An IOI gold medalist says AI coding agents now beat him on 'good enough'
I will not be using LLMs in my coding
A Hacker News thread reacting to a developer's refusal to use LLMs in coding. One commenter, an International Olympiad in Informatics gold medalist, admits AI agents can't match his best code but now reach adequate quality—and that 'good enough' wins in the real world. Others push back: software feels buggier, and nobody who skips reading the code can honestly call it high quality.
In this day and age, your choice is to either use them, or be stomped into the ground by programmers who do.
- XCSme
I was a competitive programmer, coded non-stop in many languages for 15+ years.
I haven't touched a line of code in over 6 months, didn't even look at it, but the work I do is faster and higher quality than ever.
Not sure how I feel about it
- parasti
This is akin to sticking to hand tools after the development of the electric motor.
There is no going back to writing code the old way. I don't see that happening in the industry, ever.
The grievances listed here are 100% real, but not fundamental - with some practice you can prompt an LLM to great effect without it taking the reins from you. If you let it write the code, it does become a management job more than an engineering job. That said, I do believe that there must be a way to structure your workflow such that the LLM becomes your read-only pair programmer/rubber duck while you yourself get to do the fun parts of coding.
- foldr
Even if you have a hard line against using LLMs to write code, for whatever reason, they are undoubtedly extremely useful for reviewing code and finding bugs. Why would you not take advantage of this?
- DamnInteresting
There are frequent news stories about companies that want to go capture an asteroid for mining, because it's worth "trillions" in rare metals. The companies don't seem to grasp the fact that flooding the market with a new supply said metals will diminish those metals' value dramatically. They can pump billions of dollars chasing that dream, and if they succeed, their reward will be to flood the market, and diminish the market.
LLMs feel like the same thing. They're spending billions of dollars on these machines that can flood the market with something once rare and valuable--human creativity. If they succeed, they'll just be ruining creativity and diminishing what humanity values.
- rickcarlino
> AI is not inevitable
I have a hard time believing this. The businesses employing us and the businesses competing with them will view handwritten code as an evasion of financial responsibility. That does not mean inevitability is positive or worth welcoming with open arms. But it is so inevitable at this point.
- alexpadula
LLMs and generative AI took what means to be a human away for many, not just programmers. The upcoming unrest will be fascinating.
- ricardobeat
This is a totally fine position to take - if you have no intention of staying in the field as a professional.
The environmental aspects can be solved.
Quality is a measure of the person driving the process, models can write code better than the average engineer.
The impact on learning, seniority etc is the one big unknown - but I believe can/will also be solved.
- JKCalhoun
Retired after 4 decades of programming for a living… To that end I am now a "hobbyist" programmer and not affiliated with a Corporation™ when I "ship" code. Perhaps I would feel differently if I still were.
As a hobbyist though, I find that LLMs are allowing me to tackle projects that I would not have tackled at all but for the existence of the LLM.
It's an important point to make (to me).
Many of these projects are rather tedious. (Other coders though might enjoy what this one-man calls "tedious".) I have found that liberating.