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I think I have LLM burnout

alecscollon.com

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Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#161

Post by r0b05 »

cuu508 wrote: post #148
sefrost wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons they exhaust me, is that it's always "one more prompt" to get a UI correct. It's often just slightly off, but it can take 5-10 mins sometimes to rework something. It has led to me working much longer hours. I think this is in part because I am one of the software engineers that always liked building products more than writing complex software. So, I am driven by the feeling of creating something. A…

Perhaps do the last 5% yourself?

This is what I do as I have learnt after much frustration.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#162

Post by nunez »

rafterydj wrote: post #23
jaggederest wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> generate an uncharacteristically exhaustive suite of unit tests to validate every possible scenario. This is what you want. You want comprehensive tests at every level, far more than is reasonable for a human to build or maintain, from unit, functional, to full end to end and beyond. Adversarial testing (both TDD-style "write tests to demonstrate this bug", and posthoc "prove this patch wrong with a new test") is t…

I see this get mentioned a lot but I still am skeptical that AI can generate tests we can trust more than any other code we know we cannot trust. Yes tests are conceptually isolated and that helps, but I've personally seen unit tests get generated that are semantically incorrect - that is, they test the structure of the code (e.g. they can check function output types and values), but they can't know _why_ the unit te…

AI shouldn't write tests. At least not all of them. Definitely not e2e's. The tests should be guardrails to constrain agents. This way, the author of code matters less.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#163

Post by jaggederest »

eloisius wrote: post #146
efnx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just have an agent chug on a side-project for you, or set up a CI script to review every pull request or some similarly “helpful” task. That should eat a lot of tokens!

Man. If I had this kind of mandate I could really burn some tokens. Review each new PR and extract 100 topics to debate related to it. Spin up 1000 sub agents, each with a different personality profile system prompt, to debate each point until consensus has been reached. Synthesize the learnings into a limerick. Build a Spotify playlist that pairs with the tone of the debates. Post the limerick and link to playlist o…

Oh man, when MCP was still new and shiny I made an MCP that let the AI choose appropriate theme music for what it was doing and it was an absolute blast, I need to make a more modern one.

Peer Gynt Suite's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" made a prominent appearance, but so did Aqua's "Barbie Girl"

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#165

Post by jaggederest »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #104
dpc_01234 wrote: post #13

I don't think I have a "burnout", but LLMs are really exhausting due to amount of pressure they generate. No one is really pushing me to increase my workload, but at every moment there is always something ready, done by my clankers or clankers of other people that I could be unblocking. In the past (before LLMs) it was already hard to keep up, but now it feels like there's 10x more things waiting at any given time, a…

> done by my clankers or clankers of other people I'm getting so many requests to review LLM-generated documents - planning docs, docs intended for end-users, project docs, business plan docs. A team member sent me a zip file with about 30 LLM generated documents in it the other day and asked if I could review them right away. And a lot of it was just repetition and/or stuff that was just out of left field, made-up,…

Feed it into an AI and ask it to adversarially criticize it, doc for doc, send back 30 responses in a zip folder, wipe hands on pants, return to HN.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#166

Post by ssl-3 »

sefrost wrote: post #94
dpc_01234 wrote: post #13

I don't think I have a "burnout", but LLMs are really exhausting due to amount of pressure they generate. No one is really pushing me to increase my workload, but at every moment there is always something ready, done by my clankers or clankers of other people that I could be unblocking. In the past (before LLMs) it was already hard to keep up, but now it feels like there's 10x more things waiting at any given time, a…

One of the reasons they exhaust me, is that it's always "one more prompt" to get a UI correct. It's often just slightly off, but it can take 5-10 mins sometimes to rework something. It has led to me working much longer hours. I think this is in part because I am one of the software engineers that always liked building products more than writing complex software. So, I am driven by the feeling of creating something. A…

Maybe when they get better at making SVGs of pelicans riding bicycles, they'll also get better at making UIs that can be reworked into sensible form without too much effort.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#167

Post by alasano »

dirtbag__dad wrote: post #9

> My main project right now is to establish a framework for large-scale, unsupervised code generation in our codebase Anyone else working on something like this or know of any projects attempting it?

I'm building something for that.

I've taken a bit longer than I wanted but it will be open sourced soon.

It's a durable orchestration engine that takes in specs/requirements and coordinates agents externally (meaning the engine drives the loop, not an agent) until the work is fully implemented/verified and reviewed.

It's meant to be used with any harness as basically the last step. You plan your work with whatever LLM you use and then hand off implementation to the engine (through an MCP server or other surfaces)

It can use your OpenAI/Anthropic subscriptions or any other provider and you can mix and match models across implementation and review in any way you want with fan out for parallel reviewers and more.

The goal is to produce high quality unsupervised code that matches your requirements and is reviewed throughout the implementation rather than at the end only, so that mistakes don't compound.

https://engine.build if you want to get notified when it releases.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#168

Post by UncleOxidant »

aakresearch wrote: post #158
UncleOxidant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> done by my clankers or clankers of other people I'm getting so many requests to review LLM-generated documents - planning docs, docs intended for end-users, project docs, business plan docs. A team member sent me a zip file with about 30 LLM generated documents in it the other day and asked if I could review them right away. And a lot of it was just repetition and/or stuff that was just out of left field, made-up,…

Wait, what? I thought everyone agrees that modern models post September 2025 (or whenever Opus or whatever 5.6789 was released) do not hallucinate, make things up, contradict themselves and can review their own output into perfection regardless of task, goal or context???? /s

In general I think from the coding side they're more robust now. However, people generating docs are maybe not as experienced with how to prompt in ways that avoid having the LLM tell you what you want to hear. I think this is still a pitfall that can easily be fallen into. Those of us who are doing LLM-assisted coding for the last couple of years are more aware of this now. Those who are planning/management folks are still kind of susceptible depending on how much experience they've had dealing with LLMs.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#169

Post by onion2k »

dpc_01234 wrote: post #13

I don't think I have a "burnout", but LLMs are really exhausting due to amount of pressure they generate. No one is really pushing me to increase my workload, but at every moment there is always something ready, done by my clankers or clankers of other people that I could be unblocking. In the past (before LLMs) it was already hard to keep up, but now it feels like there's 10x more things waiting at any given time, a…

I am happy about all the little side-projects, and ideas it help my realize..

Same, but I really have to fight the urge to just add fun new features to things I work on any time inspiration strikes. I am an appalling 'feature factory' if I don't actively keep myself in check. The cost of just building everything is so low, but the value of those things is also incredibly low, so I'm often just bloating what I build.

There's been a lot of articles and posts about the increasing importance of 'taste' in software built with AI, and I'm finding I know need to look for strategies to find some.

Re: I think I have LLM burnout

#170

Post by rapind »

skydhash wrote: post #48
rapind wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this is what I've done. I sucked it up and adapted myself to the tool (agents) by having as many implicit guardrails (static typing, functional, no nulls, great linting) and then layering on explicit guardrails (TDD) on top. I also want my workflow to be portable because I don't really trust the frontier model providers. It is different though. Basically a lot of what I do has changed over the last 2 years. I to…

> I totally get that a lot of people won't want to adapt though. Or people don't want to be reverse centaur keeping the clankers happily running. Instead of helping to solve users/consumers problem.

Maybe famous last words, but I'm not buying the hype that the "clankers" will take over. I suspect reality will catch up soon and we'll be left with a set of pretty powerful but still limited tools. I see no evidence to the contrary, just investment hype on one side and sky is falling on the other.
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