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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)

#311

Post by pepoluan »

abc_lisper wrote: post #201

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…

Or maybe just don't use LLM.

LLM is just a tool in the A.I. world. There are lots of other A.I. tools, such as Neural Network, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic Programming, and so on.

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

#312

Post by mojoe »

davnicwil wrote: post #286
latexr wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because nobody actually wants a "web app". People want food, love, sex or: solutions. Talk about a nonsensical non-sequitur, but I’ll bite. People want those to be deterministic too, to a large extent. When people cook a meal with the same ingredients and the same times and processes (like parameters to a function), they expect it to taste about the same, they never expect to cook a pizza and take a salad out of th…

This thing of 'look, nobody cares about the details really, they just care about the solution ' is a meme that I think will be here forever in software. It was here before LLMs, they're now just the current socially accepted legitimacy vehicle for the meme. In the end, useful stuff is built by people caring about the details. This will always be true. I think in LLMs and broadly AI people see an escape valve from tha…

Exactly, in the long run it's the people who care the most who win, it's tautological

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

#313

Post by sarchertech »

array_key_first wrote: post #186
sarchertech wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average mechanic won’t do something completely different to your car because you added some extra filler words to your request though. The average user may not care exactly what the mechanic does to fix your car, but they do expect things to be repeatable. If car repair LLMs function anything like coding LLMs, one request could result in an oil change, while a similar request could end up with an engine replaceme…

Mechanics, and humans, are non-deterministic. Every mechanic works differently, because they have different bodies and minds. LLMs are, of course, bad. Or not good enough, at least. But suppose they are. Suppose they're perfect. Would I rather use an app or just directly interface with an LLM? The LLM might be quicker and easier. I know, for example, ordering takeout is much faster if I just call and speak to a perso…

> Every mechanic works differently, because they have different bodies and minds.

Yes but the same LLM works very differently on each request. Even ignoring non-determinism, extremely minor differences in wording that a human mechanic wouldn’t even notice will lead to wildly different answers.

> LLMs are, of course, bad. Or not good enough, at least. But suppose they are. Suppose they're perfect.

You’re just talking about magic at that point.

But suppose the do become “perfect”, I’m skeptical we’ll ever have the compute resources to replace a significant fraction of computation with LLMs.

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

#314

Post by lazide »

pepoluan wrote: post #308
lazide wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can be mitigated to a degree by separating the (cheaper) sensors and the (pricier) logic. But then it will become a tradeoff of complexity vs longevity.

Nah, because it would still need servicing.

And why? There are reasonably well done, low maintenance, temperature balancing valves out there.

And they do typically last 20+ or more years.

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

#315

Post by aryehof »

kennywinker wrote: post #298
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.

If this was a good answer to mobility, people would prefer the bus over their car. It’s non-deterministic - when will it come? How quick will i get there? Will i get to sit? And it’s operated by an intelligent agent (driver). Every reason people prefer a car or bike over the bus is a reason non-deterministic agents are a bad interface. And that analogy works as a glimpse into the future - we’re looking at a fast appr…

Bus vs car hit home for me as a great example of non vs deterministic.

It has always seemed to me that workflow or processes need to be deterministic and not decided by an LLM.

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

#316

Post by 63stack »

tags2k wrote: post #252
jermaustin1 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most of us actually want to get somewhere to do an activity to then have known we did it for the rest of our lives as if to extract some intangible pleasure from its memory. Why don't we just hallucinate that we did it?

This was actually my point as well. You can follow this thought process all the way up to "make those specific neuron pathways in my brain fire", everything else is just the getting there part.

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

#317

Post by DustinKlent »

AmbroseBierce wrote: post #82
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…

>Can you set some timers for my sport session, can you plan a pure body weight session ? Yes, that's perfect. Wait, actually, remove the jumping jacks." Better yet, why exercise -which is so repetitive- if we can create a machine that just does it for you, including the dopamine triggering, why play an arcade video game where we can create a machine that fires the neuron needed to produce the exact same level of a ex…

You say bleak, but a huge number of people would consider what you're describing as a utopian paradise...especially the morphing robot part.

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

#318

Post by myaccountonhn »

ethmarks wrote: post #169
sramam wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in enterprise IT and sometimes wonder if we should add the equivalent energy calculations of human effort - both productive and unproductive - that underlies these "output/cost" comparisons. I realize it sounds inhuman, but so is working in enterprise IT! :)

I agree wholeheartedly. It irks me when people critique automation because it uses large amounts of resources. Running a machine or a computer almost always uses far less resources than a human would to do the same task, so long as you consider the entire resource consumptions. Growing the food that a human eats, running the air conditioning for their home, powering their lights, fueling their car, charging their pho…

This is a bad argument. Even if a machine replaced my job, I'm still going to eat, run the aircon, charge my phone etc. and maybe do another job. So the energy used to do the job decreased, but the total energy usage is higher because I'm still using the same amount of energy, but now the machine is also using some amount energy that wasn't being used before.

Efficiencies lead to less resources being used if your demand is constant, but if demand is elastic, it often leads to the total resource consumption increasing.

See also: Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox).

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

#319

Post by sixdimensional »

netsharc wrote: post #246
sixdimensional wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for your response!

I agree that spending time on inference or compute every time for the same LLM task is wasteful and the results would be less desirable.

But I don't think the thought experiment should end with that. We can continue to engineer and problem solve the shortcomings of the approach, IMHO.

You provided a good example of an optimization - tool creation.

Trying to keep my mind maximially open - one could think of a "design time" performance at runtime - where the user interacting with the system is describing what they want the first time, and the system is assembling the tool (much like we do now with AI assisted coding, but perhaps without even seeing the code).

Once that piece of the system is working it is persisted so no more inference is required, as essentially code - a tool, that saves time. I am thinking of this as essentially memoizing a function body- i.e. generating and persisting the code.

There could even be some process overseeing the generated code/tool to make sure the quality meets some standard and providing automated iteration, testing, etc if needed.

A big problem is if the LLM never converges to the "right" solution on it's on (e.g. the right tool to generate the HTML from the SQL query, without any hallucination). But, I am willing to momentarily punt on that problem as being more to do with the determinism problem and the quality of the result. The issue isn't per se the non-deterministic results of an LLM anyway, it's the quality of the result fit for purpose for the use case.

I think it's difficult but possible to go further with the thought experiment. A system that "builds itself" at runtime, but persists what it builds, based on user interaction and prompting when the result is satisfactory...

I remember one of the first computer science things I learned- the program that could print out it's own source code. Even then we were believing that systems could build themselves and grow themselves.

So my ask would be to look beyond the initial challenge of the first time costs of generating the tool/code and solve that by persisting a suitable result.

What challenge or problem comes next in this idea?

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

#320

Post by AmbroseBierce »

DustinKlent wrote: post #317
AmbroseBierce wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you set some timers for my sport session, can you plan a pure body weight session ? Yes, that's perfect. Wait, actually, remove the jumping jacks." Better yet, why exercise -which is so repetitive- if we can create a machine that just does it for you, including the dopamine triggering, why play an arcade video game where we can create a machine that fires the neuron needed to produce the exact same level of a ex…

You say bleak, but a huge number of people would consider what you're describing as a utopian paradise...especially the morphing robot part.

I should know I am one of them, I mean exclusively the robot part.
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