That would be like refusing to use a forklift.
Different strokes for different folks. I have written crud apps and other simple implementations thousands of times it feels like. My satisfaction is derived from building something useful not just the sale of building.
> Why do people enjoy going to the gym?
Do they? I would assume that the overwhelming majority of people would be very happy to be able to get 50% of the results for twice the membership cost if they could avoid going.
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OK. Be honest. If you had to write an argument parser once a week, would you enjoy it?
Or extracting input from a config file?
Or setting up a logger?
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Exactly. Also related on why Natural Language is not really good for programming[0]
[0]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667...
Anyway I indeed find LLMs useful for stackoverflow-like programming questions. But this seems to not be true for long as SO is dying and updated data on this type of questions will shrink I think.
Don’t agree with the assessment. At this point most of what I find LLM taking over is all the repetitive crud like implementations. I am still doing what I consider the fun parts, architecting the project and solving what are still the hard parts for the LLM, the non crud parts. This could be gone in a year and maybe I become a glorified product manager but enjoying it for the time being l, I can focus on the real thought problems and get help lifting the crud or repetitive patterns.
If you keep asking an LLM to generate the same repetitive implementations, why not just have a basic project already set up that you can modify as needed?
Yeah, I don't really get this
Most boilerplate I write has a template that I can copy and paste then run a couple of "find and replace" on and get going right away
This is not a substantial blocker or time investment that an AI can save me imo
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The LLM is doing the modifications and specific nuance that I want. Saves me time, ymmv.
Because they are similar and repetitive, but not identical.
Most coders prefer to throw code at the wall and see what sticks. These tools are a gas-powered catapult.
I don't think anyone is wrong, I am not here to detract from this. I just think most people want things that are very different than what I want.
Author here. I like programming and I like agents.