> You ask it the right niche thing and it can only pump out a few variations of the same code, that's clearly someone else's code stolen almost verbatim.

There are only so many ways to express the same idea. Even clean room engineers write incidentally identical code to the source sometimes.

There was an example on here recently where an AI PR to an open source literally had someone else's name in the comments in the code, and included their license.

That's the level of tell-tale that's its just stealing code and modifying a couple of variable names.

For me personally, the code I've seen might be written in a slightly weird style, or have strange, not applicable to the question, additions.

They're so obviously not "clean room" code or incredibly generic, they're the opposite, they're incredibly specific.

For me the excitement is palpable when I've asked it to write a feature, then I go test it and it entirely works as expected. It's so cool.

I've asked ChatGPT "Could X thing in quantum mechanics actually be caused by/an expression of the same thing going on as Y" where it had prime opportunity to say I'm a genius discovering something profound, but instead it just went into some very technical specifics about why they weren't really the same or related. IME 5 has been a big improvement in being more objective.

> many companies changed their "strategy" to mandating AI usage internally

Are they hiring? My job is still dragging its feet on approving copilot.

It demonstrated the capabilities of an AI to a potentially on-the-fence audience while giving the author experience using the new tools/environment. That's solid value. I also just find it really cool to see that an AI did this.

Yeah, it shows the AI is not capable of writing maintainable projects. I'm off the fence. And its cool you find it cool, but reducing the problem space to that of a toy project makes it so much less impressive as to be trivially ignorable.

The new LLM (pattern recognizer/matcher) is not a good tool

> actually verify that the code I just wrote does what I intended it to

That's what the author did when they ran it.

> 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.

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.

Each time I write a routine it's different. Its better. I've learned something from last time. In fact, this is one of the things that got me hooked on computing. That there's so much complexity, often hidden, that there's always more to learn and improve upon.

And truth be told, if I'm writing the same thing many times it's time to create a library. Maybe just for myself or for the company I work for. But the same thing happens. I always learn more while doing it and it always gets better.

I fear the programmer whose bottleneck is typing. They already know the answer. But the problem is that there is none

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.

There's no such language, sans Lisp with extreme use of macros.

Here's an alternative take: if typing isn't a bottleneck for you, and you don't experience coding as being donkey work, you are thinking too slow, and/or in too small increments.

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.

> The hard part is always going down a rabbit hole in established code bases.

Actually, I found that this is exactly where they shine (I wouldn't trust them with greenfield implementation myself). Exploring existing code is so much easier when you can ask them how something works. You can even ask them to find problems - you can't trust them to be correct, of course, but at least you get some good brainstorming going. And, incredibly, they often do find actual problems in the code. Pretty impressive for language models.

How long have you been programming?

I actually felt like I learned the most when I stopped going to Google and StackOverflow for solutions and instead moved to docs. It's far less direct but the information is much more rich. All that auxiliary information compounds. I want to skip it, feeling rushed to get an answer, but I've always been the better for taking the "scenic route". I'd then play around and learn how to push functions and abuse them. Boy there's no learning like learning how to abuse code.

Fwiw, I do use LLMs, but they don't write code for me. They are fantastic rubber ducky machines. Far better than my cat, which is better than an actual rubber duck. They aid in docs too, helping fill in that space when you don't exactly understand them. But don't let them do the hard work nor the boring work. The boring work is where you usually learn the most. It's also the time you don't recognize that's happening

Close to 5 years. I read docs too and love the immersion and the fully grasping of concepts when going with your route, but most days there's just not enough hours for this.

> The boring work is where you usually learn the most. It's also the time you don't recognize that's happening

That was always how I did it before mid-2025. And I do still do boring work when I truly want to master something, but doing that too much just means (for me) not finishing anything.

5 years isn't that long. I've been doing 3X that and I'm constantly learning new things. Not even about new language features but even languages I've been using that whole time. New ways to problem solve. New algorithms. New tools.

Not finishing things can be okay but also not. An important skill to learn is what's good enough. And to write good enough to be easily upgradable. It's important to write code to be flexible for this reason. It's also important to realize it's okay to completely throw away code. But also this is the reason comments are so important. Don't just write what functions do but also write how you envision the design. Even if you can't get to it now. Then when you or anyone else comes back (after lunch, next week, next year, whenever) there's good hints about all that. Knowing how to get up to speed and be effective fast. If anything this helps agents even more. Commenting is a vastly under appreciated skill and only becoming more valuable

> 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

Oh my, the AI bros got upset! You must be cranky from having to fix all those bugs your agent keeps throwing up in your "flawless 500+ LOC" code they keep writing.

My partner with a Macbook works on AI and has told me how great Apple silicon is, and their Macbook would run so many things so well.. except they don't have enough RAM and there's no way to upgrade it..

I’m in the same boat as your partner except that I generally max the RAM in my laptop when buying it.

The thing is it would probably be the same issue with a Framework or any other brand of laptop as they all have some final limit on RAM or GPU RAM.

If you upgrade the GPU or motherboard you have to ask what will happen to the old one. You can reuse some of them but most probably will just be e-waste.

There’s a chance when upgrading a whole laptop that the old one will a new use somewhere.

I'm a hoarder so I'd just keep it around. I still have my Playstation 2 after all.

Every laptop except my first college one is also somewhere around my house. Even my $300 high school laptop that could really only run Microsoft Word (I remember running Fallout 3 on it at lowest settings at a brisk 10 fps). Even for that college laptop I salvaged the storage, ram, and disk drive.

Some people around me prolesytize these modern Macbooks endlessly but I don't quite get it. I've tried them but I still love my Framework 16 to bits and I'd take it any day of the week. The Macbooks are great machines, and one thing I can say in their favor is the battery life is phenomenal, but I prefer my Framework's aesthetics and feel - it feels more like I'm holding something I've worked on and made my own vs just bought, I prefer the shiny metal over the dull gray of the Macbooks, the keyboard and trackpad are just as good (and I love the rgb pad I have in place of a numpad), and taking it apart/replacing modules just feels so cool. I've also saved those friends various times by lending an expansion card, usually usb-A.

> the keyboard and trackpad are just as good

The keyboard on my framework 13 is fine but it’s got a very sketchy touchpad and that classic symptom of a modern, shitty laptop: the whole thing flexes if I pick it up by the corner, and oftentimes actuates the trackpad button. Other times if I’m sitting in an unfavorable position the machine flexes and the trackpad button no longer works. Compare that with the rigidity of a modern Macbook.

Framework 14 is the original (and best tbh). The 13 and 16 unfortunately don't hit the balance of feeling premium like the 14 does. This thread has me wondering if they really diluted their reputation with these new devices...

I meant 14, then. I bought my framework from the third or fourth batch that was available (going from memory), in November 2021 (going from email).

Nothing premium about it at all. That’s ridiculous in my opinion, the quality is cringe in comparison to an Apple. On the other hand, I’ve got four years of use out of it, so… whatever.

I wanted to love it very badly, and they did the right thing with the camera and audio cutoff switches and their location. But that wasn’t enough to make it a great laptop.

First time I read that the trackpad of Framework is 'just as good' as in macbooks

As a daily user of both a first gen framework 13 and a M1 MacBook Pro, the MacBook touchpad is like 5-10% better. And I suspect that's all software because I did something recently that absolutely fucked the response and feel of my framework touchpad that I haven't figured out how to undo so there's clearly a lot of room for manoeuvre in software.

I still found it interesting and not worthy of the downvotes.