> I find the term “agents” extremely frustrating. It lacks a single, clear and widely understood meaning... but the people who use the term never seem to acknowledge that.
This 100%. “Agentic” especially as a buzzword can piss off
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
311–320 of 615 posts
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#312> There’s a flipside to this too: a lot of better informed people have sworn off LLMs entirely because they can’t see how anyone could benefit from a tool with so many flaws. The key skill in getting the most out of LLMs is learning to work with tech that is both inherently unreliable and incredibly powerful at the same time. This is a decidedly non-obvious skill to acquire! I wish the author qualified this more. How…
When I started my career in 2010, google was a semi-serious skill. All of the little things that we know how to do now such as ignoring certain sites, lingering on others, and iteratively refining our search queries were not universally known at the time. Experienced engineers often relied on encyclopedic knowledge of their environment or by "reading the manual". In my experience, LLM tools are the same, you ask for…
One difference is that skillful googling still only involved typing a few keywords or a short phrase and some syntax, and then knowing how to skim the results and iterate, and how to operate your browser efficiently. With LLMs, you have to type a lot more (and/or use voice input), and often also read more, it’s also not stateless/repeatable like following a web link, and most output looks the same (as opposed to the variations in web sites). I pride(d) myself on my Google foo, it was fun, but I find using LLMs to be quite exhausting in comparison.
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#313I wonder what the author of this post thinks of human generated slop. For example if someone just takes random information about a topic, organizes it in chronological order and adds empty opinions and preferences to it and does that for years on end - what do you call that?
An "Editor".
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#314> There’s a flipside to this too: a lot of better informed people have sworn off LLMs entirely because they can’t see how anyone could benefit from a tool with so many flaws. The key skill in getting the most out of LLMs is learning to work with tech that is both inherently unreliable and incredibly powerful at the same time. This is a decidedly non-obvious skill to acquire! I wish the author qualified this more. How…
It's amazing this is still an opinion in 2025. I now ask devs how they use AI as part of their workflows when I interview. It's a standard skill I expect my guys to have.
Using cloud-based AI is a no-go where I work, for IP and contractual reasons. And on-premises AI is not as capable and more difficult to integrate.
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exif watermark by the generators would solve 90% of the problem in one fell swoop because lazy people won't remove it
Every image host and social media app automatically strips EXIF data (for privacy reasons at minimum).
Stenography with a known signature perhaps
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel bad for your team. Let people work how they want. I wouldn’t not hire someone on the basis of them not using a language server. The creator of the Odin language famously doesn’t use one. He’s says that he, specifically, is faster without one.
No, it’s reasonable. If your team uses Git then it’s a valid question to establish if someone has only worked with Perforce. They didn’t say how heavily they weight the question. (All that said I expect that, soon, experience with the appropriate LLM tooling will be as important as having experience with the language your system is implemented in.)
Right, but using git is a team wide thing.
I can’t use perforce while my company is on git.
But if I do or do not use an LLM to assist me while coding, my team is unaffected.
If someone liked jetbrains, but your team used neovim, would you force them to use neovim?
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing this is still an opinion in 2025. I now ask devs how they use AI as part of their workflows when I interview. It's a standard skill I expect my guys to have.
Using cloud-based AI is a no-go where I work, for IP and contractual reasons. And on-premises AI is not as capable and more difficult to integrate.
Have you tried the latest open weight models? They're SO MUCH better today than they were even six months ago.
If I was in an environment that didn't allow hosted API models I'd absolutely be looking into the various Llama 3 models or Qwen2.5-Coder-32B.
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#318About "people still thinking LLMs are quite useless", I still believe that the problem is that most people are exposed to ChatGPT 4o that at this point for my use case (programming / design partner) is basically a useless toy. And I guess that in tech many folks try LLMs for the same use cases. Try Claude Sonnet 3.5 (not Haiku!) and tell me if, while still flawed, is not helpful. But there is more: a key thing with L…
I'm surprised at the description that it's "useless" as a programming / design partner. Even if it doesn't make "elegant" code (whatever that means), it's the difference between an app existing at all, or not. I built and shipped a Swift app to the App Store, currently generating $10,200 in MRR, exclusively using LLMs. I wouldn't describe myself as a programmer, and didn't plan to ever build an app, mostly because in…
I interpreted it as saying that ymmv wrt the models you try and how you use them, and sole exposure to one that doesn't work for you can put you off the whole lot - in this case antirez finds Claude sonnet (with good prompting) very helpful, but gpt 4o (by far the best known due to ChatGPT), not so much and if the latter is representative of others experience it may be why many are still sceptical.
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
If AGI is possible, then the entire human economy stops making sense as far as money goes, and 'owning' part of OpenAI gives you power. That's if AGI is possible and not easily replicated . If AGI can be copied and/or re-developed like other software then the value of owning OpenAI stock is more like owning stock in copper producers or other commodity sector companies. (It might even be a poorer investment. Even AGI…
This belief comes from confusing the singularity (every atom on Earth is converted into a giant image of Sam Altman) with AGI (a store employee navigates a confrontation with an unruly customer, then goes home and wins at Super Mario).
But what if that AGI can fit inside a humanoid robot and that robot is capable of self replication even if it means digging the sand out of the ground to make silicon with a spade?
Re: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
#320About "people still thinking LLMs are quite useless", I still believe that the problem is that most people are exposed to ChatGPT 4o that at this point for my use case (programming / design partner) is basically a useless toy. And I guess that in tech many folks try LLMs for the same use cases. Try Claude Sonnet 3.5 (not Haiku!) and tell me if, while still flawed, is not helpful. But there is more: a key thing with L…
Why do people have such narrow views on what makes LLMs useful? I use them for basically everything. My son throwing an irrational tantrum at the amusement park and I can't figure out why he's like that (he won't tell me or he doesn't know himself either) or what I should do? I feed Claude all the facts of what happened that day and ask for advice. Even if I don't agree with the advice, at the very least the analysis…
This reads like satire to me. Scarry that it isn't.