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With AI you need to think bigger

rodyne.com

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Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#101

Post by jboggan »

wruza wrote: post #44
CosmicShadow wrote: post #26

The exciting thing about AI is it let's you go back to any project or idea you've ever had and they are now possibly doable, even if they seemed impossible or too much work back then. Some of the key pieces missing have become trivial, and even if you don't know how to do something AI will help you figure it out or just let you come up with a solution that may seem dirty, but actually works, whereas before it was imp…

It doesn’t do that for things rarely done before though. And it’s poisoned with opinions from the internet. E.g. you can convince it that we have to remove bullshit layers from programming and make it straightforward. It will even print a few pages of vague bullet points about it, if not yet. But when you ask it to code, it will dump a react form. I’m not trying to invalidate experiences itt, cause I have a similar o…

> And it’s poisoned with opinions from the internet.

This is the scary part. What current AI's are very effectively doing is surfacing the best solution (from a pre-existing blog/SO answer) that I might have been able to Google 10 years ago when search was "better" and there was less SEO slop on the internet - and pre-extract the relevant code for me (which is no minor thing).

But I repeatedly have been in situations where I ask for a feature and it brings in a new library and a bunch of extra code and only 2 weeks later as I get more familiar with that library do I realize that the "extra" code I didn't understand at first is part of a Hello World blog post on that framework and I suddenly understand that I have enabled interfaces and features on my business app that were meant for a toy example.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#102

Post by xrd »

someothherguyy wrote: post #98
xrd wrote: post #92

Where are the LLM leaderboards for software estimation accuracy? I have been using Claude Code and Aider and I do think they provide incredibly exciting potential. I can spin up new projects with mind boggling results. And, I can start projects in domains where I previously had almost no experience. It is truly exciting. AND... The thing I worry most about is that now non-technical managers can go into Claude and say…

> I can spin up new projects with mind boggling results Boggle a skeptical mind

Meaning, give you an example?

This morning I created a new project. I provided a postgres database URL to a remote service (with a non-standard connection string, includes a parameter "?sslmode=require"). Then, I said:

  * "Write me a fastapi project to connect to a postgres database using a database url."
  * "Retrieve the schema from the remote database." It used psql to connect, retrieves the schema. That was unexpected, it figured out not only a coding task, but an external tool to connect to a database and did it without anything more than me providing the DATABASE_URL. Actually, I should say, I told it to look inside the .env file, and it did that. I had that URL wrong initially, so I told it to reload once I corrected it. It never got confused by my disorganization. 
  * It automatically added sqlalchemy models and uses pydantic once it figured out the schema.
  * "Create a webpage that lets me review one table."
  * "Rewrite to use tailwindcss." It adds the correct tailwindcss CDN imports.
  * It automatically adds a modal dialog when I click on one of the records.
  * It categorized fields in the database into groupings inside the modal, groupings that do indeed make sense.
I know the devil is in the details, or in the future. I'm sure there are gaping security holes.

But, this saved me a lot of time and it works.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#103

Post by anon373839 »

JackMorgan wrote: post #85
8373746439 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs will be the same. At the moment people are still mostly playing with it, but pretty soon it will be "hey why are you writing our REST API consumer by hand? LLM can do that for you!" Not everyone wants to be a "prompt engineer", or let their skills rust and be replaced with a dependency on a proprietary service. Not to mention the potentially detrimental cognitive effects of relegating all your thinking to LLMs…

I recall hearing a lot of assembly engineers not wanting to let their skills rust either. They didn't want to be a "4th gen engineer" and have their skills replaced by proprietary compilers. Same with folks who were used to ftp directly into prod and used folders instead of source control. Look, I get it, it's frustrating to be really good at current tech and feel like the rug is getting pulled. I've been through a f…

This is a different proposition, really. It’s one thing to move up the layers of abstraction in code. It’s quite another thing to delegate authoring code altogether to a fallible statistical model.

The former puts you in command of more machinery, but the tools are dependable. The latter requires you to stay sharp at your current level, else you won’t be able to spot the problems.

