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The Eternal Sloptember

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Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#181

Post by brabel »

overfeed wrote: post #155
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.

We had the same issue until we created a review skill that we run after a LLM is done implementing a feature. We give it a list of things to check that is based on the problems we have observed previously, like writing too verbose code, and ask it to report on issues and suggest improvements. The developer can then give feedback and let the LLM fix the issues, or just address them manually. It’s still early but I’ve been much happier now with the results. It makes it much easier as well for humans to review since there’s a report about what the change is about, why, things to keep an eye on etc. This is something you can do with any harness you may be using and there’s nothing to buy, just a suggestion from someone trying to make the best use of this insane technology.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#182

Post by hmontazeri »

When a blog like this goes completely black or white on a topic I get skeptical. Nothing in life is 0 or 1. So is AI. Has some good to it and some obvious issues. All not that big of a deal. Ppl try to position themselves on the edges bc that’s what’s polarizes and engages conversation…

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#183

Post by baq »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #152

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 en…

‘If it hurts, stop’ vs ‘if it hurts, do more of it’. Organizations have a choice, some slow down to avoid, some speed up in hope to make issues… non-issues. If the go-fast orgs find workflows that actually truly speed things up without loss of quality, it’s like hitting the jackpot - you’ve found a way to run away from competition without them even realizing it’s possible (for a while anyway, until they notice they’re grossly outpaced).

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#184

Post by [deleted] »

tardedmeme wrote: post #169
peteforde wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality: the top nth percent of coders are seeing absurd, dramatic gains in productivity using LLMs. See: antirez, Simon Willison, Steve Yegge. The more experience you bring to the table, the more value you get from these tools. Look, about 12 years ago articles about how if you're not pair programming you're doing it wrong were on HN's home page every day. Doing well prompted plan -> agent -> debug cycles is like pa…

antirez is famous for creating Redis, which took a dump in quality and everyone switched to a fork called Valkey.

[deleted]

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#185

Post by DeathArrow »

Alex_L_Wood wrote: post #108
DeathArrow wrote: post #61

To me this sounds like an old cobbler complaining that machines aren't producing good shoes if left unsupervised and that the old process of making shoes completely by hand is far superior. So what he is telling us? That agents are not infaillable and they are not capable to one shot complex software and they do not produce perfect code? We know what and the solution is to use agents for what they are good at and wor…

LLM proponents always use some language like "these old, stuck up dinosaurs with their manual labor vs us cool smart kids with automated labor", but they forget one thing - with automated labor the performance and cost difference was easily measurable in favor of the automation. With LLMs it's neither measurable nor visible (no better software, no faster delivery overall in the industry), and the costs are pretty bad…

Right now, to get some good results from AI and save time, you will have to spend a lot of tokens and money. Maybe in the future, the things will get better, I don't know.

Saving money is the wrong reason to use AI now. AI is expensive if you want good results.

But what AI is good for, is it allows you to build fast.

Also, I don't see everything being automated. To get good results you have to drive the AI.

The factories still have workers supervising the process and doing some high value manual processes even if most of the production is done by machines.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#186

Post by jay_kyburz »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #115
ares623 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what if we're accelerating to a brick wall?

More like neo-feudalism by way of breadlines.

It's hard to care much about how software is written when superpowers are invading their neighbors, democracy itself is under attack, the food supply chain is failing, and the world is hotter than it's ever been.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#187

Post by seanmcdirmid »

soperj wrote: post #160
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."

And yet, clothes would have remained very expensive if we kept doing fabric by hand. Even destitute people in the poorest countries can have clothes these days, the meaning of “who wears the pants in this house” has lost its original (一条裤子) scarcity meaning.

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#188

Post by peteforde »

tardedmeme wrote: post #174
hu3 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we just need a Dyson sphere. Besides, I have been hearing "this is the limit" since the doomers of "this is just a markov chain and can't be useful". Yet the limits keep being broken.

Most of your comment history is defending LLM psychosis

Most of your comment history is less than a month old

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#189

Post by Nition »

swiftcoder wrote: post #163
Nition wrote: post #17

With the level of ability that AI is at right now, I've found it useful personally to think of it something like a very good search over existing knowledge. Another step up in searchability in the lineage of reference books, stack overflow, GitHub etc. Programmers are rewriting and reinventing the same techniques more often than any other vocation I can think of, and so we were primed for a really good search over pr…

> Programmers are rewriting and reinventing the same techniques more often than any other vocation I can think of And the answer to that is clearly a tool that makes rewriting/reinventing cheaper than actually packaging nice reusable libraries

I'm all for packaging nice reusable libraries, but someone has to actually do it. A lot of them just don't exist (yet).

Re: The Eternal Sloptember

#190

Post by ben_w »

marcta wrote: post #171
ben_w wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on the pro-AI side. The "it is bad" side is diverse on the reasons why, but being overwhelmed by bad content isn't a monetary concern.

Some "ai is bad" arguments come from the threat of losing one's livelihood, which is a monetary concern.

Which is why I phrased it the way I did.

Black and white thinking is not *limited to* monetary concerns.

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