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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?

#31

Post by rollcat »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #15

I would never use an LLM for trying to generate a full solution to a complex problem. That's not what they're good at. What LLMs are good at and their main value I'd argue, is nudging you along and removing the need to implement things that "just take time". Like some days back I needed to construct a string with some information for a log entry, and the LLM that we have suggested a solution that was both elegant and…

> What LLMs are good at and their main value I'd argue, is nudging you along and removing the need to implement things that "just take time".

I was still learning Java at uni (while being a Python/Lisp fanboy) when I realised this:

- Complex and wordy languages need tooling (like autocomplete, autoformatting) to handle the tedious parts.

- Simple and expressive languages can get away with coding in notepad.exe.

- Lisp, as simple and powerful as it is, needs brace highlighting. You. Simply. Just. Can't.

Now 10, 20 years later you can look back at the evolution of many of these languages; some trends I've observed:

- Java, C#, C++, have all borrowed a lot from functional languages.

- JVM has Clojure.

- Go stubbornly insists on "if err != nil" - which isn't even the worst part; the following fmt.Errorf is.

- Rust (post-1.0) cautiously moved towards "?"; Zig (still pre-1.0) also has specific syntax for errors.

- Python is slowly getting more verbose, mostly because of type annotations.

- Autoformatters are actually great, you don't even have to care about indenting code as you spit it out, but... Python, being whitespace-sensitive, makes them a bit less useful.

Good tooling helps you with wordy languages. Expressive languages help you write concise code. Code is read much more often than it's written. Deterministic tooling can work with the structure of the code, but LMs (being probabilistic) can help you work with its intent. Language models are an evolution of automated tooling - they will get better, just like autocomplete got better; but they will never "solve" coding.

In my opinion, there's no truth here, only opinions.

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

#32

Post by nottorp »

melvinroest wrote: post #28
avalys wrote: post #19

I find LLMs very useful when I need to learn something new, e.g. a new library or API, or a new language. It is much faster to just ask the LLM how to render text in OpenGL, or whatever, than read through tons of terrible documentation. Or, if I have a bunch of repetitive boilerplate stuff that I have no good templates for or cannot borrow from another part of the codebase. But when it comes to what I consider the ac…

> I find LLMs very useful when I need to learn something new, e.g. a new library or API, or a new language. It is much faster to just ask the LLM how to render text in OpenGL, or whatever, than read through tons of terrible documentation. LLMs are better at reading terrible documentation than the average programmer. So in that sense, "obscure text reading and explain it better" there seems to be a clear value add. >…

> LLMs are better at reading terrible documentation than the average programmer.

LLMs don't go and read the terrible documentation for you when prompted. They reproduce the information posted by other people that struggled with said terrible documentation, if it was posted somewhere.

It's still better than a modern web search or struggling with the terrible documentation on your own - for introductory stuff.

For going into production you have to review the output, and reading code has always been harder than writing it...

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

#33

Post by gyomu »

bobxmax wrote: post #24
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…

They are. People are building sophisticated products in days not months now. If you can't see that, it's your issue.

Would you be so kind as to link to some of these sophisticated products? Would love to check them out.

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

#34

Post by consumer451 »

souenzzo wrote: post #16

my code setup hasn't changed in 10 years I tried to use many LLM tools. They are generally not capable of doing anything useful in a real project. Maybe solutions like MCP, that allow the LLM to access the git history make the LLM become useful for someone that actually works on a project.

Postgres or Supabase MCP is really useful for me, especially when dealing with data related issues like permissions bugs. It seems faster to me. Example:

> I cannot see the Create Project button as user project-admin@domain.com. Please use Supabase MCP to see if I have the correct permissions, if so, are we handling it correctly in the UI?

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

#35

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#36

Post by pornel »

I find they're useful for the first 100 lines of a program (toy problems, boilerplate).

As the project becomes non-trivial (>1000 lines), they get increasingly likely to get confused. They can still seem helpful, but they may be confidently incorrect. This makes checking their outputs harder. Eventually silly bugs slip through, cost me more time than all of the time LLMs saved previously.

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

#37

Post by melvinroest »

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'm learning math through Math Academy, ChatGPT and YouTube (mostly 3Blue1Brown and similar channels). Without that specifc combination, it would've been hell. Now it's just nice.

A few years I did it with something similar to Math Academy (from the Universiteit of Amsterdam). ChatGPT wasn't intelligent enough back then so I didn't use it. It felt a lot tougher.

ChatGPT answers questions that a teacher would find obscure nonsense, but I'm the type of student that needs to know the culture behind math so I can empathize with the people doing it and can think of solutions via that way. Like why is the letter m used when talked about an angle? Mathematically, it shouldn't matter. But it irritates me as I'd use a instead, it makes more sense as you want to lower the cognitive burden and focus as much on the math as possible. So I ask ChatGPT and one of the things it said is that historically it meant "measure". Now, I get it and can focus on the actual math again.

Another example is the fast variance calculation: average_of_squares - square_of_the_average

how does that come from (1/n) * sum((x - mean)^2) ?

It just shows it.

World domination? Nope, but I'm learning something I otherwise wouldn't. But as you can tell, YouTube and Math Academy play their own roll in it.

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

#38

Post by Yiling-J »

I think Jules does a good job at "generating code I'm willing to maintain." I never use Jules to write code from scratch. Instead, I usually write about 90% of the code myself, then use the agent to refactor, add tests (based on some I've already written), or make small improvements.

Most of the time, the output isn't perfect, but it's good enough to keep moving forward. And since I’ve already written most of the code, Jules tends to follow my style. The final result isn’t just 100%, it’s more like 120%. Because of those little refactors and improvements I’d probably be too lazy to do if I were writing everything myself.

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

#40

Post by nobodywillobsrv »

lm28469 wrote: post #18
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…

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.

So true and it makes me feel better to have this mental model. I find it useful for simple things that are perhaps just beyond search and copy paste but sometimes wonder if the more technical stuff is not even quite right as it is possible to sort of brainwash yourself into not thinking clearly when nagging an llm into being reasonable on something it has a hard time with.
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