Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 293 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#151

Post by emp17344 »

gyomu wrote: post #13

There are two kinds of engineers. Those who can’t stop raving about how much of a superpower LLMs are for coding, how it’s made them 100x more productive, and is unlocking things they could’ve never done before. And those who, like you, find it to be an extremely finicky process that requires extreme amount of coddling to get average results at best. The only thing I don’t understand is why people from the former gro…

The fact that no one can agree on how useful these things are makes me think they aren’t that useful.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#152

Post by cies »

I found they work for tasks that have been done 1000s of times already. But for creative solutions in super specialized environments (lot's of the works I do it just that) they cannot help me.

I expect they soon will be able to help me with basic refactoring that needs to be performed across a code base. Luckily my code uses strong types: type safety quickly shows where the LLM was tripping/forgetting.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#153

Post by data-ottawa »

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #127
gyomu wrote: post #13

There are two kinds of engineers. Those who can’t stop raving about how much of a superpower LLMs are for coding, how it’s made them 100x more productive, and is unlocking things they could’ve never done before. And those who, like you, find it to be an extremely finicky process that requires extreme amount of coddling to get average results at best. The only thing I don’t understand is why people from the former gro…

A little snarky but: In my experience, the folks who are 100x more productive are multiplying 100 times a small number. I've found great success with LLMs in the research phase of coding. Last week I needed to write some domain-specific linear algebra and because of some other restrictions, I couldn't just pull in LAPACK. So I had to hand code the work (yes, I know you shouldn't hand code this kind of stuff, but it w…

They definitely help raise the floor, but have a much lower ceiling.

If you’re near that ceiling you get most value out of code reviews and those side features you don’t care about that allow you to focus more on the actual problem.

That’s a 10-20% lift instead of 10/100x.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#154

Post by slightwinder »

gyomu wrote: post #13

There are two kinds of engineers. Those who can’t stop raving about how much of a superpower LLMs are for coding, how it’s made them 100x more productive, and is unlocking things they could’ve never done before. And those who, like you, find it to be an extremely finicky process that requires extreme amount of coddling to get average results at best. The only thing I don’t understand is why people from the former gro…

Even if someone seriously works 100 times faster with AI, it doesn't mean they can easily dominate any established market. A product is more than just code, and a company is more than their headcount. There is domain knowledge about the product and market. There is the personal ability of the workers and the synergy coming with, also the strength of established structures grown over years and decades. Just the habit and trust of users is a big fortress every new product has to conquer. That's not something some random dev or team of devs can easily reach just by being 100 times faster.

And realistically, there is also the question of where this claim is coming from. Someone being 100 times faster with AI is probably not starting from a place of high competence. Of the 100x, 90x are probably just for filling the gap to peak devs. So at the end they would be probably as productive as a highly competent dev of some domain, just that they can more easily access any domain without years of experience in that domain. And if we are honest, we somewhat have that already without AI, just by people copying and cookie cutting any sh*t

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#155

Post by macNchz »

sph wrote: post #118
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find LLMs 100x more productive for greenfield work. If I want to create a React app with X amount of pages, some Redux stores, Auth, etc. then it can smash that out in minutes. I can say "now add X" and it'll do it. Generally with good results. But when it comes to maintaining existing systems, or adding more complicated features, or needing to know business domain details, a LLM is usually not that great for me. T…

> I find LLMs 100x more productive for greenfield work. Greenfield != boilerplate and basic CRUD app. I'm a consultant writing greenfield apps solo, and 90% of my time is spent away from my editor thinking, planning, designing, meeting with stakeholders. I see no benefit in using a low-IQ autocomplete tool to automate a small part of the remaining 10% of the job, the easiest and most enjoyable part in fact. Personall…

Where I've found LLM coding assistants really effective in my client consulting work is around iteration: I can deliver so many more versions of an application UI in a given amount of time that it really changes the entire process of how we dig into a project. Where I might previously have wanted to start with low fidelity wireframes and go through approvals to avoid proto-duction and pain down the line when the client didn't like something, now we can rough out the whole thing in a functional proof of concept and then make sweeping changes live on a call as we test different interaction paradigms.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#156

Post by [deleted] »

igor47 wrote: post #149
TimPC wrote: post #141

LLMs give you superpowers if you work on a wide range of tasks and aren't a deep expert on all of them. They aren't that great if you know the area you are working in inside and out and never stray from it. For example, using an LLM to help you write a Dockerfile when you write Dockerfiles once a project and don't have a dedicated expert like a Deployment Engineer in your company is fantastic. Or using an LLM to get…

> For example, using an LLM to help you write a Dockerfile when you write Dockerfiles once a project and don't have a dedicated expert like a Deployment Engineer in your company is fantastic. This made me think of gell-mann amnesia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect Basically, when you understand the problem domain, you know the llm is generating crap that, as the OP says, you're unwilling to p…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#157

Post by [deleted] »

csomar wrote: post #9

I was just struggling with getting a standard/template npm package up and running with a few customizations. Ended up just following one of the popular npm packages. This is Claude 4 and although it is good at writing code, I feel like it gets dumber at certain tasks especially when you want it to connect things together. It very easily messes one thing up and then when you include the errors, it spirals from there i…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#158

Post by bluefirebrand »

l33tman wrote: post #146
s_ting765 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you that the coders who are "smitten" by LLMs are just inexperienced. I personally find that LLMs get subtle improvements in capability over time and it's usually worthwhile to check in on the progress from time to time. Even if it's just for fun.

I can see why you would chime in to say that in your experience you don't get any value out of it, but to chime in to say that the millions of people who do are "inexperienced" is pretty offensive. In the hands of skilled developers these tools are a complete gamechanger.

> In the hands of skilled developers these tools are a complete gamechanger.

This is where both sides are basically just accusing the other of not getting it

The AI coders are saying "These tools are a gamechanger in the hands of skilled developers" implying if you aren't getting gamechanging results you aren't skilled

The non-AI coders are basically saying the same thing back to them. "You only think this is gamechanging because you aren't skilled enough to realize how bad they are"

Personally, I've tried to use LLMs for coding quite a bit and found them really lacking

If people are finding a lot of success with them, either I'm using them wrong and other people have figured out a better way, or their standards are way, way lower than mine, or maybe they wind up spending just as long fixing the broken code as it would take me to write it

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#159

Post by 65 »

I'd like to think the point of technology is to do the same thing but faster.

AI tools can do things faster, but at lower quality. They can't do the _same_ thing faster.

So AI is fine for specifically low quality, simple things. But for anything that requires any level of customization or novelty (which is most software), it's useless for me.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#160

Post by [deleted] »

csomar wrote: post #9

I was just struggling with getting a standard/template npm package up and running with a few customizations. Ended up just following one of the popular npm packages. This is Claude 4 and although it is good at writing code, I feel like it gets dumber at certain tasks especially when you want it to connect things together. It very easily messes one thing up and then when you include the errors, it spirals from there i…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN