Item — HN Reader

Someone on X said that these agentic AI tools (Claude Code, Amp, Gemini Cli) are to programming like the table saw was to hand-made woodworking.

It can make some things faster and better than a human with a saw, but you have to learn how to use them right (or you will loose some fingers).

I personally find that agentic AI tools make me be more ambitious in my projects, I can tackle some things I didn't tthougth about doing before. And I also delegate work that I don't like to them because they are going to do it better and quicker than me. So my mind is free to think on the real problems like architecture, the technical debt balance of my code...

Problem is that there is the temptation of letting the AI agent do everything and just commit the result without understanding YOUR code (yes, it was generated by an AI but if you sign the commit YOU are responsible for that code).

So as with any tool try to take the time to understand how to better use it and see if it works for you.

2 comments

> to programming like the table saw was to hand-made woodworking

This is a ridiculous comparison because the table saw is a precision tool (compared to manual woodworking) when agentic AI is anything but IMO.

The nature of the comparison is in the second paragraph. It's nothing to do with how precise it is.

"You are using it wrong!"

This is insulting to all pre-2023 open source developers, who produced the entire stack that the "AI" robber barons use in their companies.

It is even more insulting because no actual software of value has been demonstrably produced using "AI".

> It is even more insulting because no actual software of value has been demonstrably produced using "AI".

Claude Code and Amp (equivalent from Sourcegraph) are created by humans using these same tools to add new features and fix bugs.

Having used both tools for some weeks I can tell you that they provide a great value to me, enough that I see paying $100 monthly as a bargain related to that value.

Edit: typo

GP is pointing out the distinct lack of AI driven development in the wild. At this point, agents should be visibly maintaining at least a few popular codebases across this world wide web. The fact that there aren't raises some eyebrows for the claims that are regularly made by proponents. Not just the breathless proponents, either. Even taking claims very conservatively, FOSS maintainer burnout should be a thing of the past, but the only noted interaction with AI seems to be amplifying it.

It's disingenuous to expect that tools that are publicly available for less than a year have a massive adoption in the wild.

Think that these were internal tools that provided value to engineers on Anthropic, OpenAI, Google & others and now are starting to be adopted by the general public.

Some people are overhyped and some seem hurt because I don't know, maybe they define themselves by their ability to write code by hand.

I have no horse in this race and I can only tell you about my experience and I can tell you that the change is coming.

Also if you don't trust a random HN nickname go read about the experiences of people like Armin Ronacher (Flask creator), Steve Yegge or Thomas H. Ptacek.

- https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/6/4/changes/ - https://sourcegraph.com/blog/the-brute-squad - https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/

I'm not asking for massive adoption. I'm asking for public facing evidence of what many claim privately, that they have evolved their job into managing agents and reviewing vs writing anything themselves.

Again, not massive adoption, just one codebase that's used in production with this property. If it's such a productivity boost, there has to be at least one public facing project that's done the same as random HN nicknames and nonrandom named individuals.

>It's disingenuous to expect that tools that are publicly available for less than a year have a massive adoption in the wild.

Github got massive adoption in a year, probably 100K developers and tens of thousands of projects including big names like Ruby on Rails.

I'm sure if I spent more than 2 minutes on this I'd have even more examples but this one is enough to neuter your claims.