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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)

#241

Post by lazide »

finnborge wrote: post #66
d-lisp wrote: post #54

Why would you need webapps when you could just talk out loud to your computer ? Why would I need programs with colors, buttons, actual UI ? I am trying to imagine a future where file navigators don't even exist : "I want to see the photos I took while I was in vacations last year. Yes, can you remove that cloud ? Perfect, now send it to XXXX's computer and say something nice." "Can you set some timers for my sport se…

I think this is well illustrated in a lot of science fiction. Irregular or abstract tasks are fairly efficiently articulated in speech, just like the ones you provided. Simpler, repetitive ones are not. Imagine having to ask your shower to turn itself on? Or your doors to open? Contextualized to "web-apps," as you have; navigating a list maybe requires an interface. It would be fairly tedious to differentiate between…

They actually aren’t done well via voice UI either - if you care about the output.

We just gloss over the details in these hypothetical irregular or abstract tasks because we imagine they would be done as we imagine them. We don’t have experience trying to tell the damn AI to not delete that cloud (which one exactly?) but the other one via a voice UI. Which would suck and be super irritating, btw.

We know how irritating it would be to turn the shower off/on, because we do that all the time.

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

#242

Post by lazide »

roncesvalles wrote: post #218
finnborge wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is well illustrated in a lot of science fiction. Irregular or abstract tasks are fairly efficiently articulated in speech, just like the ones you provided. Simpler, repetitive ones are not. Imagine having to ask your shower to turn itself on? Or your doors to open? Contextualized to "web-apps," as you have; navigating a list maybe requires an interface. It would be fairly tedious to differentiate between…

On a tangent but I still don't know why we don't have showers where you just press a button and it delivers water at the correct temperature. It seems like the simplest thing that everyone wants. A company that manufactures and installs this (a la SolarCity) should be an instant unicorn.

Water + electronics/power typically isn’t very durable, or reliable. Most people want their shower valves to work at least 20 years, ideally 50-100.

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

#243

Post by ozim »

thih9 wrote: post #30
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?

> who wants web apps to behave differently every time you interact with them? Technically everyone, we stopped using static pages a while ago. Imagine pages that can now show you e.g. infinitely customizable UI; or, more likely, extremely personalized ads.

Small anecdote. We were releasing UI changes every 2 weeks making app better more user friendly etc.

Product owners were happy.

Until users came for us with pitchforks as they didn’t want stuff to change constantly.

We backed out to releasing on monthly cadence.

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

#244

Post by mewpmewp2 »

sublinear wrote: post #217
anonzzzies wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet that money is ultimately spent on more means to ends that are just as inconvenient from another perspective? My point was that there is no true end goal as long as whims continue. The need to craft yet more means is equally endless. The crafting is the primary human experience, not the using. The using of a means inevitably becomes transparent and boring.

It should finalize into introducing satisfaction to the whims directly, so the AI would be directly managing the chemicals in our brains that would trigger feelings of reward and satisfaction.

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

#245

Post by mewpmewp2 »

codebje wrote: post #181
stirfish wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you want to drive, or do you want to be wherever you need to be to fuck?

For me personally, the latter, but there's definitely people out there that just love driving. Either way, these silly reductionist games aren't addressing the point: if I just want to get from A to B then I definitely want the absolute minimum of unpredictability in how I do it.

Only because you think the driving is what you want. The point is that what you want is determined by our brain chemicals. Many steps could be skipped if we could just give you the chemicals in your brain that you craved.

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

#246

Post by netsharc »

sixdimensional wrote: post #124
cheema33 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazing. This is the Internet moment of AI. I am a big proponent of AI. To me, this experiment mostly shows how not to use AI.

Have you tried the thought experiment though? I agree this way seems "wrong", but try putting on your engineering hat and ask what would you change to make it right? I think that is a very interesting thread to tug on.

Not grandfather, but this is "wrong" because it's like asking a junior coder to store/read some values in the database manually (each time writing an SQL query) and then writing HTML to output those values. Each time the junior coder has to do some thinking and looking up. And the AI is doing a similar thing (using the word "thinking" loosely here).

If the coder is smart, she'll write down the query and note where to put the values, she'll have a checklist of how to load the UI for the database, paste the query, hit run, and copy/paste the output to her HTML. She'll use a standard HTML template. Later she could glue these steps up with some code so that a program takes those values, put them in the SQL query, and then put them in the HTML and send that HTML to the browser... Oh look, she's made a program, a tool! And if she gets an assignment to read/write some values, she can do it in 1 minute instead of 5. Wow, custom made programs save time, who could've guessed?

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

#248

Post by jermaustin1 »

63stack wrote: post #224
jstummbillig wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us actually drive a car to get somewhere. The car, and the driving, are just a modality. Which is the point.

Most of us actually want to get somewhere to do an activity. The getting there is just a modality.

Most of us actually want to get some where to do an activity to enjoy ourselves. The getting there, and activity, are just modalities.

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

#249

Post by conartist6 »

ares623 wrote: post #50

Amazing. This is the Internet moment of AI. The Internet took something that used to be slow, cumbersome, expensive and made it fast, efficient, cheap. Now we are doing it again.

Then AI came and made the internet slow, cumbersome and expensive again

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

#250

Post by batch12 »

conartist6 wrote: post #247

Stuff like this just makes me embarrassed. There are so many real problems in the world, but people still want to spend their time trying to build a perpetual motion machine.

Lighten up. People spend their time doing lots of things they enjoy regardless of the value others place on their efforts. Instead of projecting embarrassment, go save the world if that makes you happy.
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