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Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

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Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#201

Post by abc_lisper »

I thought about this first when chatgpt 3.5 came on the scene. Yes, you _can_ at some time in the future, replace programs with AI which would be slow to an extent - if AI can write and manage the code, it _could_ be even faster.

But there is a kicker here. It is upto LLM to discover the right abstractions for “thinking” while serving the requests directly or in the code .

Coming up with the right abstraction is not a small thing. Just see what git is over cvs - without git no one would have even imagined micro services. The right abstraction cuts through the problem, not just now, but in the future too. And that can only happen if the LLM/AI managing the app is really smart and deal with real world for a long time and make the right connection - these insights don’t even come to really smart people that easily!

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#202

Post by CoderLim110 »

I’ve been thinking about similar questions myself:

1、If code generation eventually works without human intervention, and every Google search could theoretically produce a real-time, custom-generated page, does that mean we no longer need people to build websites at all? At that point, “web development” becomes more like intent-shaping rather than coding.

2、I’m also not convinced that chat is the ideal interface for users. Natural language feels flexible, but it can also be slow, ambiguous, and cognitively heavier than clicking a button. Maybe LLM-driven systems will need new UI models that blend conversation with more structured interaction, instead of assuming chat = the future.

Curious how others here think about those two points.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#203

Post by didericis »

mikodin wrote: post #180
113 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but in this case your car is non-deterministic so

Well the need is to arrive where you are going. If we were in an imagined world and you are headed to work You either walk out your door and there is a self driving car, or you walk out of your door and there is a train waiting for you or you walk out of your door and there is a helicopter or you walk out of your door and there is a literal worm hole. Let's say all take the same amount of time, are equally safe, same…

> Well the need is to arrive where you are going.

In order to get to your destination, you need to explain where you want to go. Whatever you call that “imperative language”, in order to actually get the thing you want, you have to explain it. That’s an unavoidable aspect of interacting with anything that responds to commands, computer or not.

If the AI misunderstands those instructions and takes you to a slightly different place than you want to go, that’s a huge problem. But it’s bound to happen if you’re writing machine instructions in a natural language like English and in an environment where the same instructions aren’t consistently or deterministically interpreted. It’s even more likely if the destination or task is particularly difficult/complex to explain at the desired level of detail.

There’s a certain irreducible level of complexity involved in directing and translating a user’s intent into machine output simply and reliably that people keep trying to “solve”, but the issue keeps reasserting itself generation after generation. COBOL was “plain english” and people assumed it would make interacting with computers like giving instructions to another employee over half a century ago.

The primary difficulty is not the language used to articulate intent, the primary difficulty is articulating intent.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#204

Post by d-lisp »

Krssst wrote: post #179
jonplackett wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice interfaces are not the be all and end all of communication. Even between humans we prefer text a lot of the time.

Plus there are many contexts where you don't want to use your voice (public transport, night time with other people sleeping, noisy areas where a mic won't pick up your voice...). And there are people that unfortunately cannot speak.

Well, there are people that cannot see.

Fortunately, there are solutions.

I want to add that I think you are missing my argument here. Devices that allow you to speak without speaking shall soon be available to us [0].

The important aspect of my position is to think about the relevance of "applications" and "programs" in the age of AI, and, as an exaggeration of what is shown in that post, I was wondering if in the end, UI is not bound to disappear.

[0] https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/overview/

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#205

Post by _heimdall »

CoderLim110 wrote: post #202

I’ve been thinking about similar questions myself: 1、If code generation eventually works without human intervention, and every Google search could theoretically produce a real-time, custom-generated page, does that mean we no longer need people to build websites at all? At that point, “web development” becomes more like intent-shaping rather than coding. 2、I’m also not convinced that chat is the ideal interface for u…

If (1) is true, there is no use for the web at all really.

The only value of an LLM generating a realistic HTML page as an answer is to make it appear as though the answer was found on a preexisting page, lending the answer some level of validity.

