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Devin: AI Software Engineer

cognition-labs.com

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Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#411

Post by nsokolsky »

ukuina wrote: post #361
senko wrote: post #113

As someone who works in this space ( https://pythagora.ai ), I welcome new entrants to this niche. Currently, mainstream AI usage in coding is at the level of assistants and glorified autocomplete. Which is great (I use GitHub Copilot daily), but for us working in the space it's obvious that the impact will be much larger. Besides us (Pythagora), there's also Sweep (mentioned by others in the comments) and GPT Engine…

Pythagora and similar frameworks are cool and very useful in the short term, but... Large-context models obviate the need for RAG and callgraph-augented generation. Why would would Agents need multiple turns and a framework like Pythagora in a (near-future) world with GPT4-level of capability and 10M+ token context?

I've gotten access to Gemini 1.5 Pro today with a (supposedly) 1M context window and unfortunately in practice it's not good at complicated queries over such a large window, involving multiple recursive lookups back and forth.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#412

Post by mnk47 »

swatcoder wrote: post #389
mnk47 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me much longer than usual to get past the depression phase. The main reason is that everyone online kept telling me I was dumb, too inexperienced or extremely incompetent if I thought AI was a serious threat to me, a junior developer. Friends offline said similar things, just in a nicer way. Now everyone seems to be a "doomer" like me. I was too stupid to see that people (especially online) were lashing out a…

If the circle you're listening to are "recent grads" stop listening to them . They don't know how the industry works or what it needs, few of them them know how the technology works or what it's realistic near-term prospects are let alone the long-term ones, and none of them have lived long enough to understand the pace of a technology moving from discovery through to maturity and commercialization. If you look to yo…

Well, I did see that, or at least people who claimed to be seniors online, plus some mid-level friends and yes, a junior friend. Admittedly, it's just anecdotes, but it's very difficult to get hard facts, even from perusing bls.gov.

But something changed in the past 4 months or so. I used to see the two things you described, but now I see seniors repeating the same thing juniors (whom they ridiculed) used to say. Look at this very thread, for example. People are starting to realize that even if these AI startups are making ridiculous promises, the tech might be way more than just hype/smoke and mirrors.

I've read quite a few comments in HN, and right here in this thread, that say something along the lines of "I'll be fine... It's the juniors I'm worried about".

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#413

Post by yshrestha »

ThalesX wrote: post #73

As a developer but also product person, I keep trying to use AI to code for me. I keep failing, because of context length, because of shit output from the model, because of lack of any kind of architecture etc etc etc. I'm probably dumb as hell, because I just can't get it to do anything remotely useful, more than helping me with leetcode. Just yesterday I tried to feed it a simple HTML page to extract a selector, I…

As a human, I can tell you that I suck at predicting exponential growth.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#416

Post by the_mar »

ThalesX wrote: post #73

As a developer but also product person, I keep trying to use AI to code for me. I keep failing, because of context length, because of shit output from the model, because of lack of any kind of architecture etc etc etc. I'm probably dumb as hell, because I just can't get it to do anything remotely useful, more than helping me with leetcode. Just yesterday I tried to feed it a simple HTML page to extract a selector, I…

Sound like a skill issue

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#417

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #288
ThalesX wrote: post #73

As a developer but also product person, I keep trying to use AI to code for me. I keep failing, because of context length, because of shit output from the model, because of lack of any kind of architecture etc etc etc. I'm probably dumb as hell, because I just can't get it to do anything remotely useful, more than helping me with leetcode. Just yesterday I tried to feed it a simple HTML page to extract a selector, I…

It's worth pointing out that on their eval set for "issues resolved" they are getting 13.86%. While visually this looks impressive compared to the others, anything that only really works 13.86% of the time, when the verification of the work takes nearly as much time as the work would have anyway, isn't useful. The problem with this entire space is that we have VC hype for work that should ultimately still be being do…

> It's worth pointing out that on their eval set for "issues resolved" they are getting 13.86%. While visually this looks impressive compared to the others, anything that only really works 13.86% of the time, when the verification of the work takes nearly as much time as the work would have anyway, isn't useful.

Yeah, I remember speech recognition taking decades to improve, and being more of a novelty - not useful at all - even when it was at 95% accuracy (1 word in 20 wrong). It really had to get almost perfect until it was a time saver.

As far as coding goes, it'd be faster to write it yourself and get it right first time rather than have an LLM write it where you can't trust it and still have to check it yourself.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#418

Post by catchnear4321 »

ramesh31 wrote: post #325
PheonixPharts wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out that on their eval set for "issues resolved" they are getting 13.86%. While visually this looks impressive compared to the others, anything that only really works 13.86% of the time, when the verification of the work takes nearly as much time as the work would have anyway, isn't useful. The problem with this entire space is that we have VC hype for work that should ultimately still be being do…

> I've personally seen teams working nights and weekends, implementing solutions to never before seen problems in a few weeks, and still getting a thumbs down when they cross the finish line. This is an important lesson that all SWEs should take to heart. Nobody cares about your novel algorithm. Nobody cares about your high availability architecture. Nobody cares about your millisecond network latency optimizations.…

sounds like you could use to shave a yak.

Re: Devin: AI Software Engineer

#419

Post by gen220 »

esoterica wrote: post #402
gen220 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same questions. I’ve decided the best thing I can do is vote with my wallet (i.e. as a consumer) and vote with my time (i.e. as a producer). Consume commodities that are regenerative and products that are durable. Whenever possible, buy local to keep cash flows (wealth transfer) local. Invest your time in contributing to products that encourage other people to do the same. Yvon Chouniard said (I’m complete…

Autarkies are impoverished, societies that trade freely are wealthy. Your economic impulses are deeply misguided. If everyone only bought local the world would be much poorer. It’s better (consumer choice, comparative advantage) to buy from the world and to let the world buy from you. The money doesn’t disappear when you spend it outside your locality, it flows both ways.

I’m sorry, but by whose definition are “they” “impoverished”? And what constitutes “autarky” and “local”? I’m not advocating to abolish global trade or whatever, if you think I was gesturing in that direction.

Buying (food, especially) locally means supporting a robust food chain that’s less dependent on refrigeration, global shipping, and a geographic arbitrage on agricultural labor. It’s better for the environment and connects you to your community and sense of place and seasons.

It means I can know what went into the food, in terms of soil, labor, and pesticides — something that I have no knowledge of at the grocery store.

A pound of apples, meat, or whatever from 1-2 counties away is more financially expensive, but if you can afford it there’s many non-financial benefits.

I’d rather purchase from a CSA than a national grocer, because that money mostly goes back into my local community.

You’re right the money doesn’t disappear when you spend it outside your locality, but it comes back in ways that are increasingly exploitative and/or depressing (chain stores offering no meaningful careers or opportunities for ownership, rent-seeking financialization, warehouses that bring noise pollution and packaging waste, etc.).

Again, if you can afford it, IDK why you wouldn’t prefer to spend the marginal dollar locally (i.e. private / family-owned businesses in a few counties’ radius).

It’s consumer choice and comparative advantage that actually lead people like me to shop locally...

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