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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

#131

Post by dangus »

magic_hamster wrote: post #118
haswell wrote: post #24

I recently discovered that some of the Raspberry Pi models support the Linux Kernel's "Gadget Mode". This allows you to configure the Pi to appear as some type of device when plugged into a USB port, i.e. a Mass Storage/USB stick, Network Card, etc. Very nifty for turning a Pi Zero into various kinds of utilities. When I realized this was possible, I wanted to set up a project that would allow me to use the Pi as a b…

> Instead it took a few hours, and I finished a project. Did you? If you wanted to expand on it, or debug it when it fails, do you really understand the solution completely? (Perhaps you do.) Don't get me wrong, I've done the same in the last few years and I've completed several fun projects this way. But I only use AI on things I know I don't care about personally. If I use too much AI on things I actually want to k…

I think this effect of losing your abilities is somewhat overblown.

Especially when AI has saved me on actually explaining specific lines of code that would have been difficult to look up with a search engine or reference documentation and know what I was looking for.

At some point understanding is understanding, and there is no intellectual "reward" for banging your head against the wall.

Regex is the perfect example. Yes, I understand it, but it takes me a long time to parse through it manually and I use it infrequently enough that it turns into a big timewaster. It's very helpful for me to just ask AI to come up with the string and for me to verify it.

And if I were the type of person who didn't understand the result of what I was looking at, I could literally ask that very same AI to break it down and explain it.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#132

Post by kansface »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #125
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…

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 an…

What language are you writing? I mostly write go these days, and have often wondered if it is uniquely good in that language given its constraints.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#134

Post by yifanl »

jimbokun wrote: post #130
yifanl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right now we're trained computer masseuses, not yet computer babysitters.

And to torture the analogy further since Im already in this rabbit hole, masseuses and babysitters probably have to put in the same amount of effort in their work.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#135

Post by __xor_eax_eax »

headcanon wrote: post #105
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.

I love throwing questions at it where previously it would have been daunting because you don't even know the right questions to ask, and the amount of research you'd need to do to even ask the proper question is super high.

Its great for ideating in that way. It does produce some legendary BS though.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#136

Post by axkdev »

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'm excited to understand more about how aider creates a map of the repository and effectively compresses the information in ways similar to how I keep track of high level ideas.

Run /map. It's nothing fancy, really.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#137

Post by collingreen »

keeptrying wrote: post #80
rectang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that once you have learned enough to tell the LLM exactly what answer you want, it can repeat it back to you verbatim. The question is how far short of that you should stop because the LLM is no longer an efficient way to make progress.

From a knowledge standpoint an LLM can give you pointers at any point. Theres no way it will "fall short". You just have to improve your prompt. In the worst case scenario you can say "please list out all the different research angles I should proceed from here and which of these might most likely yield a useful result for me"

My skepticism flares up with sentences like "Theres no way it will "fall short"." Especially in the face of so many first hand examples of LLMs being wrong, getting stuck, or falling short.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#138

Post by nop_slide »

jgord wrote: post #69
bloomingkales wrote: post #16

I definitely felt this. I thought "If I have to redo this in Flutter or in Swift, I can". I don't know either, so have to move with some caution (but it's all very exciting).

At first glance, it seems like _porting_ code to another language / api .. is probably a good sweet spot for these code LLMs .. .. and even automating the testing to check results match, coming up with edge cases etc. ... and if thats true, then they could be useful for _optimizing_ by porting to other apis / algos, checking same-ness of behavior, then comparing performance. The whole "vibe coding" doesn't grab me -…

> At first glance, it seems like _porting_ code to another language / api .. is probably a good sweet spot for these code LLMs ..

I recently ported skatevideosite.com from svelte/python to ruby on rails. I leaned on AI heavily to translate the svelte files to ERB templates and it did a wonderful job.

My experiene generally with these systems is that they are good with handling things you _give_ it, but less so when coming up with stuff from scratch.

For example I've tried to use it to build out additional features and the results are subpar.

Agree, yeah "vibe coding" is super cringe haha

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#139

Post by randcraw »

101008 wrote: post #40
boznz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT is never static. I have had to take several forks in my career with languages and technologies often leading to dead-ends and re-training. It is amazing how much you learn doing one thing directly translates to another, it can often lead to you not having a specific/narrow mindset too. Having an LLM next to you means there is never a stupid question, I ask the AI the same stupid questions repeatedly until I get it…

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…

I think the replacement for developers won't be CTOs but program managers -- folks with business degrees (or none at all) but who understand the company's needs for the software and can translate them into prompts to build the product without any understanding of how to code. (Some places call these folks 'software anthropologists'.) They'll hone the product iteratively though development almost like a genetic algorithm would, by trial and error -- rejecting or revising the output verbally (and eventually by interacting with components seen on the screen). Vibe programming by business types will replace today's software engineers.

Re: With AI you need to think bigger

#140

Post by haswell »

magic_hamster wrote: post #118
haswell wrote: post #24

I recently discovered that some of the Raspberry Pi models support the Linux Kernel's "Gadget Mode". This allows you to configure the Pi to appear as some type of device when plugged into a USB port, i.e. a Mass Storage/USB stick, Network Card, etc. Very nifty for turning a Pi Zero into various kinds of utilities. When I realized this was possible, I wanted to set up a project that would allow me to use the Pi as a b…

> Instead it took a few hours, and I finished a project. Did you? If you wanted to expand on it, or debug it when it fails, do you really understand the solution completely? (Perhaps you do.) Don't get me wrong, I've done the same in the last few years and I've completed several fun projects this way. But I only use AI on things I know I don't care about personally. If I use too much AI on things I actually want to k…

> Did you?

Yes.

> do you really understand the solution completely?

Yes; fully. I'd describe what I delegated to the AI as "busy work". I still spent time thinking through the overall design before asking the AI for output.

> But I only use AI on things I know I don't care about personally.

Roughly speaking, I'd put my personal projects in two different categories:

1. Things that try to solve some problem in my life

2. Projects for the sake of intellectual stimulation and learning

The primary goal of this scanner project was/is to de-clutter my apartment and get rid of paper. For something like this, I prioritize getting it done over intellectual pursuits. Another option I considered was just buying a newer scanner with built-in scan-to-SMB functionality.

Using AI allowed me to split the difference. I got it done quickly, but I still learned about some things along the way that are already forming into future unrelated project ideas.

> If I use too much AI on things I actually want to know, I feel my abilities deteriorating.

I think this likely comes down to how it's used. For this particular project, I came away knowing quite a bit more about everything involved, and the AI assistance was a learning multiplier.

But to be clear, I also fully took over the code after the initial few iterations of LLM output. My goal wasn't to make the LLM build everything for me, but to bootstrap things to a point I could easily build from.

I could see using AI for category #2 projects in a more limited fashion, but likely more as a tutor/advisor.

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