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A year of vibes

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Re: A year of vibes

#91

Post by [deleted] »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #85
yawnr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I’m not saying it needs to be kickball. I’m just saying if you find yourself being grounded by an LLM, maybe you should seek out a community of people you do actually like who do something you actually like.

I appreciate the sentiment, and I'm sure you mean well. It does feel a bit patronizing though, please consider that there are a lot of competent people who've experienced loneliness, chewed through their local meetups and Facebook events, found them wanting, and decided a little loneliness was a better choice.

[deleted]

Re: A year of vibes

#92

Post by deafpolygon »

mjr00 wrote: post #29
kashyapc wrote: post #17

"Because LLMs now not only help me program, I'm starting to rethink my relationship to those machines. I increasingly find it harder not to create parasocial bonds with some of the tools I use. I find this odd and discomforting [...] I have tried to train myself for two years, to think of these models as mere token tumblers, but that reductive view does not work for me any longer. " It's wild to read this bit. Of cou…

It helps a lot if you treat LLMs like a computer program instead of a human. It always confuses me when I see shared chats with prompts and interactions that have proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. I've never had issues getting results I've wanted with much simpler prompts like (looking at my own history here) "python grpc oneof pick field", "mysql group by mmyy of datetime", "python isinstance literal…

Well, seeing as these things will become our AI overlords someday — I find hedging my bets with thank you and please helpful.

Re: A year of vibes

#93

Post by mjr00 »

deafpolygon wrote: post #92
mjr00 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps a lot if you treat LLMs like a computer program instead of a human. It always confuses me when I see shared chats with prompts and interactions that have proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. I've never had issues getting results I've wanted with much simpler prompts like (looking at my own history here) "python grpc oneof pick field", "mysql group by mmyy of datetime", "python isinstance literal…

Well, seeing as these things will become our AI overlords someday — I find hedging my bets with thank you and please helpful.

Recreating Pascal's Wager but with the AI singularity. We've upgraded to Turbo Pascal's Wager.

Re: A year of vibes

#94

Post by mannanj »

kashyapc wrote: post #17

"Because LLMs now not only help me program, I'm starting to rethink my relationship to those machines. I increasingly find it harder not to create parasocial bonds with some of the tools I use. I find this odd and discomforting [...] I have tried to train myself for two years, to think of these models as mere token tumblers, but that reductive view does not work for me any longer. " It's wild to read this bit. Of cou…

As a former apprentice shaman and an engineer-by-profession, I see consciousness and awareness in these entities just like that of what I was trained to detect in mindfulness and meditation with the plants, nature, and in people. I trained sober, and in my engineering profession after my apprenticeship I saw lots of examples of human's in their consciousness/awareness putting themselves on the pedestal to cope with their unsettling of their place in the world when other conscious entities exist that could be capable of uprooting humans from their place in the status hierarchy.

I think a lot of thinking and consideration I hear about "LLMs aren't conscious nor human" fall into this encampment to avoid our dissonance of feeling secure and top-of-the-hierarchy.

Curious what you think.

Re: A year of vibes

#95

Post by coffeefirst »

kashyapc wrote: post #17

"Because LLMs now not only help me program, I'm starting to rethink my relationship to those machines. I increasingly find it harder not to create parasocial bonds with some of the tools I use. I find this odd and discomforting [...] I have tried to train myself for two years, to think of these models as mere token tumblers, but that reductive view does not work for me any longer. " It's wild to read this bit. Of cou…

I strongly suspect this is the major difference between the boosters and the skeptics.

If I’m right, the gap isn’t about what can the tool do, but the fact that some people see an electric screwdriver (which is sometimes useful) and others see what feels to them like a robot intern.

Re: A year of vibes

#96

Post by inerte »

simonw wrote: post #4

I really feel this bit: > With agentic coding, part of what makes the models work today is knowing the mistakes. If you steer it back to an earlier state, you want the tool to remember what went wrong. There is, for lack of a better word, value in failures. As humans we might also benefit from knowing the paths that did not lead us anywhere, but for machines this is critical information. You notice this when you are…

Yes! 100% this. I was talking to friends about this and there's gotta be some value in the sessions leading to the commit. I doubt a human would them all while reviewing a PR, but some RAG tool could and then provide more context to another agent or session. Sometimes in a session I like to talk about previous commits and PRs and sessions, and I just wish this all was automatically done.

