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What it feels like to work with Mythos

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Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s true, I think these authors are making a much stronger claim that AI is proficient or even an expert at software engineering. This author describes how complex and sophisticated their software is, and the only value he’ll concede to “coders” is that there might be a few bugs they’d need to fix. Imagine not being an architect and using Claude to put together a building plan, then concluding it’s b…

Why do they even need coders to fix these bugs? It would be an order of magnitude (at least) to ask Claude to find and fix them, and it will likely be successful. Building in the physical world has physical and time constraints that cannot be overcome, which is one of the reasons architecture (and engineering) are so important in this domain. In software development these constraints were only inherent when people we…

Technical debt remains the same. LLMs are found not to work as well when editing messy codebases - exactly the kind you get after using an LLM for a while. After a few weeks or months you have to either throw it away and start over, or involve a human at exorbitant prices.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point doesn’t seem to have been thought through.

The point is, if road engineers changed their process and materials, and to you it felt like driving on the same road, with the same wear and tear and potholes, you wouldn't even notice. If AIs can generate code that looks ridiculous to humans but over time has the correct performance, the correct behaviour, no-one outside of software engineers will know or care.

But they don't. LLMs can't understand messy code much better than humans can. Maybe a little, but not enough to compensate for the code they create being messy.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#273
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm becoming more convinced these are questions of the Before Times. Yes, yes—heresy, I know. Yet, I can't deny the reality that I observe working with LLMs every day. If this truly is a step-function (as some are sgguesting), then I have absolutely zero concern for the quality of the code.

Kind of a circular argument, isn't it? "Some people are saying it's very good at coding. If that's true, I don't care if the code is good."

I didn't say I don't care if the code is good.

I said I had zero concern for the quality of the code. That is, I do not have concern that the quality of the code will be a concern in and of itself.

It's a subtle, but IMO important difference. We only care about code quality so as it gives us stable, understandable systems. Historically that meant a human had to read and understand it. Suppose a future where that's no longer the case, then we may still end up with stable, understandable systems without understanding every minutiae of the substrate. It's the same way I don't really know if my compiler is correct, but the behavioral patterns of my code suggest it is without me understanding anything about its code quality.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now for the best question: whats your ROI here?

Humans are very expensive, so the equation almost always falls against them. It's not just salary, but also safety/labor regulation, legal risk, vacations, sick time, personal conflicts, HR, benefits. Even when automation is more expensive on paper, it's generally still cheaper

Since the recent re-pricing many companies are finding AI coding to be more expensive than human coding.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does AI make incredibly inefficient code most of the time? Yup. But it does it at lightspeed with minimal effort. This hits the nail in the head. Detractors often hang on to examples of coding assistants making mistakes or output subpar code, but they somehow miss the fact that coding assistants can also be prompted again and refactor whole swaths of code just as fast as they introduce oopsies. This means that the…

The problem is that this approach is not sustainable. Errors compound. The cost to fix one issue might seem small at first, but over a stretch of time all these "oopsies" become architectural spaghetti that can only be fixed with a complete rewrite, which will certainly become more expensive than getting the code "organically" developed. The only way I see AI coding working in the long run is if we go back to a Water…

> The problem is that this approach is not sustainable. Errors compound. The cost to fix one issue might seem small at first, but over a stretch of time all these "oopsies" become architectural spaghetti that can only be fixed with a complete rewrite, which will certainly become more expensive than getting the code "organically" developed.

That's so far been called software development.

All software developed by people suffers from this issue.

Where exactly is the novelty?

> The only way I see AI coding working in the long run is if we go back to a Waterfall/BDUF process and having actual engineering.

Nonsense. The problem is exactly the same.

With agents iterations are much faster, and this can mean things can get messier faster but can get in shape just as fast.

Ironically, agents improve the quality of the deliverable as well. Approaches such as spec-driven development do a far better job delivering features up to spec than manual coding by flesh and blood developers.

There's an awful lot of baseless scaremongering in your post. You make it sound like with AI assisted coding developers stopped paying any attention to quality.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I alt-tab to a MMO and farm XP.

Which one?

I've been playing Monsters and Memories, basically an Everquest clone.

https://monstersandmemories.com

It's in private beta but sometimes they have a public beta, like just last week. They were supposed to have released this month but they pushed back to October.

Also check out Adrullan Online, it's also an EQ clone but Minecraft voxel style. More like alpha status, they don't seem as far along.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#277

As a software engineer and solution provider, I do not feel threatened by this. I do not fear that management will get tools like Mythos and then not need people like me. Most of the value I provide is in translating what the management/client _thinks_ they need into what is the real problem and solution. That's not an insult to them, it's just pointing out that they see only their problem, and they imagine what woul…

I will never stop being fascinated with takes like this. Maybe you're right. But people said very similar things over the last few years and many of those statements look unbelievably naive in retrospect. Sure, AI can auto-complete the line, but it can't write full functions. Sure, AI can write functions, but it can't complete full features. Sure, AI can write full features, but it can't build full applications. Sure…

Even the early versions of AI autocomplete tools like Tabnine and the original Copilot could autocomplete entire functions, so I think you might be strawmanning a bit.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s true, I think these authors are making a much stronger claim that AI is proficient or even an expert at software engineering. This author describes how complex and sophisticated their software is, and the only value he’ll concede to “coders” is that there might be a few bugs they’d need to fix. Imagine not being an architect and using Claude to put together a building plan, then concluding it’s b…

Why do they even need coders to fix these bugs? It would be an order of magnitude (at least) to ask Claude to find and fix them, and it will likely be successful. Building in the physical world has physical and time constraints that cannot be overcome, which is one of the reasons architecture (and engineering) are so important in this domain. In software development these constraints were only inherent when people we…

It's quick to build a hut in a green field, but slow to remodel the expanded building after. I think that will remain true regardless of if a team of sw developers are doing it, or an AI with a product manager or somewhere in between.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#280
post #38

What I find fascinating that there is so little substance in this article about the quality of produced code and the medium. Is the code documented and tested? Is it understandable and extendable? Is it secure? What language, framework, database was used? Author mentions judgement and taste - well, is the code tasteful? Will the model rearchitecture the entire thing if I ask it to add new functionality, spending anot…

You can either adapt or survive man, coping and negation dont help, AI is here to stay and yes it does require pilots but this map would have taken you weeks to do, the AI did it in 10 hours, you can still dedicate a week to refactor.

Also this is easily solved by .md spec files, this whole "bad code" cope is just FUD'

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