Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code • Hacker News Board

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#271

Post by thelittleone » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

Peacefulz wrote: post #236

jeswin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I worry about junior developers. It will be a while before vocational programming courses retool to teach this new way of writing code, and these are going to be te…

I personally think that having hands on keyboards is still going to be imperative. Anyone can have an idea, but not everyone is going to be able to articulate that idea to an AI model in a way that will produce high quality, secure software. I'm by no means an expert, but I feel like you still need someone who understands underlying principles and best practices to create something of value.

This assumes that prompts do not evolve to the point where grandma can mutter some words to AI that produces an app that solves a problem. Prompts are an art form and a friction point to great results. Was only some months before reasoning models that CoT prompts where state of the art. Reasoning models take that friction away.

Thinking it out even further, programming languages will likely go away altogether as ultimately they're just human interfaces to machine language.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#272

Post by Myrmornis » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #172

myrmi wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel uncomfortably called out by all three points. What tools should I be trying to see what you are?

I use my own tools and scripts, and those aren't for everyone - so I'm just gonna make some general suggestions. 1. You should try Aider. Even if you don't end up using it, you'll learn a lot from it. 2. Conversations are useful and important. You need to figure out a way to include (efficiently, with a few clicks) the necessary files into the context, and then start a conversation. Refine the output as a part of the…

I agree with your overall point, and your despair at software engineers who are still refusing to acknowledge the value of these tools during the process of writing code. However

> A better auto-complete is almost useless.

That's not true. I agree that Copilot seemed unhelpful when I last tried it, but Cursor's autocomplete is extremely useful.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#273

Post by rybosworld » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #52

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.…

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

> There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next.

This is viewing things too narrowly I think. Why do we even need most of our current software tools aside from allowing people to execute a specific task? AI won't need VSCode. If AI can short circuit the need for most, if not nearly all enterprise software, then I wouldn't expect software demand to increase.

Demand for intelligent systems will certainly increase. And I think many people are hopeful that you'll still need humans to manage them but I think that hope is misplaced. These things are already approaching human level intellect, if not exceeding it, in most domains. Viewed through that lens, human intervention will hamper these systems and make them less effective. The rise of chess engines are the perfect example of this. Allow a human to pair with stockfish and override stockfish's favored move at will. This combination will lose every single game to a stockfish-only opponent.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#274

Post by chunky1994 » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:33 PM UTC

20k wrote: post #139

WhitneyLand wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time AI achieves something new/productive/interesting, cue the apologists who chime in to say “well yeah but that really just decomposes into this stuff so it doesn’t mean much”. I don’t get why people don’t understand that everything decomposes into other things. You can draw the line for when AI will truly blow your mind anywhere you want, the point is the dominoes keep falling relentlessly and there’s no end…

The thing is, that's not true at all. AI is great for some tasks, and poor for other tasks. That's the reason to break it down like this, because people are trying to explain where AI will and won't revolutionise things, instead of following along with the already-popping AI bubble uncritically For example: AI's smash translation. They won't ever beat out humans, but as an automated solution? They rock. Natural langu…

The difference is though there isn't a whole lot of "whole cloth novel solutions" being written in software today so much as a "write me this CRUD app to do ABC" which current generations are exceedingly good at.

There are probably 10% of truly novel problems out there, the rest are just already solved problems with slightly different constraints of resources ($), quality (read: reliability) and time. If LLMs get good enough at generating a field of solutions that minimize those three for any given problem, it will naturally tend to change the nature of most software being written today.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#275

Post by kemiller » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

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.…

My observation in my years running a dev shop was that there are two classes of applications that could get built. One was the high-end, full-bore model requiring a team of engineers and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to a basic MVP, which thus required an economic opportunity in at least the tends of millions. The other, very niche or geographically local businesses that can get their needs met with a self-service tool, max budget maybe $5k or so. Could stretch that to $25k if you use offshore team to customize. But 9/10 incoming leads had budgets between $25k and $100k. We just had to turn them away. There's nothing meaningful you can do with that range of budget. I haven't seen anything particularly change that. Self-service tools get gradually better, but not enough to make a huge difference. The high end if anything has receded even faster as dev salaries have soared.

AI coding, for all its flaws now, is the first thing that takes a chunk out of this, and there is a HUGE backlog of good-but-not-great ideas that are now viable.

That said, this particular story is bogus. He "just wrote the tests" but that's a spec — implementing from a quality executable spec is much more straightforward. Deepseek isn't doing the design, he is. Still a massive accelerant.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#276

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

motorest wrote: post #220

jeswin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I worry about junior developers. It will be a while before vocational programming courses retool to teach this new way of writing code, and these are going to be te…

> I worry about junior developers. It will be a while before vocational programming courses retool to teach this new way of writing code, and these are going to be testing times for so many of them. I don't agree. LLMs work as template engines on steroids. The role of a developer now includes more code reviewing than code typing. You need the exact same core curriculum to be able to parse code, regardless if you're t…

[deleted]

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#277

Post by svilen_dobrev » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #52

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.…

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

maybe shifting the jobs' target.. to higher a level (finally!) ? Reminds me of:

https://chris-granger.com/2015/01/26/coding-is-not-the-new-l...

modelling has been , is , and will be the needed literacy..

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#278

Post by spease » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

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.…

The nature of this PR looks like it’s very LLM-friendly - it’s essentially translating existing code into SIMD.

LLMs seem to do well at any kind of mapping / translating task, but they seem to have a harder time when you give them either a broader or less deterministic task, or when they don’t have the knowledge to complete the task and start hallucinating.

It’s not a great metric to benchmark their ability to write typical code.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#279

Post by logicchains » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

rybosworld wrote: post #273

simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

> There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. This is viewing things too narrowly I think. Why do we even need most of our current software tools aside from allowing people to execute a specific task? AI won't need VSCode. If AI can short…

>AI won't need VSCode

Why not? It's still going to be quicker for the AI to use automated refactoring tooling than to manually make all the changes itself.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#280

Post by WXLCKNO » Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

submeta wrote: post #259

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.…

The dev jobs won‘t go away, but they will change. Devs will be more and more like requirements engineers who need to understand the problem to then write prompts with the peoper context so that the llm can produce valuable and working code. And the next level will be to prompt llms to generate prompts for llms to produce code and solutions. But already I hire less and less developers for smaller tasks. The things tha…

I think what you're describing is going to be a very short transitional period.

Once current AI gets good enough, the people micromanaging parts of it will do more to hinder the process than to help it.

One person setting the objectives and the AI handling literally everything else including brainstorming issues etc, is going to be all that's needed.