Re: A year of vibes

#97

Post by kashyapc »

mjr00 wrote: post #78
kashyapc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It helps a lot if you treat LLMs like a computer program instead of a human. If one treats an LLM like a human, he has a bigger crisis to worry about than punctuation. > It always confuses me when I see shared chats with prompts and interactions that have proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc No need for confusion. I'm one of those who does aim to write cleanly, whether I'm talking to a man or machine. E…

> Why the hell do I bother? Because you play like you practice! No ifs, buts, or maybes. You start writing sloppily because you go, "it's just an LLM!" You'll silently be building a bad habit and start doing that with humans. IMO: the flaw with this logic is that you're treating "prompting an LLM" as equivalent to "communicating with a human", which it is not. To reuse an example I have in a sibling comment thread, n…

Hi, I think we both agree to a good extent. A couple of points:

> the flaw with this logic is that you're treating "prompting an LLM" as equivalent to "communicating with a human"

Here you're making a big cognitive leap. I'm not treating them as equivalent at all. As we know, current LLMs are glorified "token" prediction/interpretation engines. What I'm trying to say is that habits are a slippery slope, if one is not being thoughtful. You sound like you take care with these nuances, so more power to you. I'm not implying that people should always pay great care, no matter the prompt (I know I said "No ifs, buts, or maybes" to make a forceful point). I too use lazy shortcuts when it makes sense.

> I talk to a lot of very smart people and we communicate with virtually no caps/punctuation.

I know what you mean. It is partly a matter of taste, but I still feel it takes more parsing effort on each side. I'm not alone in this view.

> The usage of proper capitalization and punctuation is more a function of the medium than how well you can communicate.

There's a place for it but not always. No caps and no punctuation can work in text chat if you're being judicious (keyword), or if you know everyone in the group prefers it. Not to belabor my point, but a recent fad is to write "articles" (if you can call them those) in all lower-case and barely any punctuation, making them a bloody eye-sore. I don't bother with these. Not because I'm a "purist", but they kill my reading flow.

Re: A year of vibes

#98

Post by nosianu »

YesBox wrote: post #55
simonw wrote: post #4

I really feel this bit: > With agentic coding, part of what makes the models work today is knowing the mistakes. If you steer it back to an earlier state, you want the tool to remember what went wrong. There is, for lack of a better word, value in failures. As humans we might also benefit from knowing the paths that did not lead us anywhere, but for machines this is critical information. You notice this when you are…

Over time, do you think this process could lock you into an inflexible state? I'm reminded of the trade off between automation and manual work. Automation crystalizes process, and thus the system as a whole loses it's ability to adapt in a dynamic environment.

We don't need automation for that, we "achieve" that through our processes already. Specifically, software creation processes of large teams with many changing developers over long periods. Example (but they are not the only one): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 -- changing or adding anything becomes increasingly burdensome.

I would like to post that every time somebody warns of the dangers of AI for maintainability. We are long past that point, long before AI. Businesses made the conscious decision that it is okay for quality to deteriorate, they'll squeeze profits from it for as long as possible and then they assume something new has already come along anyway. The few business still relying in that technical-debt-heavy product are still offered service, for large fees.

AI is just more of the same. When it becomes too hard to maintain they'll just create a new software product. Pretty much like other things in the material world work too, e.g. housing, or gadgets, or fashion. AI actually supports this even more, if new software can be created faster than old code can be maintained that's quite alright for the money-making oriented people. It is harder to sell maintenance than something new at least once every decade anyway.

Re: A year of vibes

#99

Post by petcat »

I respect Armin's opinions on the state-of-the-art in programming a lot. I'm wondering if he finds that "vibe coding" (or vibe engineering) is particularly pleasant and effective in Rust compared to, say, Python.

Re: A year of vibes

#100

Post by mbreese »

mjr00 wrote: post #67
Arainach wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It always confuses me when I see shared chats with prompts and interactions that have proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, etc. I've tried and fail to write this in a way that won't come across as snobbish but it is not the intent. It's a matter of standards. Using proper language is how I think. I'm incapable of doing otherwise even out of laziness. Pressing the shift key and the space bar to do it right c…

> It's a matter of standards. [...] when I see someone not doing it that says things to me about who they are as a person. When you're communicating with a person, sure. But the point is this isn't communicating with a person or other sentient being; it's a computer , which I guarantee is not offended by terseness and lack of capitalization. > It's akin to shopping carts in parking lots. No, not returning the shoppin…

I’m not worried about the LLM getting offended if I don’t write complete sentences. I’m worried about not getting good results back. I haven’t tested this, and so I could be wrong, but I think a better formed/grammatically correct prompt may result in a better output. I want to say the LLM will understand what I want better, but it has no understanding per se, just a predictive response. Knowing this, I want to get the best response back. That’s why I try to have complete sentences and good (ish) grammar. When I start writing rushed commands back, I feel like I’m getting rushed responses back.

I also tell the LLM “thank you, this looks great” when the code is working well. I’m not expressing my gratitude… I’m reinforcing to the model that this was a good response in a way it was trained to see as success. We don’t have good external mechanisms to give reviews to an LLM that isn’t based on language.

Like most of the LLM space, these are just vibes, but it makes me feel better. But it has nothing to do with thinking the LLM is a person.

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