alt Hacker News> typing isn't the bottleneck. Not even close.
I find it absolutely is much of the time - I'll determine the architecture/overall solution, know exactly what needs to go in a multitude of files, and now actualizing all that isn't really thinking anymore, just donkey work. Getting AI to do this has been incredible now that it's finally good enough. I've had Copilot make flawless 500+LOC C++ classes in the first pass, and when I introduced bugs by changing it by hand, it found them instantly from stack traces without even having symbols, saving me hours. I see a future where writing a large codebase all by hand is seen like raising a barn the Amish way with no powertools - impressive and maybe there's something to be said for it philosophically, but just not practical otherwise.
Replies
If you use that much time for donkey work, you are using the wrong tools. If it is so simple so that can delegate it to a LLM, you need to use a language with more expressive power.
How often are you actually doing this though? I think I probably work in something greenfield about once a decade. The hard part is always going down a rabbit hole in established code bases. I can do the boilerplate in a few days. It saves time, but not really even one hairy issue a year.
> I've had Copilot make flawless 500+LOC C++ classes in the first pass
Lmao, please tell me what products you're working on so I can avoid them
I find however, that while typing it all out, my mind often continues analyzing and thinking, and that I often find a new idea, or new structure, that might be even better. Typing it out and seeing it appear in front of me. It also gives me a feeling for how tedious, brittle, or annoying the solution is.
Granted, sometimes it's really not that interesting to type the stuff. It depends what one is working on.