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Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

worksonmymachine.substack.com

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Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#171

Post by commakozzi »

jon-wood wrote: post #111
verisimilidude wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI's superpower is doing mediocre work at high speed. That's okay. Great, even. There's lots of mediocre work to do. And mediocre still clears below average. But! There's still room for expertise. And this is where I disagree about swimming with the tide. There will be those who are uninterested in using the AI. They will struggle. They will hone their craft. They will have muscle memory for the tasks everyone else f…

My ongoing concern is that most of us probably got to being able to do good work via several years of doing mediocre work. We put in the hours and along the way learned what good looks like, and various patterns that allow us to see the path to solving a given problem. What does the next generation do when we’ve automated away that work? How do they learn to recognise what good looks like, and when their LLM has got…

they will be judging the merit of work in much broader context.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#172

Post by siliconwrath »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #68
patcon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have systemic concerns with how Google is changing roles from "knowledge bridging" to "knowledge translating", but in terms of information: I find it very useful. You find it gives you poor information?

Always check the sources. I've personally found it; - Using a source to claim the opposite of what the source says. - Point to irrelevant sources. - Use a very untrustworthy source. - Give our sources that do not have anything to do with what it says. - Make up additional things like any other LLM without source or internet search capability, despite reading sources. I've specifically found Gemeni (the one Google put…

I’ve had to report AI summaries to Google several times for telling me restaurant items don’t contain ingredients I'm allergic to, when the cited “source” allergen menu says otherwise. They’re gonna kill someone.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#173

Post by Benjammer »

vishvananda wrote: post #156
bloppe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An I the only one who has to constantly tell Claude and Gemini to stop making edits to my codebase because they keep messing things up and breaking the build like ten times in a row, duplicating logic everywhere, etc? I keep hearing about how impressive agents are. I wish they could automate me out of my job faster

I'm really baffled why the coding interfaces have not implemented a locking feature for some code. It seems like an obvious feature to be able to select a section of your code and tell the agent not to modify it. This could remove a whole class of problems where the agent tries to change tests to match the code or removes key functionality. One could even imagine going a step further and having a confidence level ass…

Why are engineers so obstinate about this stuff? You really need a GUI built for you in order to do this? You can't take the time to just type up this instruction to the LLM? Do you realize that's possible? You can just write instructions "Don't modify XYZ.ts file under any circumstances". Not to mention all the tools have simple hotkeys to dismiss changes for an entire file with the press of a button if you really want to ignore changes to a file or whatever. In Cursor you can literally select a block of text and press a hotkey to "highlight" that code to the LLM in the chat, and you could absolutely tell it "READ BUT DON'T TOUCH THIS CODE" or something, directly tied to specific lines of code, literally the feature you are describing. BUT, you have to work with the LLM and tooling, it's not just going to be a button for you or something.

You can also literally do exactly what you said with "going a step further".

Open Claude Code, run `/init`. Download Superwhisper, open a new file at project root called BRAIN_DUMP.md, put your cursor in the file, activate Superwhisper, talk in stream of consciousness-style about all the parts of the code and your own confidence level, with any details you want to include. Go to your LLM chat, tell it to "Read file @BRAIN_DUMP.md" and organize all the contents into your own new file CODE_CONFIDENCE.md. Tell it to list the parts of the code base and give it's best assessment of the developer's confidence in that part of the code, given the details and tone in the brain dump for each part. Delete the brain dump file if you want. Now you literally have what you asked for, an "index" of sorts for your LLM that tells it the parts of the codebase and developer confidence/stability/etc. Now you can just refer to that file in your project prompting.

Please, everyone, for the love of god, just start prompting. Instead of posting on hacker news or reddit about your skepticism, literally talk to the LLM about it and ask it questions, it can help you work through almost any of this stuff people rant about.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#174

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

bloppe wrote: post #62
lordnacho wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you also can't not swim with the tide. If you drove a horse-buggy 100 years ago, it was probably worth your while to keep your eye on whether motor-cars went anywhere. I was super skeptical about a year ago. Copilot was making nice predictions, that was it. This agent stuff is truly impressive.

