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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)

#51

Post by finnborge »

This is amazing. It very creatively emphasizes how our definition of "boilerplate code" will shift over time. Another layer of abstraction would be running N of these, sandboxed, responding to each request, and then serving whichever instance is internally evaluated to have done the best. Then you're kind of performing meta reinforcement learning with each whole system as a head.

The hard part (coming from this direction) is enshrining the translation of specific user intentions into deterministic outputs, as others here have already mentioned. The hard part when coming from the other direction (traditional web apps) is responding fluidly/flexibly, or resolving the variance in each user's ability to express their intent.

Stability/consistency could be introduced through traditional mechanisms: Encoded instructions systematically evaluated, or, via the LLMs language interface, intent-focusing mechanisms: through increasing the prompt length / hydrating the user request with additional context/intent: "use this UI, don't drop the db."

From where I'm sitting, LLMs provide a now modality for evaluating intent. How we act on that intent can be totally fluid, totally rigid, or, perhaps obviously, somewhere in-between.

Very provocative to see this near-maximum example of non-deterministic fluid intent interpretation>execution. Thanks, I hate how much I love it!

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

#52

Post by indigodaddy »

hyko wrote: post #18

The fatal problem with LLM-as-runtime-club isn’t performance. It’s ops (especially security). When the god rectangle fails, there is literally nobody on earth who can even diagnose the problem, let alone fix it. Reasoning about the system is effectively impossible. And the vulnerability of the system is almost limitless, since it’s possible to coax LLMs into approximations of anything you like: from an admin dashboar…

What if they are extremely narrow and targeted LLMs running locally on the endpoint system itself (llamafile or whatever)? Would that make this concern at least a little better?

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

#54

Post by d-lisp »

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 session, can you plan a pure body weight session ? Yes, that's perfect. Wait, actually, remove the jumping jacks."

"Can you produce a detroit style techno beat I feel like I want to dance."

"I feel life is pointless without a work, can you give me some tasks to achieve that would give me a feeling of fulfillment ?"

"Can you play an arcade style video game for me ?"

"Can you find me a mate for tonight ? Yes, I prefer black haired persons."

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

#55

Post by indigodaddy »

This is absolutely awesome. I had some ideas in my head that were very muddy and fuzzy re how to implement, eg like have the LLM just on demand/dynamically create/serve some 90s retro style html/website from a single entry field/form (to describe the website), etc, but I just couldn't begin to figure out how to go about it or where to start. But I love your idea about just putting the description in the route-- makes a lot of sense (I think I saw something else in the last few months on HN front page that was similar with putting whatever in a URI/domain route, but I think it was more of "redirect to whatever external website/page is most appropriate/relevant to the described route"- so a little similar but you've taken this to the next level).

I guess there are many of us out there with these same thoughts/ideas and you've done an awesome job articulating and implementing it, congrats!

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

#56

Post by finnborge »

tekbruh9000 wrote: post #46

You're still operating with layers of lexical abstraction and indirection. Models full of dated syntactic and semantic concepts about software that waste cycles. Ultimately useless layers of state that the goal you set out to test for inevitably complicates the process. In chip design land we're focused on streamlining the stack to drawing geometry. Drawing it will be faster when the machine doesn't have decades of p…

I'm not sure I follow this entirely, but if the assertion is that "everything is math" then yeah, I totally agree. Where I think language operates here is as the medium best situated to assign objects to locations in vector space. We get to borrow hundreds of millions of encodings/relationships. How can you plot MAN against FATHER against GRAPEFRUIT using math without circumnavigating the human experience?

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

#57

Post by 113 »

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…

> Because nobody actually wants a "web app". People want food, love, sex or: solutions.

Okay but when I start my car I want to drive it, not fuck it.

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

#59

Post by finnborge »

predkambrij wrote: post #36

CSV is a lot lighter on tokens, compared to json, so it can go further, before a LLM gets exhausted.

If you haven't already seen the DeepSeek OCR paper [1], images can be profoundly more token-efficient encodings of information than even CSVs!

[1]: https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-OCR/blob/main/DeepSe...

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

#60

Post by jonplackett »

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…

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