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Web development is fun again

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Re: Web development is fun again

#291

Post by croemer »

llmslave2 wrote: post #214
simonw wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using it to build things. Here's an example from the other day. I've always been curious about writing custom Python C extensions but I've never been brave enough to really try and do it. I decided it would be interesting to dig into that by having Codex build a C extension for Python that exposed simple SQLite queries with a timeout. It wrote me this: https://github.com/simonw/research/blob/main/sqlite-time-lim.…

With all due respect you were reading, not learning. It's like when people watch educational YouTube videos as entertainment, it feels like they're learning but they aren't. It's fine to use the LLMs in the same way that people watch science YouTube content, but maybe don't frame it like it's for learning. It can be great entertainment tho.

Disagree, it can be learning as long as you build out your mental model while reading. Having educational reading material for the exact thing you're working on is amazing at least for those with interest-driven brains.

Science YouTube is no comparison at all: while one can choose what to watcha, it's a limited menu that's produced for a mass audience.

I agree though that reading LLM-produced blog posts (which many of the recent top submissions here seem to be) is boring.

Re: Web development is fun again

#292

Post by croemer »

seanclayton wrote: post #273

I remember when Hacker News felt smaller. Threads were shorter. Context fit in your head. You could read the linked article, skim the comments, and jump in without feeling like you’d missed a prerequisite course. It probably didn’t feel special at the time, but looking back, it was simpler. The entire conversation space was manageable. If you had a thought, you could express it clearly, hit “reply,” and reasonably ex…

Tell the AI to keep your comment shorter next time ;)

Re: Web development is fun again

#293

Post by baq »

jckahn wrote: post #194
bitwize wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till the VC tap gets shut off. You: Hey ChatGPT, help me center a div. ChatGPT: Certainly, I'd be glad to help! But first you must drink a verification can to proceed. Or: ChatGPT: I'm sorry, you appear to be asking a development-related question, which your current plan does not support. Would you like me to enable "Dev Mode" for an additional $200/month? Drink a verification can to accept charges.

Alternatively, just use a local model with zero restrictions.

This is currently negative expected value over the lifetime of any hardware you can buy today at a reasonable price, which is basically a monster Mac - or several - until Apple folds and rises the price due to RAM shortages.

Re: Web development is fun again

#294

Post by izacus »

simonw wrote: post #7

Something I like about our weird new LLM-assisted world is the number of people I know who are coding again, having mostly stopped as they moved into management roles or lost their personal side project time to becoming parents. AI assistance means you can get something useful done in half an hour, or even while you are doing other stuff. You don't need to carve out 2-4 hours to ramp up any more. If you have signific…

Yes, people who were at best average engineers and those that atrophied at their skill through lack of practice seem to be the biggest AI fanboys in my social media.

It's telling, isn't it?

Re: Web development is fun again

#295

Post by croemer »

sph wrote: post #239

> Clicks, expecting some new spec or framework that actually made web dev fun again > Looks inside > "AI has entered the chat" What did I even expect. I wonder how many clickbait posts of this type are gonna make the HN front page.

Agreed. It almost feels like the majority of the top articles reek of LLM writing in bad ways.

Re: Web development is fun again

#296

Post by NewsaHackO »

croemer wrote: post #284
llmslave2 wrote: post #117

> Even with refinement and back-and-forth prompting, I’m easily 10x more productive Developers notoriously overestimate the productivity gains of AI, especially because it's akin to gambling every time you make a prompt, hoping for the AI's output to work. I'd be shocked if the developer wasn't actually less productive.

Don't worry, it's an LLM that wrote it based on the patterns in the text, e.g. "Starting a new project once felt insurmountable. Now, it feels realistic again."

That is a normal, run of the mill sentence.

Re: Web development is fun again

#297

Post by marcellus23 »

llmslave2 wrote: post #164
marcellus23 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be shocked if the developer wasn't actually less productive I agree 10x is a very large number and it's almost certainly smaller—maybe 1.5x would be reasonable. But really? You would be shocked if it was above 1.0x? This kind of comment always strikes me as so infantilizing and rude, to suggest that all these developers are actually slower with AI, but apparently completely oblivious to it and only you know bet…

I would never suggest that only I know better. Plenty of other people are observing the same thing, and there is also research backing it up. Maybe shocked is the wrong term. Surprised, perhaps.

There are simply so many counterexamples out there of people who have developed projects in a small fraction of the time it would take manually. Whether or not AI is having a positive effect on productivity on average in the industry is a valid question, but it's a statistical one. It's ridiculous to argue that AI has a negative effect on productivity in every single individual case.

Re: Web development is fun again

#298

Post by pests »

jesse__ wrote: post #250
Defletter wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there has to be some level of "getting stuff done"/"achieving a goal" when /making/ things, otherwise you'd be foregoing for-loops because writing each iteration manually is more fun.

I have a 10-year-old side project that I've dumped tens of thousands of hours into. "Ship the game" was an explicit non -goal of the project for the vast majority of that time. Sometimes, the journey is the destination.

And sometimes the destination is the destination and the journey is a slog.

Re: Web development is fun again

#299

Post by wcarss »

lelanthran wrote: post #225
101008 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was very anti AI (mainly because I am scared that I'll take my job). I did a side project that would have took me weeks in just two days. I deployed it. It's there, waiting for customers now. I felt in love with the process to be honest. I complained my wife yesterday: "my only problem now is that I don't have enough time and money to pay all the servers", because it opened to me the opportunities to develop and de…

> I felt in love with the process to be honest. I complained my wife yesterday: "my only problem now is that I don't have enough time and money to pay all the servers", because it opened to me the opportunities to develop and deploy a lot of new ideas. What opportunities? You aren't going to make any money with anything you vibe coded because, even the people you are targeting don't vibe code it, the minute you have…

That might be true, but it doesn't have to be immediately true. It's an arbitrage problem: seeing a gap, knowing you can apply this new tool to make a new entrant, making an offering at a price that works for you, and hoping others haven't found a cheaper way or won the market first. In other words, that's all business as usual. How does Glad sell plastic bags when there are thousands of other companies producing plastic bags, often for far, far less? Branding, contracts, quality, pricing -- just through running a business. No guarantee it's gonna work.

Vibe-coding something isn't a guarantee the thing is shit. It can be fine. It still takes time and effort, too, but because it can take lot less time to get a "working product", maybe some unique insight the parent commenter had on a problem is what was suddenly worth their time.

Will everyone else who has that insight and the vibe coding skills go right for that problem and compete? Maybe, but, also maybe not. If it's a money-maker, they likely will eventually, but that's just business. Maybe you get out of the business after a year, but for a little while it made you some money.

Re: Web development is fun again

#300

Post by croemer »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #296
croemer wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, it's an LLM that wrote it based on the patterns in the text, e.g. "Starting a new project once felt insurmountable. Now, it feels realistic again."

That is a normal, run of the mill sentence.

I can't prove it of course but I stand by it.
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