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Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

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Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#101
post #3

Yesterday my 8yo prompted (using voice recognition) Claude to make a game where it would play her a song (say Twinkle) and she had to play it back and get scored. The UI was a nice piano with visual feedback. The laptop key served as the keys until I prompted for midi support so she could use the electric piano. The whole thing took about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state s…

>Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state starting to become a bit of a spaghetti mess.

What does this even mean? Does the software run? Did you plan on extending it? Maybe turning it into a "platform"?

Why doesn't HackerNews understand software exists to solve a problem? No one cares if code is pretty if it does the job. You can talk about "potential issues" until you're blue in the face. It doesn't matter.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing LLM output to compiler output is such a stale meme by now that it's surprising to see people still saying it. Obviously a deterministic translation of a higher level programming language to machine code is different than the slop cannon.

1. Compilation has typically not been deterministic. Even within the same exact compiler tool chain version. 2. Compilers and building tool chains change all the time. CI and automated testing catch any regressions. Tye same can be done with LLMs. 3. LLM code generation, with some work, can be made deterministic, if that mattered to somebody.

Nonsense. The "weights" in "models" refer to probabilities.

Even the implicit claim that they could deterministically produce "the" correct answer with 100% certainty doesn't withstand any scrutiny.

Nevermind problems posed in English prose, complicated or philosophical questions. Is the correct answer to 2+2 four, or is it 1+3? When you you have 2 apples and give me one apple, how many apples do you have now; one, or half as many as before? What is the correct answer? Without a spaghetti of arbitrary axioms in the system prompt? Even if you come up with something clever about apples, it even fails at "when is your birthday". When it is today, should I say "today" or say the date? Not even God could decide that.

Arguably, the specifications for a compiler is also such a mess of axioms, and you can split hairs and say "it's all random anyway", but you'll still use a seatbelt instead of silly string, so what gives?

For compilers, give or take, there is a correct output for a given input (under which I'll include config, options, the targeted architecture, whatever). With LLM there is no such thing even if you do infinite mental backflips, and there won't be, because there can't be. Even if you could perfect the compilers that are needed to make the software that trains and drives LLM deterministic, you cannot make LLM fully deterministic without making them not an LLM.

If you can find a way to encode what a compiler would do to programs into the weights of a model so that produces the output of a compiler that would be a cool and completely useless feat, because it would probably be bigger, slower and impossible to reason about. But it would still be cool and I would still try it out.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of code is being written and a lot of it is going to be a real future burden. This assumes that the models of the future won't find it easier to just throw the code away and rebuild it This also assumes that the same application build by humans wouldn't become a "spaghetti mess".

errors compound

...Whether you are an LLM or human. And, on average, LLMs write better code than humans.

Not you, of course. You write exceptional code with zero errors that never needs rework. I'm talking about the rest of us.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#104
post #3

Yesterday my 8yo prompted (using voice recognition) Claude to make a game where it would play her a song (say Twinkle) and she had to play it back and get scored. The UI was a nice piano with visual feedback. The laptop key served as the keys until I prompted for midi support so she could use the electric piano. The whole thing took about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state s…

> Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state starting to become a bit of a spaghetti mess. What does this even mean? Does the software run? Did you plan on extending it? Maybe turning it into a "platform"? Why doesn't HackerNews understand software exists to solve a problem? No one cares if code is pretty if it does the job. You can talk about "potential issues" until you're blue in the face. I…

It's not about prettiness. It's about being harder to extend thus making future adaptations harder.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#105
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to not realize how far these models have become. I remember when they would always hallucinate APIs that wasn't there or make up fields that didn't exist.. those problems are virtually solved now. So with that in mind, why wouldn't AI be able to write better code? The code would have to be maintainable by AI itself (operating based on the assumption that the future will be Agentic Engineering)

I don't use Claude, but isn't the consensus right now that Opus 5 is worse than previous generations? I suppose you could just commit to always using Fable and never use Opus, but it > might decide your 8yo is actually trying to build a cleverly disguised bomb so her request gets silently downgraded to a dumber model My contention isn't that models haven't improved or won't keep improving – my position is that the bu…

Yeah, the models aren't improving because Reddit told you so, and the businesses aren't incentivized to make better models. Galaxy brain take.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#106
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state starting to become a bit of a spaghetti mess. What does this even mean? Does the software run? Did you plan on extending it? Maybe turning it into a "platform"? Why doesn't HackerNews understand software exists to solve a problem? No one cares if code is pretty if it does the job. You can talk about "potential issues" until you're blue in the face. I…

It's not about prettiness. It's about being harder to extend thus making future adaptations harder.

You don't always need to extend or adapt. Not every piece of software is a business. Most often it's a tool to achieve something else.

Besides, this all revolves around the, I believe false, premise that humans write code better than AI.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#107
I have a bad Ethernet cables through unused chimney from my apartament to the basement. The workers I asked to pull it just did it brute force and 2 of pairs are broken. When I was chatting with Claude to see if I can use it somehow to send Ethernet packets one of the Claude responses was to use broken cables as a pilot to pull fiber channel!

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#108
post #3

Yesterday my 8yo prompted (using voice recognition) Claude to make a game where it would play her a song (say Twinkle) and she had to play it back and get scored. The UI was a nice piano with visual feedback. The laptop key served as the keys until I prompted for midi support so she could use the electric piano. The whole thing took about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state s…

Those of us involved in offshore projects already know the feeling.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#109
post #87

Somehow, on HN, suggesting to use an LLM to solve some problem gives you negative responses. But then ... posting to HN that you've used an LLM to solve a problem is OK?

I can't say I've seen the same universally, but, if it is s trend, it would seem one invites discussion between humans on the site while the other seeks to minimize it.

Re: Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength

#110
post #3

Yesterday my 8yo prompted (using voice recognition) Claude to make a game where it would play her a song (say Twinkle) and she had to play it back and get scored. The UI was a nice piano with visual feedback. The laptop key served as the keys until I prompted for midi support so she could use the electric piano. The whole thing took about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state s…

> Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state starting to become a bit of a spaghetti mess.

So it's on par with humans, then.

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