Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I don't care how well your "AI" works

fokus.cool

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 808 posts

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#251

Post by matwood »

embedding-shape wrote: post #67
m_a_g wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun) In my Big Tech job, I sometimes forget that some people can really enjoy what they do. It seems like you're in a fortunate position of both high pay and high enjoyment. Congratulations! Out of curiosity, what do you work on?

Right now I'm doing consulting for two companies, maybe a couple of hours per week, mostly having downtime and trying to expand on my machine learning knowledge. But in general, every job I've had has been "high pay and high enjoyment" even when I initially had "shit pay" compared to other programmers, and the product wasn't really fun, I was still programming, an activity I still love. Compare this to the jobs I did…

It's a good perspective to keep. I've also worked a lot of crappy jobs. Overnights in a grocery store (IIRC, they paid an extra .50/hour to work overnights), fine dining waiter (this one was actually fun, but the partying was too much), on a landscaping crew, etc... I make more money than I ever thought possible growing up. My dad still can't believe I have job 'playing on the computer' all day, though I mostly manage now.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#252

Post by eithed »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #210
walt_grata wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs vs human Handholding the human pays off in the long run more than hand holding the llm, which requires more hand holding anyway. Claude doesn't get better as I explain concepts to it the same way a jr engineer does.

I had hired 3 junior/mid lvl devs and paid them to do nothing but study to improve their skills, it was my investment in their future, I had a big project on the horizon that I needed help with. After 6 months I let them go, the improvement was far too slow. Books that should have taken a week to get through were taking 6 weeks. Since then LLM have completely surpassed them. I think it’s reasonable to think that some…

But this is an issue of worker you're hiring. I've worked with senior engineers who a) did nothing (as - really not write any thing within the sprint, nor do any other work) b) worked on things they wanted to work on c) did ONLY things that they were assigned in the sprint (= if there were 10 tickets in the sprint and they were assigned 1 of these tickets then they would finish that ticket and not pick up anything else, staying quiet) d) worked only on tickets that have requirements explicitly stated step by step (open file a, change line 89 to be `checkBar` instead of `checkFoo`... - having to write this would take longer than doing the changes yourself as I was really writing in Jira ticket what I wanted the engineer to code, otherwise they would come back with "not enough spec, can't proceed"). All of these cases - senior people!

Sure - LLMs will do what they're told (to a specific value of "do" and "what they're told")

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#253

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

lupire wrote: post #214
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. This sounds kind of logical, but really isn't. In reality you can ASSIGN a task to a junior dev and expect them to eventually complete it, and learn from the experience as well. Sure there'll likely be some interaction between the jun…

Doesn't matter. First, yes, a modern AI will come back and ask questions. Second, the AI is so much faster at interactions than a human is, that you can use that saved time to glance at its work and redirect it. The AI will come back with 10 prototype attempts in an hour, while a human will take a week for each, with more interupt questions for you about easy things

Sure, LLMs are a useful tool, and fast, but the point is they don't have human level intelligence, can't learn, and are not autonomous outside of an agent that will attempt to complete a narrow task (but with no ownership and guarantee of eventual success).

We'll presumably get there eventually and build "artificial humans", but for now what we've got is LLMs - tools for language task automation.

If you want to ASSIGN a task to something/someone then you need a human or artificial human. For now that means assigning the task to a human, who will in turn use the LLM as a tool. Sure there may be some productivity increase (although some studies have indicated the exact opposite), but ultimately if you want to be able to get more work done in parallel then you need more entities that you can assign tasks do, and for time being that means humans.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#254

Post by enraged_camel »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #198
thunky wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly is being de-valuated for a profession You're probably fine as a more senior dev...for now. But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. Plus as an industry we've been exploiting our employer's lack of information to extract large salaries to produce largely poor qua…

> But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it. This sounds kind of logical, but really isn't. In reality you can ASSIGN a task to a junior dev and expect them to eventually complete it, and learn from the experience as well. Sure there'll likely be some interaction between the jun…

>> e.g. coming back to you and asking for help

Funny you mention this because Opus 4.5 did this just yesterday. I accidentally gave it a task with conflicting goals, and after working through it for a few minutes it realized what was going on, summarized the conflict and asked me which goal should be prioritized, along with detailed pros and cons of each approach. It’s exactly how I would expect a mid level developer to operate, except much faster and more thorough.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#255

Post by Aurornis »

TrackerFF wrote: post #188

I get that some people want to be intellectually "pure". Artisans crafting high-quality software, made with love, and all that stuff. But one emerging reality for everyone should be that businesses are swallowing the AI-hype raw. You really need a competent and understanding boss to not be labeled a luddite, because let's be real - LLMs have made everyone more "productive" on paper. Non-coders are churning out small…

> Non-coders are churning out small apps in record pace, juniors are looking like savants with the amount of code and tasks they finish, where probably 90% of the code is done by Claude or whatever.