An I the only one who has to constantly tell Claude and Gemini to stop making edits to my codebase because they keep messing things up and breaking the build like ten times in a row, duplicating logic everywhere, etc? I keep hearing about how impressive agents are. I wish they could automate me out of my job faster

It happens to me, yes. Sometimes they get stuck in the process. I learned how to go around certain issues but it's very annoying.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#175

Post by viraptor »

exographicskip wrote: post #154
bloppe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An I the only one who has to constantly tell Claude and Gemini to stop making edits to my codebase because they keep messing things up and breaking the build like ten times in a row, duplicating logic everywhere, etc? I keep hearing about how impressive agents are. I wish they could automate me out of my job faster

Duplicate logic is definitely a thing. That and littering comments all over the place. Worth it to me as I can fix all the above after the fact. Just annoying haha

Ask for no comments. Or extremely infrequent ones for complex sections only. Agreeing with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44619462 here.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#177

Post by saadatq »

this isn’t vibe coding. This is something completely new. I call it “flex coding.”

heck I built a full app in an afternoon AND I was a good dad?

> I'd wander into my office, check what Claude had built, test it real quick. If it worked, great! Commit and push. "Now build the server connection UI," I'd say, and wander back out.

Made breakfast. Claude coded.

Played with my son. Claude coded.

Watched some TV. Claude coded.

Every hour or so, I'd pop back in. Five minutes of testing. One minute of feedback.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#178

Post by lightbulbish »

Benjammer wrote: post #173
vishvananda wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really baffled why the coding interfaces have not implemented a locking feature for some code. It seems like an obvious feature to be able to select a section of your code and tell the agent not to modify it. This could remove a whole class of problems where the agent tries to change tests to match the code or removes key functionality. One could even imagine going a step further and having a confidence level ass…

Why are engineers so obstinate about this stuff? You really need a GUI built for you in order to do this? You can't take the time to just type up this instruction to the LLM? Do you realize that's possible? You can just write instructions "Don't modify XYZ.ts file under any circumstances". Not to mention all the tools have simple hotkeys to dismiss changes for an entire file with the press of a button if you really w…

_all_ models I’ve tried continuously, and still, have problems ignoring rules. I’m actually quite shocked someone would write this if you have experience in the area, as it so clearly contrasts with my own experience.

Despite explicit instructions in all sorts of rules and .md’s, the models still make changes where they should not. When caught they innocently say ”you’re right I shouldn’t have done that as it directly goes against your rule of ”.

Just to be clear, are you suggesting that currently, with your existing setup, the AI’s always follow your instructions in your rules and prompts? If so, I want your rules please. If not, I don’t understand why you would diss a solution which aims to hardcode away some of the llm prompt interpretation problems that exist

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#179

Post by bluefirebrand »

weitendorf wrote: post #84
karel-3d wrote: post #24

Reading articles like this feels like being in a different reality. I don't work like this, I don't want to work like this and maybe most importantly I don't want to work with somebody who works like this. Also I am scared that any library that I am using through the myriad of dependencies is written like this. On the other hand... if I look at this as some alternate universe where I don't need to directly or indirec…

I've been working on AI dev tools for a bit over a year and I don't love using AI this way either. I mostly use it for boilerplate, ideas, or to ask questions about error messages. But I've had a very open mind about it ever since I saw it oneshotting what I saw as typical Google Cloud Functions tasks (glue together some APIs, light http stuff) a year ago. I think in the last month we've entered an inflection point w…

> but you really can feed these things junior-sized tickets and send them off expecting a PR to hit your tray pretty quickly

This really hasn't been my experience

Maybe I just expect more out of juniors than most people, though

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#180

Post by [deleted] »

stillsut wrote: post #134
karel-3d wrote: post #24

Reading articles like this feels like being in a different reality. I don't work like this, I don't want to work like this and maybe most importantly I don't want to work with somebody who works like this. Also I am scared that any library that I am using through the myriad of dependencies is written like this. On the other hand... if I look at this as some alternate universe where I don't need to directly or indirec…

> Just keep it away from me I'm reminded of teaching bootcamp software engineering, when every day #1 we go through simple git workflows and it seems very intimidating to students and they don't understand the value. Which fair enough because git has a steep learning curve and you need to use it practically to start picking it up. I think this might be analogous to the shift going on with ai-generated and agent-gener…

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