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AI can code, but it can't build software

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Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#31

Post by throwaway314155 »

jumploops wrote: post #19

I've been forcing myself to "pure vibe-code" on a few projects, where I don't read a single line of code (even the diffs in codex/claude code). Candidly, it's awful. There are countless situations where it would be faster for me to edit the file directly (CSS, I'm looking at you!). With that said, I've been surprised at how far the coding agents are able to go[0], and a lot less surprised about where I need to step i…

> Candidly, it's awful.

Noting your caveat but I’m doing this with Python and your experience is very different from mine.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#32

Post by CivBase »

preommr wrote: post #9

These discussions are so tiring. Yes, they're bad now, but they'll get better in a year. If the generative ability is good enough for small snippets of code, it's good enough for larger software that's better organized. Maybe the models don't have enough of the right kind of training data, or the agents don't have the right reasoning algorithms. But it is there.

Problem is, as the author points out, designing software solutions is a lot more complicated than writing code. AI might get better in a year, but when will it be good enough? Does our current approach to AI even produce an economical solution to this problem, even if it's technically possible?

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#33

Post by veegee »

prmph wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

> LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Just this past weekend, I've designed and written code (in Typescript) that I don't think LLMs can even come close to writing in years. I have a subscription to a frontier LLM, but lately I find myself using like 25% of the time. At a certain level the software architecture problems I'm solving, drawing upon decades of understanding about maintainable, performant, and verif…

[flagged]

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#34

Post by colordrops »

simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

Once all the context that a typical human engineer has to "build software" is available to the LLM, I'm not so sure that this statement will hold true.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#35

Post by eterm »

I've been experimenting with a little vibe coding.

I've generally found the quality of .NET to be quite good. It trips up sometimes when linters ping it for rules not normally enforced, but it does the job reasonably well.

The front-end javascript though? It's both an absolute genuis and a complete menace at the same time. It'll write reams of code to gets things just right but with no regards to human maintainability.

I lost an entire session to the fact that it cheerfully did:

    npm install fabric
    npm install -D @types/fabric
Now that might look fine, but a human would have realised that the typings library is a completely different out-dated API, the package last updated 6 years ago.

Claude however didn't realise this, and wrote a ton of code that would pass unit tests but fail the type check. It'd check the type checker, re-write it all to pass the type checker, only for it now to fail the unit tests.

Eventually it semi-gave up typing and did loads of (fabric as any) all over the place, so now it just gave runtime exceptions instead.

I intervened when I realised what it was doing, and found the root cause of it's problems.

It was a complete blindspot because it just trusted both the library and the typechecker.

So yeah, if you want to snipe a vibe coder, suggest installing fabricjs with typings!

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#36

Post by bloppe »

subtlesoftware wrote: post #16
bloppe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’re not there today, but it doesn’t seem that far off. What time frame counts as "not that far off" to you? If you tried to bet me that the market for talented software engineers would collapse within the next 10 years, I'd take it no question. 25 years, I think my odds are still better than yours. 50 years, I might not take the bet.

Great question. It depends on the product. For niche SaaS products, I’d say in the next few years. For like Amazon.com, on the order of decades.

If the niche SaaS product never required a talented engineer in the first place, I'd be inclined to agree with you. But even a niche SaaS product requires a decent amount of engineering skill to maintain well.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#37

Post by svachalek »

jumploops wrote: post #19

I've been forcing myself to "pure vibe-code" on a few projects, where I don't read a single line of code (even the diffs in codex/claude code). Candidly, it's awful. There are countless situations where it would be faster for me to edit the file directly (CSS, I'm looking at you!). With that said, I've been surprised at how far the coding agents are able to go[0], and a lot less surprised about where I need to step i…

Also, put heavy lint rules in place, and commit hooks to make sure everything compiles, lints, passes tests, etc. You've got to be super, super defensive. But Claude Code will see all those barriers and respond to them automatically which saves you the trouble of being vigilant over so many little things. You just need to watch the big picture, like make sure tests are there to replicate bugs, new features are tested, etc, etc.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#38

Post by crazygringo »

prmph wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

> LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Just this past weekend, I've designed and written code (in Typescript) that I don't think LLMs can even come close to writing in years. I have a subscription to a frontier LLM, but lately I find myself using like 25% of the time. At a certain level the software architecture problems I'm solving, drawing upon decades of understanding about maintainable, performant, and verif…

> The people saying LLM can code are hard for me to understand.

Just today, I spent an hour documenting a function that performs a set of complex scientific simulations. Defined the function input structure, the outputs, and put a bunch of references in the body to function calls it would use.

I then spent 15 minutes explaining to the free version of ChatGPT what the function needs to do both in scientific terms and in computer architecture terms (e.g. what needed to be separated out for unit tests). Then it asked me to answer ~15 questions it had (most were yes/no, it took about 5 min), then it output around 700 lines of code.

It took me about 5 minutes to get it working, since it had a few typos. It ran.

Then I spent another 15 minutes laying out all the categories of unit tests and sanity tests I wanted it to write. It produced ~1500 lines of tests. It took me half an hour to read through them all, adjusting some edge cases that didn't make sense to me and adjusting the code accordingly. And a couple cases where it was testing the right part of the code, but had made valiant but wrong guesses as to what the scientifically correct answer would be. All the tests then passed.

All in all, a little over two hours. And it ran perfectly. In contrast, writing the code and tests myself entirely by hand would have taken at least a couple of entire days.

So when you say they're good for those simple things you list and "that's about it", I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I find myself relying on them more and more for the hardest scientific and algorithmic programming, when I provide the design and the code is relatively self-contained and tests can ensure correctness. I do the thinking, it does the coding.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#39

Post by bloppe »

colordrops wrote: post #34
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a good headline. LLMs are remarkably good at writing code. Writing code isn't the same thing as delivering working software. A human expert needs to identify the need for software, decide what the software should do, figure out what's feasible to deliver, build the first version (AI can help a bunch here), evaluate what they've built, show it to users, talk to them about whether it's fit for purpose, iterate…

Once all the context that a typical human engineer has to "build software" is available to the LLM, I'm not so sure that this statement will hold true.

But it's becoming increasingly clear that LLMs based on the transformer model will never be able to scale their context much further than the current frontier, due mainly to context rot. Taking advantage of greater context will require architectural breakthroughs.

Re: AI can code, but it can't build software

#40

Post by teaearlgraycold »

eterm wrote: post #35

I've been experimenting with a little vibe coding. I've generally found the quality of .NET to be quite good. It trips up sometimes when linters ping it for rules not normally enforced, but it does the job reasonably well. The front-end javascript though? It's both an absolute genuis and a complete menace at the same time. It'll write reams of code to gets things just right but with no regards to human maintainabilit…

Although - at least for simple packages - I've found LLMs good at extracting type definitions from untyped libraries.
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