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Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

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Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#341

Post by shepherdjerred »

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #303
shepherdjerred wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hardly ever open an IDE anymore. I use Claude Code and Cursor. What I do: - use statically typed languages: TypeScript, Go, Rust, Python w/ types - Setup linters. For TS I have a bunch of custom lint rules (authored by AI) for common feedback that I've given. ( https://github.com/shepherdjerred/monorepo/tree/main/package... ) - For Cursor, lots of feedback on my desired style. https://github.com/shepherdjerred/scou…

Cursor is an IDE.

Oh to clarify I used to use Cursor but the last month or two I've used Claude Code almost exclusively. Mostly because it seems to be more generous with credits.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#342

Post by lithocarpus »

nkrisc wrote: post #317
simonw wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI-assisted programming may be having the opposite effect, at least for me. I'm now incentivized to use less abstractions. Why do we code with React? It's because synchronizing state between a UI and a data model is difficult and it's easy to make mistakes, so it's worth paying the React complexity/page-weight tax in order for a "better developer experience" that allows us to build working, reliable software…

If LLMs are that capable, then why are AI companies selling access to them instead of using them to conquer markets?

I would guess fear of losing market share and valuable data, as well as pressure to appear to be winning the AI race for the companies' own stock price.

i.e competition. If there were only one AI company, they would probably not release anything close to their most capable version to the public. ala Google pre-chatgpt.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#343

Post by pca006132 »

joquarky wrote: post #331
pca006132 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this doesn't solve dependency hell. If the functionalities were loosely coupled, you can already vendor the code in and manually review them. If they are not, say it is a db, you still have to depend on that? Or maybe you can use AI to vendor dependencies, review existing dependencies and updates. Never tried that, maybe that is better than the current approach, which is just trusting the upstream most of the tim…

Are you really going to manually review all of moment.js just to format a date?

By vendoring the code in, in this case I mean copying the related code into the project. You don't review everything. It is a bad way to deal with dependencies, but it feels similar to how people are using LLMs now for utility functions.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#344

Post by ip26 »

torben-friis wrote: post #99
rambojohnson wrote: post #58

What exhausts me isn’t “falling behind.” It’s watching the profession collectively decide that the solution to uncertainty is to pile abstraction on top of abstraction until no one can explain what’s actually happening anymore. This agentic arms race by C-suite know-nothings feels less like leverage and more like denial. We took a stochastic text generator, noticed it lies confidently, wipes entire databases and hard…

Our industry wants disruption, speed, delivery! Automatic code generation does that wonderfully. If we wanted safety, stability, performance, and polish, the impact of LLMs would be more limited. They have a tendency to pile up code on top of code. I think the new tech is just accelerating an already existing problem. Most tech products are already rotting, take a look at windows or iOS. I wonder what will it take fo…

One possible positive outcome of all this could be sending LLMs to clean up oceans of low value tech debt. Let the humans move fast, let the machines straighten out and tidy up.

The ROI of doing this is weak because of how long it takes an expensive human. But if you could clean it up more cheaply, the ROI strengthens considerably- and there’s a lot of it.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#345

Post by losvedir »

simonw wrote: post #100
rambojohnson wrote: post #58

What exhausts me isn’t “falling behind.” It’s watching the profession collectively decide that the solution to uncertainty is to pile abstraction on top of abstraction until no one can explain what’s actually happening anymore. This agentic arms race by C-suite know-nothings feels less like leverage and more like denial. We took a stochastic text generator, noticed it lies confidently, wipes entire databases and hard…

I think AI-assisted programming may be having the opposite effect, at least for me. I'm now incentivized to use less abstractions. Why do we code with React? It's because synchronizing state between a UI and a data model is difficult and it's easy to make mistakes, so it's worth paying the React complexity/page-weight tax in order for a "better developer experience" that allows us to build working, reliable software…

Huh, I've been assuming the opposite: better to use React even if you don't need it, because of its prevalence in the training data. Is it not the case that LLMs are better at standard stacks like that than custom JS?

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#346

Post by tjr »

lithocarpus wrote: post #342
nkrisc wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If LLMs are that capable, then why are AI companies selling access to them instead of using them to conquer markets?

I would guess fear of losing market share and valuable data, as well as pressure to appear to be winning the AI race for the companies' own stock price. i.e competition. If there were only one AI company, they would probably not release anything close to their most capable version to the public. ala Google pre-chatgpt.

I’m not sure that really answers the question? Or perhaps my interpretation of the question is different.

If (say) the code generation technology of Anthropic is so good, why be in the business of selling access to AI systems? Why not instead conquer every other software industry overnight?

Have Claude churn out the best office application suite ever. Have Claude make the best operating system ever. Have Claude make the best photo editing software, music production software, 3D rendering software, DNA analysis software, banking software, etc.

Why be merely the best AI software company when you can be the best at all software everywhere for all time?

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#347

Post by timcobb »

whaaaat and this is the guy who coined "vibe-coding"? I am honestly pretty shocked reading this. I must be a fool or an idiot or both because I, for one, feel like suddenly I went from being a 1x developer to a 10x developer. Maybe 10x folks like Karpathy have it the opposite way?

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#348

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

He should join the Ardour project. Or go to work for Ableton or Bitwig or Presonus or Digidesign or MOTU or any other DAW manufacturer. Or any video or image editing application. Or get involved with more or less any complex, "creative" native desktop application.

All of the stuff he feels he is falling behind on? Almost completely irrelevant in our domain.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#349

Post by timcobb »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #140
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #78

Wow - can we coin "Slopbrain" for people who are so far gone into AI eventualism that they can no longer function? Liked "cooked" but "slopped" or something. Good grief lol. Talk about getting lost in the sauce...

WSJ has been writing increasingly about "AI Psychosis" (here's their most recent piece [0]). I'm increasingly seeing that this is the real threat of AI. I've personally known people who have started to strain relationships with friends and family because they sincerely believe they are evolving into something new. While not as dramatic, the normalization of the use of "AI as therapist" is equally concerning. I know t…

WSJ is Fox News Platinum, I wouldn't overthink it

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#350

Post by timcobb »

flumpcakes wrote: post #130

> 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…

> This sounds unbearable. It doesn't sound like software development, it sounds like spending a thousand hours tinkering with your vim config

Before LLM programming, this was at least 30-50% of my time spent programming, fixing one config and build issue after another. Now I can spend way more time thinking about more interesting things.

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