Marytzu
So my work is mandating agentic coding. One thing I have found is that it shifts to the right (as opposed to you know...shiftLeft), both in terms of quality and understanding. I have adjusted by scrutinizing the output (code) much deeper than if I owned more of the workflow (discovery at minimum).
But ofc, that annuls much of the time saved using an agentic workflow. #programming #agents #AI
Mar 23 at 5:13amMastodon for Android
Show threadMarytzu6d ago
And yes, I did have an agent review the code before I reviewed it. Also had another create an ffbd for me with line annotations. Still ended up having to go deep on that code review at the end to understand it.
Show threadMarytzu5d ago

Also, this is one workflow at a time. I don't get the talk of parallelization of agents. How on earth do you deal with all the context switching? I think it would kill me tbh.

It takes all of my cognitive bandwidth just reading and understanding the outputs.

Show threadDr. Thaddeus Q. They5d ago
@marytzu
It's kinda like pair programming, and the critics say the same - you're wasting time putting two people to produce the output of one.
But in the long term, having better reviewed code actually pays. Perhaps it's the same case here, as long you don't just vibe code
Show threadMarytzu5d ago
@mattesilver depends what you mean by vibe code, haha. My old workflow was good ole ctrl c +v albeit with heavy modifications, & as for what was copied; mostly existing design patterns in the codebase. New workflow is feed tech design & ticket to planner bot -->implementation plan--->copilot in VS-->QA bot-->I review it. Mgmt at my work is pushing for full agentic workflow though, so god knows how long this will last b4 a full hands-off workflow is mandated.🙃
Show threadHarald5d ago

@marytzu
LOL, whenever I tried recently, after a short while I thought, fuck it, rather than coerce a more than stubborn "junior developer", aka ai, into implementing what I want, I just write it myself.

Boring lookup jobs like is it string.join(list) or list.join(string) are good for ai, but writing code is still much quicker than writing an elaborate spec in natural language precise enough to get the intended result.

Show threadMarytzu5d ago

@HaraldKi yes, I had an example of that recently. I needed to change a hardcoded enum in the legacy code, I knew what I wanted, and it was just easier to make the change myself rather than having to explain it in natural language.

Re: "junior developer": in some ways it's so much smarter (eg creating an ffbd of the code way faster than i could), in either ways it is soo stupid. Like my claude opus 4.6 can't stop using magic strings/numbers no matter the prompt.