Although… I would argue that in the former case you should learn assembly at least once, so that your computer doesn’t seem like a magic box.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#104

Post by radlad »

CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #97

I had a minor desire to make a feature that had a slightly higher effort than reward, so although I knew I could struggle it out I didn't bother. After years of this I decided to give an AI a shot at the code. It produced something plausible looking and I was excited. Was it that easy? The code didn't work. But the approach made me more motivated to look into it and I found a solution. So although the AI gave me crap…

I had a similar experience but found that with a little prodding, I was even able to get it to finish the job.

Then it was a little messy, so I asked it to refactor it.

Of course, not everything lends itself to this: often I already know exactly the code I want and it's easier to just type it than corral the AI.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#105

Post by headcanon »

CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #97

I had a minor desire to make a feature that had a slightly higher effort than reward, so although I knew I could struggle it out I didn't bother. After years of this I decided to give an AI a shot at the code. It produced something plausible looking and I was excited. Was it that easy? The code didn't work. But the approach made me more motivated to look into it and I found a solution. So although the AI gave me crap…

Agreed, its always nicer for me to have something to work with, even if by the end of it its entirely rewritten.

It helps to have it generate code sometimes to just explore ideas and refine the prompt. If its obviously wrong, thats ok, sometimes I needed to see the wrong answer to get to the right one faster. If its not obviously wrong, then its a good enough starting point we can iterate to the answer.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#106

Post by rurp »

xrd wrote: post #92

Where are the LLM leaderboards for software estimation accuracy? I have been using Claude Code and Aider and I do think they provide incredibly exciting potential. I can spin up new projects with mind boggling results. And, I can start projects in domains where I previously had almost no experience. It is truly exciting. AND... The thing I worry most about is that now non-technical managers can go into Claude and say…

This largely fits with a pattern I've been seeing with LLM coding. The models are often helpful, sometimes extremely so, when it comes to creating prototypes or other small greenfield projects. They can also be great at producing a snippet of code in an unfamiliar framework or language. But when it comes to modifying a large, messy, complicated code base they are much less helpful. Some people find them a useful as a beefed up autocomplete, while others don't see enough gains to offset the time/attention to use them.

I think a lot of arguments about LLM coding ability stem from people using them for the former or the latter and having very different experiences.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#108

Post by Cheer2171 »

keeptrying wrote: post #25
klabb3 wrote: post #13

As a mostly LLM-skeptic I reluctantly agree this is something AI actually does well. When approaching unfamiliar territory, LLMs (1) use simple language (improvement over academia but also much professional intentionally obfuscated literature), (2) use the right abstraction (they seem good at ”zooming out” to big picture of things, and (3) you can move both laterally between topics and ”zoom in” quickly. Another way…

Yes. LLMs are the perfect learning assistant. You can now do literally anything. Literally. Going to take a while for everyone to figure this out but they will given time.

I'm old enough to remember when they first said that about the Internet. We were going to enter a new enlightened age of information, giving everyone access to the sum total of human knowlege, no need to get a fancy degree, universities will be obsolete, expertise will be democratized.... See how that turned out.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#109

Post by yifanl »

doug_durham wrote: post #68
101008 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm worried about being replaced by LLM. If it keeps evolving to the point where a CTO can ask LLM to do something and deploy it, why he would pay for a team of engineers? Forking to different technologies and languages is one thing (I've been there, I started with PHP and I haven't touch it for almost a decade now), but being replaced by a new tech is something different. I don't see how I could pivot to still be us…

Where in reality can a CTO talk to a human and deploy it? It takes engineers to understand the requirements and to iterate with the CTO. The CTO has better things to do with their time than wrestle with an LLM all day.

I guarentee that the first thought in any good CTO's mind in that world is "How much payroll do computer babysitters deserve?"

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#110

Post by nineplay »

CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #97

I had a minor desire to make a feature that had a slightly higher effort than reward, so although I knew I could struggle it out I didn't bother. After years of this I decided to give an AI a shot at the code. It produced something plausible looking and I was excited. Was it that easy? The code didn't work. But the approach made me more motivated to look into it and I found a solution. So although the AI gave me crap…

One of my more effective uses of AI is for rubber duck debugging. I tell it what I want the code to do, iterate over what it comes back with, adjust the code ( 'now rewrite foo() so 'bar' is is passed in'). What comes back isn't necessarily perfect and I don't blindly copy and paste but that isn't the point. At the end I've worked out what I want to do and some of the tedious boiler-plate code is taken care of.
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