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GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

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Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#131

Post by kaashif »

martinald wrote: post #38
kaashif wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as a primarily backend engineer dealing with either weird technical problems Claude can't get quite right or esoteric business domain problems Claude has no idea about (and indeed, it may be only a few people in one company could help with) - Claude isn't that useful. But random stuff like make a web app that automates this thing or make an admin panel with auto complete on these fields and caching data pulled…

One thing I'd recommend for weird business domain projects as a starter is getting it to create a "wiki" of markdown files of all the logic (I suspect this may have been on your to-do list anyway!). You may be pleasantly surprised at how well it does it, and then you can update your claude.md file to point to them (or even put it in there, but it is maybe overkill).

Agreed - LLMs are great at reading and synthesising docs. At various points I've gotten pushback when I ask people to document because no-one will look at the docs, but now we have LLMs to read and link to docs for us. And traditional search still works, of course, but worse.

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#132

Post by makeitdouble »

avalys wrote: post #9

I have a degree in CS from MIT and did professional software engineering from 2004 - 2020. I recently started a company in another field and haven’t done any real development for about 4 years. Earlier this summer I took a vacation and decided to start a small software hobby project specific to my industry. I decided to try out Cursor for the first time. I found it incredibly helpful at saving time implementing all t…

> found it incredibly helpful at saving time implementing all the bullshit involved in starting a new code base - setting up a build system, looking up libraries and APIs, implementing a framework for configuration and I/O, etc.

Thanks for the very eloquent explaination.

I feel that's where most people get the best value from GPTs. And that's also why ruby on rails like platforms are so popular in the first place.

Avoiding the boilerplate from the start and focusing on what matters doesn't need to go through AI, same way we didn't need to stick to Java's generators and code factories. I kinda fear we lose some of these advancements as people move away from these more elegant stacks, but also hope the pendulum balances back when the hype fades away.

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#133

Post by johnisgood »

iamben wrote: post #126
gndk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having good results with similar stuff, but not sure about the best approach. What exactly do you mean by "your global settings"? Do you have a global CLAUDE.md file? Or do you do this via the UserPromptSubmit hook and return an additionalContext ? I use this hook to constantly reinforce some things, like "be concise. use context7." It even works to put "ultrathink" in there to always have it in thinking mode. Bu…

Hey, fwiw I'm almost certainly not using Claude in the best possible way - I have a 'pro' (as in the ~$20 a month plan) and I just prompt. But in the 'Settings' section there's a bit that says: "What personal preferences should Claude consider in responses?" - I add stuff in there.

I use claude.ai too and it is fine for me, even though I do the copy-pasting, or uploading.

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#134

Post by ath3nd »

dnh44 wrote: post #129
ath3nd wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM for a complex piece of software far beyond what you have time for, you see the benefits. Are LLMs the new Agile/Scrum? "Once you really learn Scrum, it will solve all world problems and clean your house? Your experience is totally different? Skill issue. Try again." I get your position and don't want to sound dismissive either, however I want to point out that in the only recent study actually trying to measure…

I think that in that study all but one of the devs had hardly any experience with using AI tools.

> devs had hardly any experience with using AI tools.

I love it, here come the "you are using it wrong" arguments!

I thought these tools are so great, so awesome, that even without much experience they will help you? Or are they not so great and you actually gotta spend a considerable amount of time of learning them to see some return? Which one is it:

- are LLMs groundbreaking and democratizing development making it so much easier (which doesn't correspond to the results of the study)

- or do they need months of practice to give a modest return (or loss) of productivity back?

"You are using it wrong" is the cheapest cop-out when somebody questions the productivity benefits of LLMs. I'd like the LLM fanbase community to come up with better arguments (or ask their little assistant for assistance).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854649

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#135

Post by calrain »

ath3nd wrote: post #112
calrain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your position, and I don't want to sound dismissive, but when you really learn how to manage an LLM for a complex piece of software far beyond what you have time for, you see the benefits. Try

> LLM for a complex piece of software far beyond what you have time for, you see the benefits. Are LLMs the new Agile/Scrum? "Once you really learn Scrum, it will solve all world problems and clean your house? Your experience is totally different? Skill issue. Try again." I get your position and don't want to sound dismissive either, however I want to point out that in the only recent study actually trying to measure…

If knowledge and experience isn't an issue, then LLMs will benefit the programmer less in that space, but are still useful for doing mundane activities you avoid doing, like pivoting an early idea about an API pathing strategy, and have the LLM do the test case pivot for you.

If knowledge and experience in the language is an issue, then LLMs have increased value as they can teach you language notation as well as do the mundane stuff.

If understanding good programming architecture / patterns is an issue, then you have to be more careful with the LLM as you are listening to advice from something that doesn't understand what you really want.

If understanding how to guide an LLM is an issue, then you have to work, test, and design ways of building guidelines and practices that get the outcomes you want.

Using LLMs to code isn't some cheat-code to success, but it does help greatly with the mundane parts of code if you know how to program, and program well.

How much of a large project is truly innovation? Almost every application has boilerplate code wrapped around it, error handling, CRUD endpoints, Web UI flows, all stuff you have to do and not really the fun stuff at the core of your project.

This is where I find LLMs shine, they help you burn through the boring stuff so you can focus more on what really delivers value.

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#136

Post by dustfinger »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #14

At what point does clinging to driving a manual transmission round the track go from a sign of practical skill to a sign of stubborn arrogance?

We are straying a bit off-topic with this, but driving a standard can actually be a lot of fun. I have an automatic right now, but I have always enjoyed driving a standard more than automatics. This next point may be due to the quality of my particular automatic, but I have found passing vehicles on the highway to be a lot faster in a standard, because I can choose to just drop into a lower gear and hit the gas, I don't have to hit the gas and then wait for the vehicle to decide that it should go into a lower gear. So, it doesn't have to be a practical skill or a sign of arrogance, someone might just enjoy driving a standard as I do.

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#137

Post by thunky »

dreadnip wrote: post #111
anonzzzies wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very bad at frontend and I know frontend peeps keep saying claude/llms are bad at it, but now, for the first time in my 40 year career, I deliver frontend that are looking better and functioning better than whatever I see in hip products people 'designed with love in blah'. And our clients agree. If the css is correct or not, I don't know as I never really found the energy to learn it and now I don't need to and…

I guess the main takeaway is that you don’t care about the quality of the generated code. The end result is all that matters. If I ask it to “add drag & drop”, I already know in my mind what the correct code should look like, because I’ve implemented it many times in the past. LLMs just never deliver the -code- that I want. The end result might look ok and the drag & drop will work, but the code will be atrocious and…

> This is what I’m being paid for right?

That's a good question. Because developers can sometimes have a bit of an unhealthy love affair with their own code.

Does your employee actually care as much about code quality as much as you do?

They would probably ask what is the downside of accepting this lower quality code, given the upside you presented:

> The end result might look ok and the drag & drop will work

Which you did quickly, saving them money (in theory).

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#138

Post by jmull »

avalys wrote: post #9

I have a degree in CS from MIT and did professional software engineering from 2004 - 2020. I recently started a company in another field and haven’t done any real development for about 4 years. Earlier this summer I took a vacation and decided to start a small software hobby project specific to my industry. I decided to try out Cursor for the first time. I found it incredibly helpful at saving time implementing all t…

This is consistent with my experience… which is why I’m still an AI skeptic (relatively speaking, that is).

Generally, it’s making easy stuff easier. That’s nice, but doesn’t change the game. Personally, I already know how to whip through most of the easy stuff, so the gains aren’t that large.

I like to imagine a world where the front page of HN is clogged with articles about mastering the keyboard shortcuts in your text editor and combining search with basic techniques of reading comprehension. That’s the level of productivity gains we’re talking about here.

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#139

Post by gndk »

iamben wrote: post #126
gndk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having good results with similar stuff, but not sure about the best approach. What exactly do you mean by "your global settings"? Do you have a global CLAUDE.md file? Or do you do this via the UserPromptSubmit hook and return an additionalContext ? I use this hook to constantly reinforce some things, like "be concise. use context7." It even works to put "ultrathink" in there to always have it in thinking mode. Bu…

Hey, fwiw I'm almost certainly not using Claude in the best possible way - I have a 'pro' (as in the ~$20 a month plan) and I just prompt. But in the 'Settings' section there's a bit that says: "What personal preferences should Claude consider in responses?" - I add stuff in there.

Ah thats interesting. I only use Claude Code right now and don't have anything in that section you mention. Wonder how/when its applied and if it is also applied to CC...

Re: GPTs and Feeling Left Behind

#140

Post by amdivia »

> I can spend an entire day with a GPT and produce nothing of value.

Although I believe you, I think this is due to improper use. I know this sounds like a "you're holding phone wrong" moment, but I found many uses for AI that I feel addicted to what its providing me.

Like you I started with Vim long ago, in an attempt to reduce the thought -> code cycle. But after many years I started seeking something even faster, and LLMs seem to be it for me.

From a quicker navigation of the codebase, to quickly writing the boilerplate for me, adding debugging statements where I need. Believe me there is a big jump in productivity if you use it right. You just gotta keep trying until you develop a sense of what you can ask it to do and what it would be good for

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