Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

copyconstruct.medium.com San Francisco, CA Joined July 2010

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

6 hours ago

Ball-knowers knew all along that Twitter wasn’t just going to collapse after Elon fired 75% of the staff, because Twitter 1.0 had some of the best infrastructure engineers working on it, and when you get that calibre of people building your foundations, it lasts.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a day ago

@SeanTAllen @MarcJBrooker Would be super curious to see this. I feel like currently we’re in the best and worst of times, where a massive amounts of code is being generated, but I spend a lot of effort making sure every bug is correctly diagnosed, and rejecting a ton of stuff. It’s super exhausting.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

2 days ago

@MarcJBrooker No amount of existing testing methodologies can help fix this “spurious edge case misattribution” problem. LLMs even fail to deterministically debug the same problem the same way, in two different sessions. I just don’t have the confidence to trust the code it generates.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

2 days ago

@MarcJBrooker The bigger problem is that people often open PRs for bugs etc that don’t fix the problem at all. LLM often manage to even repro something, but it’s for a really obscure edge case no real end user is hitting, while the actual bug goes undiagnosed.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

4 days ago

With agentic coding, even in the best case scenarios (where you read every line of generated code), there’s something we’ve lost, perhaps irrevocably. That has a real cost, & not to mention, second and third order effects, that “software factories” etc don’t necessarily solve.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

5 days ago

@umachingunde Reddit is teeming with anti-AI people. There were (probably still are) even *programming* subs where you couldn’t mention AI.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

6 days ago

Writing a post about “how to effectively debug code when you no longer fully understand it”. This is real bug I had to fix in ~9K LOC (100% AI generated). None of the tactics I started with here helped “root cause” the issue, lol. Had to take a different approach to isolate it.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

@nihil2501 An excerpt from an unpublished blog post draft of mine

Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

@__alexlazar__ Update: Been super busy lately, but should have time on weekends in Sept. Should be done by the end of this month, I hope. Here’s an excerpt (as proof I haven’t abandoned this, lol)

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

One thing I don’t see many talk about is how coding agents can often *amplify* weaknesses, both individual and organizational. I think of this as the “empty calories” problem, which is exacerbated when “hyperproductivity” originates from your team’s “lowest common denominator”.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a month ago

@__alexlazar__ About 40% done. Hoping to fully wrap this up next week. Posting here to keep myself accountable, and not abandon this draft, lol.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

2 months ago

I used to say “you should aim to understand every line of generated code” (and I still try to!) But in practice, there’s an emergent set of (sometimes counterintuitive) skills (NOT loops/toxenmaxxing!) that lets one ship and debug large amounts of unfamiliar code productively.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

The IDE/editor might be dead, but it helps to occasionally open one and read some code. Often, what “looked OK” in isolation when an agent wrote a patch can end up looking *very* different from more of a “panoramic view”, with misshapen and incoherent APIs, abstractions.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

@HumanTechGuy Oh yes, still human. Just siccing Claude on a “loop” on this bug would not have got me anywhere for sure.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

I previously called this an “emergent” skill set. The people yapping about how you “don’t need to understand the code anymore” are NOT telling you how to sharpen or even hone this new skillset, where you *can* debug problems out of your comfort zone, methodically with AI.

Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

2 months ago

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

Incidentally, this proves that with AI you can now solve problems *way* out of your wheelhouse or your “knowledge/skill” level, if you persevere enough and can get creative with how you approach debugging. It’s a different skill set than coding or even traditional debugging tho.

Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

The people who blithely claim “you don’t need to understand the code anymore” aren’t telling you what debugging looks like in such cases Here’s one example where I had to debug a gnarly problem at work with Claude *without* access to the code Possible? Yes “Easy”? Nope 🙂‍↔️

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

a week ago

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

2 weeks ago

@typesanitizer I find so much of “influencer” wisdom to be extremely ill-advised. The people who probably can give the best advice are busy with their jobs and lives, and those with ample time to pontificate more often than not leave me baffled.

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Cindy Sridharan @copyconstruct

2 weeks ago

@tianyin_xu As someone who came here on a student visa 15 years ago, it pains me to see this. The war on international students is one of the most self-destructive acts ever.

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CJ Gustafson @cjgustafson

3 weeks ago

I’m increasingly convinced that “giving a shit” will be a competitive differentiator now that everyone is using AI to do their work. Ten years ago, I had this manager who was a perfectionist. whenever he thought a presentation was “done” he’d spend 15 more minutes changing colors and aligning shapes (that were def already aligned, btw) and checking where the titles sat so they didn’t jump from slide to slide. He was purposefully trying to locate the point others would quit, and then put just a little more effort in. At first I was like dude you’re a psychopath we’ve been working on this deck for a month. It’s great. But his point was that going the extra 10% has a non linear impact if everyone else stops at around the same point. That was pre AI. Today people can pump and dump drivel at a fantastic clip. And they hit send or post after pretty minimal effort, awash in the glory of the 80% ok slop they so quickly created. On one hand, it’s frustrating. But on the other hand, it’s creating a new opportunity to stand out by simply giving a shit. By caring about your work product a little bit more and taking it personally you separate yourself by a wide margin. So give a shit today! It might make you great.