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The Coming Loop

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Re: The Coming Loop

#31

Post by bee_rider »

soulofmischief wrote: post #6
camillomiller wrote: post #2

Show me the billion dollar solopreneur startup, or the profit increase for companies and at that point I’ll start thinking that this tasteless high level wanking might make sense in some way

We've just invented the car and you're upset it hasn't achieved Mach speed yet.

One car went Mach 1, ever, apparently. Anyway, I don’t think the analogy fits. Ford or whoever didn’t loudly and frequently predict Mach 1 cars, right?

The situation is more like: Altman & co are predicting their new car will replace all vehicles: horses, trains, planes, motorcycles, there’s a real possibility the concept of vehicles will not exist other than cars, in the future. Meanwhile it hasn’t really done highway speeds yet. It does some impressive runs on curated tracks, and people use it around their farms (it seems to work ok for some of them).

We’ll see, I guess.

Re: The Coming Loop

#32

Post by camillomiller »

bee_rider wrote: post #31
soulofmischief wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've just invented the car and you're upset it hasn't achieved Mach speed yet.

One car went Mach 1, ever, apparently. Anyway, I don’t think the analogy fits. Ford or whoever didn’t loudly and frequently predict Mach 1 cars, right? The situation is more like: Altman & co are predicting their new car will replace all vehicles: horses, trains, planes, motorcycles, there’s a real possibility the concept of vehicles will not exist other than cars, in the future. Meanwhile it hasn’t really done highw…

It is a terrible analogy that shows terrible thinking. After all, there's one thing we can bet with more confidence on: delegating thinking to this mediocrity machines is affecting the ability to do the same in scores and scores of previously smart people.

Re: The Coming Loop

#33

Post by _verandaguy »

ramon156 wrote: post #4

Quoting the creator of CC holds little value in my opinion. I too call my product good. > opting out of this fully machine-driven future may not be an option. I am contemplating whether I want to stay inside this rat race. I completely agree with the conclusion of this blog post, by the way. I feel uneasy, and I do not enjoy the work I deliver using LLMs. I think OP did a really good job on capturing at least my curr…

    > I am contemplating whether I want to stay inside this rat race.
I'm in the same boat. I'm hoping to go back to school in 2027 and be out of work that revolves around programming in 5 years.

I'm not enthusiastic about the field anymore, which sucks, because I used to love working in programming.

Re: The Coming Loop

#34

Post by camillomiller »

joenot443 wrote: post #30

We've had great success with agents thus far at my job. A year into Clauding and all our dev metrics are up while our downtime has remained steady. Being an iOS engineer, much of my engineering cycle these days is going from Figma/PRD → spec → code. After being handed off to QA, we handle the bugs and product slips as they come through, while we simultaneously build/spec the upcoming addition. This is basically the s…

Would you have a breakdown of costs/benefit? Can you say with certainty that this workflow has increased productivity so much that you are seeing profit increases that you wouldn't have otherwise noticed just by hiring more people? Asking with no ill intention, I just crave for actual business cases that make sense, and yet no-one seems to be able to reliably produce that.

Re: The Coming Loop

#35

Post by sandrello »

This is a very fatalistic take. While I understand where it's coming from, I try not to share the same mindset: engineers getting increasingly distant from how things are getting built is not something that will "undoubtedly happen, whether we like it or not".

Also:

> Now there is obviously a question if this desire to understand the code is one that I will still have a few years from now.

I do not think we should be having doubts like this. Either you consider understanding the code you ship and allowing your future self to be able to work on the system you're building to be a value, or you don't. I, for one, do, and I do not think using LLMs and coding agents will affect my point of view on that.

Re: The Coming Loop

#36

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

joenot443 wrote: post #30

We've had great success with agents thus far at my job. A year into Clauding and all our dev metrics are up while our downtime has remained steady. Being an iOS engineer, much of my engineering cycle these days is going from Figma/PRD → spec → code. After being handed off to QA, we handle the bugs and product slips as they come through, while we simultaneously build/spec the upcoming addition. This is basically the s…

I personally have not had good luck with loops due to similar issues as the post author - but if you were to port your flow to "looping" it would be something like:

- An automation that periodically checks for PRD's at a given location that have not yet been implemented.

- If it sees one not implemented, it puts a lock on it (so other agents later don't pick it up while its still working) and implements the PRD in code, assuming it has the figma link and all specs required.

- When its done it makes a PR, waits for if it passes and even in some cases automatically merges into your staging/preview enironments and just pings you with a build/URL. You can then leave feedback or something and it can also also poll for pending feedback. Or you just mark it looks good, the agent then merges the PR, moves the PRD to implemented status, maybe even writes/updates docs and cleans up any temporary work.

- Repeat checking for new PRD's every T unit time. (10 minutes, 1 hour, etc)

This is how people say you should be looping - you never even cared or looked at the code, and also never prompted the agent yourself.

But I find most agents are often pretty bad still at replicating UI vs making something from scratch and most design specs are still not as detailed around how things look at all sizes, in all scenarios etc. Design seems to be one of those things that still requires a human to validate. And then all the things the post author mentions about it not being willing to apply hard constraints, minimize impossible states, validate at edges and prevent horrendous overchecking of things. etc.

Re: The Coming Loop

#37

Post by mattchew »

This is the best essay on agentic coding I've read. Clear thinking and writing, pragmatic about the future of agent-led coding.

If you usually skip straight to the comments, you might want to actually read this one.

Re: The Coming Loop

#38

Post by duendefm »

I honestly wonder if this kind of stuff really brings something to the table. Like I use opus for sometime and certainly I can put it to good use and optimize some parts of my day to day job (programmer). But it fails so hard in such simple tasks that it seems to me that putting it in loop can't just magically make everything better, unassisted. Does anyone actually uses agents and loops to create new software, new technology? Has anyone created with those systems, software they couldn't produce otherwise technologically wise? Or is it at best just an accelerator, cutting off on the building time?

Re: The Coming Loop

#39

Post by enoch_r »

Devasta wrote: post #7
ramon156 wrote: post #4

Quoting the creator of CC holds little value in my opinion. I too call my product good. > opting out of this fully machine-driven future may not be an option. I am contemplating whether I want to stay inside this rat race. I completely agree with the conclusion of this blog post, by the way. I feel uneasy, and I do not enjoy the work I deliver using LLMs. I think OP did a really good job on capturing at least my curr…

> I feel uneasy, and I do not enjoy the work I deliver using LLMs. I have basically stopped writing code in my spare time since the advent of AI. Before I felt like I was working on a classic car. Was it a practical use of my time? No. I could go out and download software that did what I wanted. Did I have fun doing it? Yes, the act of working on it was important, I felt I was still learning and improving as I did. N…

This piece changed how I work with LLMs and made me much more optimistic about how "fun" it can be to work with them: https://nolanlawson.com/2026/05/25/using-ai-to-write-better-...

Before I would just throw prompts at the LLM and it'd end up building a pile of crap (but semi-working crap, and 100x faster than I ever could) - it was pretty depressing. Using tools like `grill-me` (or `grill-with-docs`) I feel like I'm actually building my understanding of the system and helping shape it, and the results are much better.

Re: The Coming Loop

#40

Post by nfcampos »

jazzypants wrote: post #24
nfcampos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really are my thoughts, I've been doing this stuff pretty much every day for the past 6 months

No offense, but this sentiment is diluted by commits like this: https://github.com/nfcampos/loop-dev/commit/e28b1fce0078e605... I assume that GP was just saying that they would prefer to read these thoughts written by a human author (preferably you). I agree.

That commit happens to be a find replace because i usually write for my company’s blog (we)
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