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

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

#221

Post by cassianoleal »

sunrunner wrote: post #47
lm28469 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they fall under the "engineers" category like my local postman and Michael Schumacher both fall under the "driver" category. Most people don't work on anything technically hard, most problems are business logic issues that aren't solved technically or legacy code workarounds for which you need to put 3-10 domain experts in a room for a few hours to solve.

There are a lot of terms in software development that have been co-opted from other disciplines and misrepresent a lot of development work, including 'engineering' and 'architecture'. I think it's helpful to think of engineering as a _process_ instead of a role, and the reality is that a lot of development work doesn't necessarily rely on the strong engineering methodology (e.g. measurement, material properties, tole…

> the reality is that a lot of development work doesn't necessarily rely on the strong engineering methodology (e.g. measurement, material properties, tolerances, modelling, etc.)

It's probably true that a lot of development work doesn't rely on those. It's probably also true that the work other kinds of engineers do also don't.

That said, when engineering software systems, those are very important. Measurement: resource sizing, observability; tolerances: backoffs, back pressure, queues, topics, buffers; modelling: types, syntax, data analytics...

There's a whole class of developers out there that are not aware or very good at those. And that's fine. There's a place for them in the market. You don't need an engineer to work on your floor joists or your plumbing. Sure you can have one, but you can also hire a builder or DIY it all yourself.

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

#222

Post by esafak »

nottorp wrote: post #219
esafak wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern tools don't fine tune on your code base but use RAG; select the context to feed it to the LLM with each request. The better the context inference algorithm, the better the results. See if your tool tells you what files it selected.

Yes but why? On a large code base it would probably work better if you didn't need to put it all in the context... if you even could...

I am saying the same thing; you want to selectively establish the context, not pass it all.

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

#223

Post by jimbokun »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #41
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…

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…

To me that makes coding LLMs the new Excel.

I mean that in the sense that Excel is the tool that non developers could take the farthest to meet their needs without actually becoming a full time developer. But then to take it past that point a professional developer needs to step in.

I imagine non devs vibe coding their way to solutions far more complex than Excel can handle. But once they get past the greenfield vibe coding stage they will need a pro to maintain it, scale it, secure it, operationalize it, etc.

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

#224

Post by jimbokun »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #196
insane_dreamer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> create a React app with X amount of pages, some Redux stores, Auth, etc. Unless you're a contractor making basic websites for small businesses, how many of these do you need to make? This really a small fraction of the job of most developers, except for entry-level devs. > when it comes to maintaining existing systems, or adding more complicated features, or needing to know business domain details, This is what exp…

Your conclusion is wrong I think. LLMs cannot magically replace entry levels devs. Who’s gonna ask the LLM to create the basic website? The product owner? The accountant? The sales guy? They wouldn’t know how to be precise enough to state what they actually need. An entry level engineer would make use of the LLM to produce the website and push it to production. Hell, only engineers know that the devil is in the detai…

A lot of the value a good engineer provides is saying “you don’t want to do that, it’s a bad idea for these reasons.” Or “that’s actually easier than you think. We could do it this way.”

Knowing what’s possible, difficult, easy, risky, cheap, expensive, etc.

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

#226

Post by jimbokun »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #20
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…

I find LLMs make me about 10% more productive – which is great, but nowhere near as extreme as some claims. Cursor autocompletes a lot of stuff I would have typed anyway, and LLM search is a strong complement to Google, though not a direct replacement. Generating more than a few lines usually gives me bad code, but often suggests libraries I didn't know about, especially outside my area of expertise. There's just not…

I do find AI a replacement to Google most of the time, because now when I search on Google the Gemini results at the top generally give me what I wanted to know.

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

#227

Post by bagacrap »

paulcole wrote: post #225

> but trying to get it to generate code that I am willing to maintain and "put my name on" took longer than writing the code would have Why don’t you consider that the AI will be the one maintaining it?

If that were possible we'd have already pointed LLMs at the Linux bug tracker (for example) and fixed all the open issues.

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

#228

Post by maxnevermind »

cube2222 wrote: post #89

I get a lot of value out of LLMs including for existing codebases and authoring / modifying code in them. However, only maybe 10% of that is agentic coding. Thus, my recommendation would be - try non-agentic tools. My primary workflow is something that works with the Zed editor, and which I later ported as a custom plugin to Goland. Basically, you first chat with the AI in a sidebar possibly embedding a couple of fil…

> From all I know, only Zed's AI assistant supports this.

You mean the session context awareness? I thought it is a default in all major IDE/plugins. Or you mean some specific trait of that feature?

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

#229

Post by AfterHIA »

I like to think of the painter who's trained in classical design; they spend their time thinking about Baroque diagonals and golden ratios. They have a, "deep knowledge" of how paintings are classically organized. One day they encounter a strange machine that can produce any image they wish-- without considering the economic impact this would have on their craft he is often asked, "isn't this machine a marvel?" His reply is often, "it sheds no light for me on why certain ratios produce beautiful forms, it tells me nothing of the inspired mind of poets, nor of the nature of the Good."

In Plato's Republic Socrates' compares the ability to produce a piece of furniture with the ability to produce the image of a cabient or so-forth with a small compact mirror; what is the difference if a deceivable crowd doesn't know the difference?

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

#230

Post by prakashn27 »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #41
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…

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…

100% true.
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