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The Eternal Sloptember

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#151

Post by leptons »

farhanhubble wrote: post #14

I'm in the "haven't written any code in a while" boat ATM. I'd love to see examples of issues that are so big that they warrant reverting to manual coding. My main issue has been the inconsistent quality across between model releases and the tendency to insert older APIs or documentation, especially with command line tools. I can understand if the model struggles with a million line monolithic codebase with a decade…

Even with relatively simple things, frontier models get me about 90% of the way - and this is without evaluating how good that 90% actually is. It's the last 10% that the model fucking sucks at. And it's often the simplest things. It takes a lot of tokens and a lot of time to cajole the AI to get that last 10% working. And even then, I've just given up and had to go read the slop and fix the bug myself because it become so frustrating.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#152

Post by athrowaway3z »

This post hits the nail at a bit of an angle.

The AI agents are great, and any expert can prompt them correctly to get good code. LLMs occasionally pick wrong patterns and start digging a hole, but this is why an expert is required. The code itself is just not worth writing when a detailed prompt can get you the same code typing 20x less text.

Where I agree with the post is:

The adoption of AI agents into software engineering is a problem. Solo projects are great, but our teams have not adjusted to the speed-of-change to a mental model of a project. So I see orgs making a choice to either: slow down or forgo the shared mental model.

Anybody choosing to forgo the mental model is building crooked legacy slop at scale. You can and should save the mental model to an AGENTS.md, but devs need it in their brain to prevent the digging a hole behavior.

To be fair the digging a hole behavior is something humans do just as well. But in teams you'd communicate enough to catch it - hopefully^1. It's the combination of higher speeds and teams that's creating a bit of a disaster.

I'm not sure what a good solution is either. There is a case for solo devs running for 2-month sprints with much more freedom. Perhaps we'll have an "AI Agile manifesto" within a year.

[1] Though you should not underestimate the amount of poor code being created before LLMs. There are enough teams for whom LLMs are practically all upsides. Stay very far away from those.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#153

Post by decimalenough »

For context: the author is George "geohot" Hotz, who has a long list of exploits, likely the best known of which is basically vibe coding (I mean that in the nicest possible way) comma.ai for autonomous cars on a shoestring budget long before actual AI vibe coding was a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#154

Post by teo_zero »

When digital cameras replaced traditional ones, we thought it would make photography more democratic: each of us would be Helmut Newton for 15 minutes. But it didn't give us the beautiful portraits and inspired lanscapes we expected, only millions of pictures of food.

How much will it take for AI agents to pass from distilling decades of collective wisdom to copying each other's worst mistakes?

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#155

Post by overfeed »

cafkafk wrote: post #74

I think a lot of the problem with the current discourse is how black-and-white it is. Either you're a luddite or "ai pilled". In most cases, LLMs can get you 80-95% of the way, sometimes less, sometimes more. And heck, sometimes, it just gets you somewhere wrong. But it seems everyone is arguing about whether LLMs can be perfect software engineers in isolation running in a closet, and using that to say that LLMs do n…

> In most cases, LLMs can get you 80-95% of the way, sometimes less, sometimes more.

That's my experience too, but it's 60-95% solutions in my case[1], with about 120-140% of lines of code required. I wish there was a harness that would let me mask code it should/n't change, because prompt-based refactors fail from the same over-eagerness.

1. I try faster, smaller models first.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#157

Post by mikewarot »

teo_zero wrote: post #154

When digital cameras replaced traditional ones, we thought it would make photography more democratic: each of us would be Helmut Newton for 15 minutes. But it didn't give us the beautiful portraits and inspired lanscapes we expected, only millions of pictures of food. How much will it take for AI agents to pass from distilling decades of collective wisdom to copying each other's worst mistakes?

>But it didn't give us the beautiful portraits and inspired lanscapes we expected, only millions of pictures of food.

Here's a sample of my work using digital cameras, not a food picture in sight.

https://flickr.com/photos/---mike---/albums/7217772029640662...

The thing about having the ability to take effectively free photographs is that it really lets you experiment and learn the edges of what's possible.

I was inspired by Stanford's camera array, and wound up doing virtual focus synthetic aperture photography. I'm hoping to build a rig to do it on near real time, instead of the manual process I used to do on my train rides to and from work.

Sure, the removal of cost lead to a flood of the mundane, but it also means we can capture our lives in ways that even kings couldn't afford in the past. I have thousands of good photos, and even some video, of friends and family.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#158

Post by vasco »

> And whenever you need a quick prototype and don’t care about polish, it is absurdly fast. But is it a software engineer? Not close to the bar at any company I have worked at.

This line which he wrote, will override any quality gaps, because the cost to produce that shitty software will be lower than the cost to produce good software.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#160

Post by soperj »

cafkafk wrote: post #74

I think a lot of the problem with the current discourse is how black-and-white it is. Either you're a luddite or "ai pilled". In most cases, LLMs can get you 80-95% of the way, sometimes less, sometimes more. And heck, sometimes, it just gets you somewhere wrong. But it seems everyone is arguing about whether LLMs can be perfect software engineers in isolation running in a closet, and using that to say that LLMs do n…

It's funny, but the more I know about the true Luddites, the more I see their point of view.

" the original Luddites were primarily protesting against machinery used to "fraudulently and deceitfully" manufacture inferior goods, bypass labor standards, and strip skilled artisans of their livelihoods."

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