Comment by netdevphoenix
6 days ago
> Now I first discuss with an AI Agent or ChatGPT to write a thorough spec before handing it off to an agent to code it. I don’t read every line. Instead, I thoroughly test the outcome.
This is likely the future.
That being said: "I used to spend most of my time writing code, fixing syntax, thinking through how to structure the code, looking up documentation on how to use a library.".
If you are spending a lot of time fixing syntax, have you looked into linters? If you are spending too much time thinking about how to structure the code, how about spending some days coming up with some general conventions or simply use existing ones.
If you are getting so much productivity from LLMs, it is worth checking if you were simply unproductive relative to your average dev in the first place. If that's the case, you might want to think, what is going to happen to your productivity gains when everyone else jumps on the LLM train. LLMs might be covering for your unproductivity at the code level, but you might still be dropping the ball in non-code areas. That's the higher level pattern I would be thinking about.
I was a good dev but I did not love the code itself. I loved the outcome. Other devs would have done better on leetcode and they would have produced better code syntax than me.
I’ve always been more of a product/business person who saw code as a way to get to the end goal.
That elite coder who hates talking to business people and who cares more about the code than the business? Not me. I’m the opposite.
Hence, LLMs have been far better for me in terms of productivity.
> I’ve always been more of a product/business person who saw code as a way to get to the end goal.
That’s what code always is. A description on how the computer can help someone faster to the end goal. Devs care a little more about the description, because end goals change and rewriting the whole thing from scratch is costly and time-consuming.
> That elite coder who hates talking to business people and who cares more about the code than the business? Not me. I’m the opposite.
I believe that coder exists only in your imagination. All the good ones I know are great communicators. Clarity of thought is essential to writing good code.
I don't think so. These coders exist everywhere. Plenty of great coders are great at writing the code itself but not at the business aspects. Many coders simply do not care about the business or customers part. To them, the act of coding and producing quality code and the process of writing software is the goal. IE. These people are most likely to decline building a feature that customers and the business desperately need because it might cause the code base to become harder to maintain. These people will also want to refactor more than building new features. In the past, these people had plenty of value. In the era of LLMs, I think these people have less value than business/product oriented devs.
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> > That elite coder who hates talking to business people and who cares more about the code than the business? Not me. I’m the opposite.
> I believe that coder exists only in your imagination. All the good ones I know are great communicators. Clarity of thought is essential to writing good code.
Clarity of thought does not make you a good communicator with respect to communicating with business people. People, for example, say about me that I am really good at communicating to people who are in deep love of research, but when I present arguments of similar clarity to business people, my often somewhat abstract considerations typically go over their heads.