Honestly I think you’re swallowing some of the hype here.

I think the biggest advantages of LLMs go to the experienced coders who know how to leverage them in their workflows. That may not even include having the LLM write the code directly.

The non-coders producing apps meme is all over social media, but the real world results aren’t there. All over Twitter there were “build in public” indie non-tech developers using LLMs to write their apps and the hype didn’t match reality. Some people could get minimal apps out the door that kind of talked to a back end, but even those people were running into issues not breaking everything on update or managing software lifecycle.

The top complaint in all of the social circles I have about LLMs is with juniors submitting LLM junk PRs and then blaming the LLM. It’s just not true that juniors are expertly solving tasks with LLMs faster than seniors.

I think LLMs are helpful and anyone senior isn’t learning how to use them to their advantage (which doesn’t mean telling the LLM what to write and hoping for the best) is missing out. I think people swallowing the hype about non-tech people and juniors doing senior work is getting misled about the actual ways to use these tools effectively.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#256

Post by bgwalter »

Aurornis wrote: post #234
zwnow wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You really need a competent and understanding boss to not be labeled a luddite, because let's be real - LLMs have made everyone more "productive" on paper. I am actually less productive when using LLMs because now I have to read another entities code and be able to judge wether this fits my current business problem or not. If it doesn't, yay refactoring prompts instead of tackling the actual problem. Also I can wri…

> I am actually less productive when using LLMs because now I have to read another entities code and be able to judge wether this fits my current business problem or not. You don’t have to let the LLM write code for you. They’re very useful as a smart search engine for your code base, a smart refactoring tool, a suggestion generator, and many other ways. I rarely have LLMs write code for me from scratch that I have t…

Is that why open source progress has generally slowed down since 2023? We keep hearing these promises, and reality shows the opposite.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#257

Post by ceejayoz »

lxgr wrote: post #213
ceejayoz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hackers have always tried out new technologies to see how they work – or break – so why would LLMs be any different? Who says we haven't tried it out ?

Seems like various hackers came to various different conclusions from trying them out, then. Why feign surprise about this?

Why not?

I was surprised how hard many here fell for the NFT thing, too.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#258

Post by poszlem »

easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

> That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture.

People who haven't lived through the transition will likely come here to tell you how wrong you are, but you are 100% correct.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#259

Post by pacifika »

lxgr wrote: post #215
fileeditview wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The era of software mass production has begun. With many "devs" just being workers in a production line, pushing buttons, repeating the same task over and over. The produced products however do not compare in quality to other industry's mass production lines. I wonder how long it takes until this comes all crashing down. Software mostly already is not a high quality product.. with Claude & co it just gets worse. edit…

> The era of software mass production has begun. We've been in that era for at least two decades now. We just only now invented the steam engine. > I wonder how long it takes until this comes all crashing down. At least one such artifact of craft and beauty already literally crashed two airplanes. Bad engineering is possible with and without LLMs.

Yeah it’s interesting to see if blaming LLMs becomes as acceptable as “caused by a technical fault” to deflect responsibility from what is a programmer’s output.

Perhaps that’s what lead to a decline in accountability and quality.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#260

Post by [deleted] »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #177
danaris wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't worry about where AI is today, worry about where it will be in 5-10 years. And where will it be in 5-10 years? Because right now, the trajectory looks like "right about where it is today, with maybe some better integrations". Yes, LLMs experienced a period of explosive growth over the past 5-8 years or so. But then they hit diminishing returns , and they hit them hard. Right now, it looks like a veritable pla…

Right about where it is today with better integrations? One year is the difference between Sonnet 3.5 and Opus 4.5. We're not hitting diminishing returns yet (mostly because of exponential capex scaling, but still). We're already committed to ~3 years of the current trajectory, which means we can expect similar performance boosts year over year. The key to keep in mind is that LLMs are a giant bag of capabilities, an…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN