Looks like plenty of recent prior art on this:
https://github.com/puraxyz/puraxyz/blob/main/docs/paper/main...
Backpressure is all you need
21–30 of 133 posts
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#22I’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 agree. I have gotten an incredible amount of work done iterating with 5-30 minute long agent tasks. But it requires I stay engaged, and not go chill on the beach, which I guess is a lot of agentmaxxers’ goal.
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#23> 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?
They are probably reacting to the laughable idea that by making PRs 20% better (or whatever), devs will continue to review the code with sufficient rigor to catch even the bugs they're supposedly now preventing. Assuming such rigor was ever present in their work!
Put another way, who are they supposed to hire to tell these low quality PRs apart from the high quality ones? Who even knows how to do something like that?!
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#24Isn'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…
It is an incorrect use of what was already a flawed metaphor. Pressure is isotropic. Directed pressure makes no sense, like all other fluid analogies in unrelated fields of engineering.
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#25[dead]
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#26I’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…
For me it's usually that I start with a single agent, but then I won't have anything to do while it is churning and I have other ideas/features that keep building up that I want to do, so I need to scale, and while I'm scaling I need to start to have those workflows, so eventually I end up with many agents, most which are autonomous working on their own worktrees, but I will have a specific agent that I will talk to more iteratively.
So e.g. I may have 1 agent that I ask and iterate on with directly, and 9 agents that work separately on their own.
I will utilize this 1 agent on features I care most about and want to guide and iterate on in as much detail as possible.
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#27[dead]
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#28I’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…
Yeah it's wild watching so many people decide waterfall is great all of a sudden.
Never mind stumbling into proper engineering principles like having documented, testable requirements specifications.
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#29Isn'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…
Author here. Well noted. I do think backpressure might not be the ideal analogy/term.
It comes from previous posts I’ve come across, but I haven’t considered exactly what you mentioned. That’s on me.
Re: Backpressure is all you need
#30Isn'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…
It is an incorrect use of what was already a flawed metaphor. Pressure is isotropic. Directed pressure makes no sense, like all other fluid analogies in unrelated fields of engineering.
Wait so cross ventilation, where a breeze will flow through a house if windows are open on opposite sides at a much greater rate than if windows are only open on the upwind side… isn’t really a thing?