Same. I also code up about 50% of stuff so all the structure is there, effectively as guardrails, before using AI. Then prompting it instructions that are effectively the solution, so it doesn’t come up with its own.
Then, read through it all, replace things that could’ve been done better, and test.
On average it’s maybe 15-20% quicker than manually coding the whole lot. Try skip any of those steps and the chances of it blowing out increase to the point I just end up doing it all anyway and it’s taken twice as long because of it.
It’d be minimal since I’m doing all the hard work initially and feeding it logic to follow. I find open vibe coding does rip tokens and usually ends up with an overcomplicate mess. Many rabbit holes the AI creates and sends itself down, so a lot more unnecessary lines and often entire redundant blocks.
If someone’s going to do that, at the least break it up into sections to save tokens and time. But ideally, just get some coding experience under the belt of have a crack at it yourself first so it’s easy to identify the pitfalls and where clear instructions is needed.
You’d really need to know the fully burdened cost of an hour of the person’s time who’d be doing the work, versus the cost of the tokens plus all the overheads involved in its administration and use of the AI solution (tokens, support, training). Same goes with the downsides-- you’d need to know how the rate of serious bugs changes when you incorporate the slop. Some of the defects will make it through reviews and testing and into prod.
Same. I also code up about 50% of stuff so all the structure is there, effectively as guardrails, before using AI. Then prompting it instructions that are effectively the solution, so it doesn’t come up with its own.
Then, read through it all, replace things that could’ve been done better, and test.
On average it’s maybe 15-20% quicker than manually coding the whole lot. Try skip any of those steps and the chances of it blowing out increase to the point I just end up doing it all anyway and it’s taken twice as long because of it.
It’s alarming when people don’t even check.
Out of interest, how much is this 15-20% increase in productivity costing in tokens?
It’d be minimal since I’m doing all the hard work initially and feeding it logic to follow. I find open vibe coding does rip tokens and usually ends up with an overcomplicate mess. Many rabbit holes the AI creates and sends itself down, so a lot more unnecessary lines and often entire redundant blocks.
If someone’s going to do that, at the least break it up into sections to save tokens and time. But ideally, just get some coding experience under the belt of have a crack at it yourself first so it’s easy to identify the pitfalls and where clear instructions is needed.
You’d really need to know the fully burdened cost of an hour of the person’s time who’d be doing the work, versus the cost of the tokens plus all the overheads involved in its administration and use of the AI solution (tokens, support, training). Same goes with the downsides-- you’d need to know how the rate of serious bugs changes when you incorporate the slop. Some of the defects will make it through reviews and testing and into prod.