If Karpathy feels behind, imaging how we, regular folks feel
Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
171–180 of 630 posts
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
we're 10 months into agentic coding. Claude code came out in march. I dont understand how you are so unimaginative to think what this might look like in 5 years even with slow progress.
It might be genuinely useful in 5 years, my issue is how it's being marketed now. We're 6 months into "AI will be writing 90% of code in three months" among other ridiculous statements.
I don't mean to be inflammatory but I am not at all convinced that LLMs will be useful for software development in 5 years!
I think LLMs are very well marketed but I don't think they're very good at writing code and I don't think they've gotten better at it!
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#173Man, this is giving me a cognitive dissonance compared to my experiences. Actually, even the post itself reads like a cognitive dissonance with a dash of the usual "if it's not working for you then you are using it wrong" defence.
I feel exactly like Karpathy here. I have some work to do, and I know exactly what I need to do, and I'm able to explain it to AI, and the AI seems to understand me (I'm lately using Opus 4.5). I wrote down a roadmap, it should take me a few weeks of coding. It feels like with a proper workflow with AI agents, this work should be doable in one or two days. Yet, I know by now that it's not going to be nearly that fast…
If I can reassure you, if your project is complex enough and involve heavy data manipulation, a 30% improvement using Opus/Gemini 3/codex 5.2 seems like a good result. I think on complex tasks, Opus 4.5 improves my output by around 20-25%.
And since it's way, way less wrong than sonnet4, it might also improve my whole team velocity.
I won't lie, AI coding has been a net negative for the 'lazy devs' on my team who don't delves into their own generated code (by 'lazy devs' here I mean the subset of devs who do the work but often don't bother to truly understand the logic behind what they used/did. They are very good coworkers, add velue and are not really lazy, but I don't see another term for that).
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#174And there it is again, the "powerful alien tool" that was just "handed to us". No decades of research and massive allocation of resources over the last few years as well as very intentional decision making by tech leadership to develop this specific technology. Nope, it just mysteriously dropped from the sky one day.
Do you know who is the author ?
It’s written in the title of the post “Andrew Karpathy” he’s fairly well known in AI circles, he was head of autopilot at Tesla, and co-founded OpenAI. If you’re curious to learn more about him, the Wikipedia page has a short summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrej_Karpathy
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#175I don't usually post something like this, but this is so fucking stupid. I'm prepared to stand by that. Let's see in a few years if I'm right. "AI" is literally models trained to make you think it's intelligent. That's it. It's like the ultimate "algorithm" or addiction machine. It's trained to make you think it's amazing and magical and therefore you think it's amazing and magical.
The system prompt may vary but:
"It's trained to make you think it's amazing and magical and therefore you think it's amazing and magical."
is the dark pattern underlying the entire LLM hype cycle IMO.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#176[deleted]
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#177> There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and ... This sounds unbearable. It doesn't sound like software development, it sounds like spending a thousand hours tinkering with your vim config. It…
As far as I can tell as a heavy coding agent user: you don’t need to know any of this and that’s a testament to how good code agent TUIs have become. All I do to be productive with a coding agent is tell it to break a problem down into tasks, store it inside beads, and then make sure each step is approved by me. I also add in a TDD requirement where it needs to build tests that fail then eventually pass.
Everything else I’ve used has been over engineered and far less impactful. What I just said above is already what many of us do anyway.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using it less and less now, since the sheen has worn off and I've been able to more accurately judge its capabilities. It's like an intern at everything it does and unfortunately I'm expected to produce better code than that.
I'm very confused, are you or are you not an LLM run account? A couple weeks ago, under a freshly made account "llmslave", you said it's already replacing devs and the field is cooked, and anyone who doesn't see that lacks the skills to adopt AI [1] I pointed out that given your name and low quality comments, you were likely an LLM run account. As SOON as I made that comment, you abandoned the account and have now ma…
No, I'm just a fan account. No affiliation with the OG llmslave, I just thought the name and concept was funny.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#179If Karpathy feels behind, imaging how we, regular folks feel
I've worked really hard over the last year at working out how to use these things, and it has more than paid off.
But I think if I had started learning today instead of a year ago, I'd get up to speed in more like 6 months instead of a year. A lot of stuff I learned a year ago is not really necessary anymore, but furthermore, there's just a lot more information out there about how to use these from people who have been learning it on their own.
I just don't think people who have ignored it up until now are really that far behind.
Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”
#180And there it is again, the "powerful alien tool" that was just "handed to us". No decades of research and massive allocation of resources over the last few years as well as very intentional decision making by tech leadership to develop this specific technology. Nope, it just mysteriously dropped from the sky one day.
Do you know who is the author ?
It is even worse coming from him.