If users really are fine with the LLM just generating the answer on the fly, doing so in HTML is completely unnecessary. Just give the user answers in text form.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#206

Post by kesor »

This is just like vibe coding. In vibe coding, you snapshot the results of the LLM's implementation into files that you reuse later.

This project could use something like that. Perhaps ask the LLM to implement a way to store/cache the snapshots of its previous answers. That way, the more you use it, the faster it becomes.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#207

Post by Ghos3t »

jstummbillig wrote: post #48
sunaurus wrote: post #20

The question posed sounds like "why should we have deterministic behavior if we can have non-deterministic behavior instead?" Am I wrong to think that the answer is obvious? I mean, who wants web apps to behave differently every time you interact with them?

Because nobody actually wants a "web app". People want food, love, sex or: solutions. You or your coworker are not a web app. You can do some of the things that web apps can, and many things that a web app can't, but neither is because of the modality. Coded determinism is hard for many problems and I find it entirely plausible that it could turn out to be the wrong approach in software, that is designed to solve som…

So basically you say the future of web would be everyone gets their own Jarvis, and like Tony you just tell Jarvis what you want and it does it for you, theres no need for a preexisting software or to even write a new one, it just does what's needed to fulfill the given request and give you the results you want. This sounds nice but wouldn't it get repetitive and computationally expensive, life imagine instead of Google maps, everyone just asks the AI directly for the things people typically use Google maps for like directions and location reviews etc. A centralized application like maps can be more efficient as it's optimized for commonly needed work and it can be further improved from all the data gathered from users who interact with this app, on the other hand if AI was allowed to do it's own thing, it could keep reinventing the wheel solving the same tasks again and again without the benefit of building on top of prior work, while not getting the improvements that it would get from the network effect of a large number of users interacting with the same app.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#208

Post by anonzzzies »

sublinear wrote: post #154
OJFord wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...so that you can get to the supermarket for food, to meet someone you love, meet someone you may or may not love, or to solve the problem of how to get to work; etc. Your ancestors didn't want horses and carts, bicycles, shoes - they wanted the solutions of the day to the same scenarios above.

As much as I love your point, this is where I must ask whether you even want a corporeal form to contain the level of ego you're describing. Would you prefer to be an eternal ghost? To dismiss the entire universe and its hostilities towards our existence and the workarounds we invent in response as mere means to an end rather than our essence is truly wild.

Most people need to go somewhere (in a hurry) to make money or food etc which most people don't want to do if they didn't have to, so yeah it is mostly a means to an end.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#209

Post by anonzzzies »

cheema33 wrote: post #87
jstummbillig wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because nobody actually wants a "web app". People want food, love, sex or: solutions. You or your coworker are not a web app. You can do some of the things that web apps can, and many things that a web app can't, but neither is because of the modality. Coded determinism is hard for many problems and I find it entirely plausible that it could turn out to be the wrong approach in software, that is designed to solve som…

> Average humans are pretty great at solving a certain class of complex problems that we tried to tackle unsuccessfully with many millions lines of deterministic code.. Are you suggesting that an average user would want to precisely describe in detail what they want, every single time, instead of clicking on a link that gives them what they want?

There would be bookmarks to prompts and the results of the moment would be cached : both of these are already happening and will get better. We probably will freeze and unfreeze parts of neural nets to just get to that point and even mix them up to quickly mix up different concept you described before and continue from there.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#210

Post by anonzzzies »

jstummbillig wrote: post #48
sunaurus wrote: post #20

The question posed sounds like "why should we have deterministic behavior if we can have non-deterministic behavior instead?" Am I wrong to think that the answer is obvious? I mean, who wants web apps to behave differently every time you interact with them?

Because nobody actually wants a "web app". People want food, love, sex or: solutions. You or your coworker are not a web app. You can do some of the things that web apps can, and many things that a web app can't, but neither is because of the modality. Coded determinism is hard for many problems and I find it entirely plausible that it could turn out to be the wrong approach in software, that is designed to solve som…

But it is still very early days. And if you have the AI generate code for deterministic things and fast execution, but the ai always monitors the code and if the user requires things that don't fit code, it will jump in. It's not one or the other necessarily.
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