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Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

simonwillison.net

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Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#61

Post by anotherpaulg »

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1

It's definitely possible for AI to do a large fraction of your coding, and for it to contribute significantly to "improving itself". As an example, aider currently writes about 70% of the new code in each of its releases.

I automatically track and share this stat as graph [0] with aider's release notes.

Before Sonnet, most releases were less than 20% AI generated code. With Sonnet, that jumped to >50%. For the last few months, about 70% of the new code in each release is written by aider. The record is 82%.

Folks often ask which models I use to code aider, so I automatically publish those stats too [1]. I've been shifting more and more of my coding from Sonnet to DeepSeek V3 in recent weeks. I've been experimenting with R1, but the recent API outages have made that difficult.

[0] https://aider.chat/HISTORY.html

[1] https://aider.chat/docs/faq.html#what-llms-do-you-use-to-bui...

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#62

Post by CamperBob2 »

bbzealot wrote: post #42
pavitheran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deepseek is a big deal but we should be happy not worried that our tools are improving.

Why though? I'm worried these technologies may take my job away and make the balance between capital and labor even more uneven. Why should I be happy?

You won't be happy doing a robot's job either, at least not for long.

In the ideal case, we won't be dependent on the unwilling labor of other humans at all. Would you do your current job for free? If not -- if you'd rather do something else with your productive life -- then it seems irrational to defend the status quo.

One thing's for certain: ancient Marxist tropes about labor and capital don't bring any value to the table. Abandon that thinking sooner rather than later; it won't help you navigate what's coming.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#63

Post by oorza »

rozap wrote: post #48
jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

Broadly agree. Whether or not it is useful isn't really an interesting discussion, because it so clearly is useful. The more interesting question is what it does to supply and demand. If the past is any indication, I think we've seen that lowering to barrier to getting software shipped and out the door (whether it's higher level languages, better tooling) has only made demand greater. Maybe this time it's different b…

I don't think it's necessarily any larger of a leap than any of the other big breakthroughs in the space. Does writing safe C++ with an LLM matter more than choosing Rust? Does writing a jQuery-style gMail with an LLM matter more than choosing a declarative UI tool? Does adding an LLM to Java 6 matter more than letting the devs switch to Kotlin?

Individual developer productivity will be expected to rise. Timelines will shorten. I don't think we've reached Peak Software where the limiting factor on software being written is demand for software, I think the bottlenecks are expense and time. AI tools can decrease both of those, which _should_ increase demand. You might be expected to spend a month outputting a project that would previously have taken four people that month, but I think we'll have more than enough demand increase to cover the difference. How many business models in the last twenty years that weren't viable would've been if the engineering department could have floated the company to series B with only a half dozen employees?

What IS larger than before, IMO, is the talent gap we're creating at the top of the industry funnel. Fewer juniors are getting hired than ever before, so as seniors leave the industry due to standard attrition reasons, there are going to be fewer candidates to replace them. If you're currently a software engineer with 10+ YoE, I don't think there's much to worry about - in fact, I'd be surprised if "was a successful Software Engineer before the AI revolution" doesn't become a key resume bullet point in the next several years. I also think that if you're in a position of leadership and have the creativity and leadership to make it work, juniors and mid-level engineers are going to be incredibly cost effective because most middle managers won't have those things. And companies will absolutely succeed or fail on that in the coming years.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#64

Post by softwaredoug »

amarcheschi wrote: post #34

For what i can understand, he asked deepseek to convert arm simd code to wasm code. in the github issue he links he gives an example of a prompt: Your task is to convert a given C++ ARM NEON SIMD to WASM SIMD. Here is an example of another function: (follows a block example and a block with the instructions to convert) https://gist.github.com/ngxson/307140d24d80748bd683b396ba13b... I might be wrong of course, but ask…

LLMs are great at converting code, I've taken functions whole cloth and converted them before and been really impressed

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#65

Post by jasonthorsness »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

I think quality is going to go up - I have so much code I wish I could go back and optimize for better performance, or add more comprehensive tests for, and LLMs are getting great at both of those as they work really well off of things that already exist. There has never been enough time/resources to apply towards even the current software demand, let alone future needs.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#66

Post by dfilppi »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

[dead]

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#67

Post by punkpeye »

simonw wrote: post #43
punkpeye wrote: post #39

I don't get something. So I tried hosting this model myself. But the amount of minimum GPU RAM needed is 400gb+ Which even with the cheapest GPU providers will be at least USD 15/hour How is everyone running these models?

Using the smaller distilled versions. I'm running this one, which only needs 20GB of VRAM (or regular RAM on Apple Silicon): https://ollama.com/library/deepseek-r1:32b

Do we know how do these distilled versions perform in benchmarks?

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#68

Post by joshmarlow »

bbzealot wrote: post #42
pavitheran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deepseek is a big deal but we should be happy not worried that our tools are improving.

Why though? I'm worried these technologies may take my job away and make the balance between capital and labor even more uneven. Why should I be happy?

> make the balance between capital and labor even more uneven.

I think it's interesting to note that as opens source models evolve and proliferate, the capital required for a lot of ventures goes down - which levels the playing field.

When I can talk to one agent-with-a-CAD-integration and have it design a gadget for me and ship the design off to a 3D printer and then have another agent write the code to run on the gadget, I'll be able to build entire ventures that would require VC funding and a team now.

When intellectual capital is democratized, financial capital looses just a bit of power...

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#70

Post by simonw »

rozap wrote: post #48
jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

Broadly agree. Whether or not it is useful isn't really an interesting discussion, because it so clearly is useful. The more interesting question is what it does to supply and demand. If the past is any indication, I think we've seen that lowering to barrier to getting software shipped and out the door (whether it's higher level languages, better tooling) has only made demand greater. Maybe this time it's different b…

> If the past is any indication, I think we've seen that lowering to barrier to getting software shipped and out the door (whether it's higher level languages, better tooling) has only made demand greater.

Something I think about a lot is the impact of open source on software development.

25 years ago any time you wanted to build anything you pretty much had to solve the same problems as everyone else. When I went to university it even had a name - the software reusability crisis. At the time people thought the solution was OOP!

Open source solved that. For any basic problem you want to solve there are now dozens of well tested free libraries.

That should have eliminated so many programming jobs. It didn't: it made us more productive and meant we could deliver more value, and demand for programmers went up.

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