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Backpressure is all you need

lucasfcosta.com

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Re: Backpressure is all you need

#11

Post by piazz »

wellpast wrote: post #4

I’m willing to be wrong but this industry-wide emphasis on AI creative/coding workflows seems way over-engineered. Ime successful creative execution looks like micro-iterations where each output informs the next creative move. I can build something incredibly fast from essentially caveman grunt instructions through an LLM harness, iterating as I go. Optimizing for feeding a huge plan to an agent sounds to me like a n…

100% agree. Took me ages of working with the agents to circle back around this, which was the best way to get work done before AI automation anyways.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#15

Post by cyanydeez »

interesting idea, unfortunately programming the structure is equivalent (P=NP) to just programming itself. same as TDD.

as usual, the tool isnt really doing whats listed on its label.

however, people are different so this might improve someones capability to deploy LLMs. might even provide better evidence where actual brain power is needed.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#16

Post by bunderbunder »

wellpast wrote: post #4

I’m willing to be wrong but this industry-wide emphasis on AI creative/coding workflows seems way over-engineered. Ime successful creative execution looks like micro-iterations where each output informs the next creative move. I can build something incredibly fast from essentially caveman grunt instructions through an LLM harness, iterating as I go. Optimizing for feeding a huge plan to an agent sounds to me like a n…

I suspect that letting agents spin away unattended for long stretches of time will become less and less popular as more and more companies blow their token budgets and start requiring some answers to difficult questions before agreeing to further loose the purse strings.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#17

Post by atq2119 »

Alifatisk wrote: post #12
vermilingua wrote: post #3

> It should also reduce the number of low-quality PRs your teammates have to review for details the agent should have caught itself. Oh boy.

Care to elaborate?

That quote shows an utter disregard for basic human decency.

It is the responsibility of the person running the coding agent to make sure the resulting PRs are high quality. Putting that on your team mates, or worse, random open source project maintainers on the internet, is the definition of an extractive contribution.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#18

Post by artursapek »

denysvitali wrote: post #14

This seems to be the coding agents 101: build a strong feedback loop. Am I missing something?

Yeah I don’t really see the backpressure analogy here - it implies that the agent is constantly producing new stuff, which isn’t really possible since the solution is very detailed specs/goals.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#19

Post by xg15 »

Isn't this a bit of an incorrect usage of the term "backpressure"?

OP quoted the correct definition right at the start:

> In systems engineering, backpressure is the mechanism by which a downstream component signals upstream that it can't accept more work

(the "downstream component" being the human reviewer in this case)

But the measures they propose don't actually do that. They are more like fixed throttle elements which would slow down the rate of submissions of an agent and weed out some low-quality submissions before hitting "downstream".

I'm missing the connection to the actual capacity (or will) that the human developers have to review the submissions.

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