We really need to get nuanced about the discussion around LLMs in programming. My experience is that LLMs work great for producing glue code. Join together a bunch of well documented APIs? LLMs will make enough progress that I can finish it myself. Produce a pile of HTML and CSS for a nondescript design? I'll get at least a mostly working result that I can easily fix up. But try to, say, design a cross platform GUI library and the results are underwhelming. LLMs know a heck of a lot of stuff, but they are not very good at working with concepts.
With AI you need to think bigger
121–130 of 182 posts
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#122We really need to get nuanced about the discussion around LLMs in programming. My experience is that LLMs work great for producing glue code. Join together a bunch of well documented APIs? LLMs will make enough progress that I can finish it myself. Produce a pile of HTML and CSS for a nondescript design? I'll get at least a mostly working result that I can easily fix up. But try to, say, design a cross platform GUI l…
The missing piece in your view here is that eventually nearly all code is or eventually becomes gibberish glue code, or it stops being used. LLMs just speed up the cycle.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#123I 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…
> although the AI gave me crap code it still inspired the answer
This is exactly my experience using AI for code and prose. The details are like 80% slop, but it has the right overall skeleton/structure. And rewriting the details of something with a decent starting structure is way easier than generating the whole thing from scratch by hand.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The motivated will excel even further, for the less motivated nothing will change. The gap is just going to increase between high-agency individuals and everyone else.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#125I 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…
My experience with ChatGPT is underwhelming. It does really basic language questions faster and easier than google now. Questions about a function signature or questions like, "how do I get the first n characters of a string". Things like that. Once I start asking it more complex questions not only does it get it wrong often, if you tell it the answer is wrong and ask to do it again it will often give you the same answer. I have no doubt it will get there, but I continue to be surprised at all the positives I hear about it.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#126Humans are inherently greedy.
Once we get a feel for what the AI can and cannot do, bigger bets will occur.
Currently, companies seem tight - team counts are held low, and hiring is frozen. Very much a position of "let's see how much AI efficiency gains us".
But eventually, the money sitting on the sidelines will look attractive again - attractive for taking bigger, more ambitious bets.
More hiring has to take place.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I’d suggest we are much closer to that reality now than we were in the 90s, in large part thanks to the internet.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> It’s quite another thing to delegate authoring code altogether to a fallible statistical model.
Isnt this what a compiler is really doing? JIT optimizes code based on heuristics, it a code path is considered hot. Sure, we might be able to annotate it, but by and large you let the tools figure it out so that we can focus on other things.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#129Where 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've been programming for 20 years, just so y'all know I have at least some level of competence.
I tried Vibe Coding for the first time on Friday and was blown away. It was awesome. I met some people (all programmers) at a party on Friday and excitedly told them about it. One of them tried, he loved.
Then yesterday I read a LinkedIn (Lunatic?) post about "Vibe Design", where PMs will just tell the computer what to do using some sort of visual language, where you create UI elements and drop them on a canvas, and AI makes your vision come true, etc, etc...
And my first thought was: "Wait a minute, I've seen this movie before. Back on late 90s / early 2000s it was the 4th generation programming language, and Visual Basic would allow anyone to code any system"...
And while it's true Visual Basic did allow a BUNCH of people to make money building and selling systems to video rental shops and hair saloons, programmers never went away.
I welcome anyone building more software. The tools will only get better. And programmers will adapt them, and it will make us better too, and we will still be needed.
Re: With AI you need to think bigger
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?"
They ask that already.