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The Tower Keeps Rising

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Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#191

Post by sph »

stavros wrote: post #182
what wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show us the 10s of features you’re releasing daily now?

I made this in two days: https://www.writelucid.cc/

Does this speed of development only apply to the early stages, or will it slow down as the codebase grows? I have yet to see these 100x improvements (and the claims themselves keep getting bigger) on anything more than prototype scale, rather than month-long projects.

No doubt AI boosters will claim we have found an O(1) productivity enhancer that is somehow two orders of magnitude better than anything else before. This is entering lunacy territory.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#192

Post by mkehrt »

strix_varius wrote: post #184
fancyfredbot wrote: post #148

I increasingly feel that the reason vibe coding specifically prohibits reading the generated code is that it's impossible to forget the horror that lurks in these python files. The code will do what you asked for in a broad sense but wherever choices arise on how to accomplish the goal it'll have made those choices incoherently. There'll be strange validations applied inconsistently to some user inputs but not others…

> reason vibe coding specifically prohibits reading the generated code Wait what? Are there rules to vibe coding now? Are we no true Scotsmanning slop now?

Well, that's literally what "vibe coding means", no?

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#193

Post by fancyfredbot »

strix_varius wrote: post #184
fancyfredbot wrote: post #148

I increasingly feel that the reason vibe coding specifically prohibits reading the generated code is that it's impossible to forget the horror that lurks in these python files. The code will do what you asked for in a broad sense but wherever choices arise on how to accomplish the goal it'll have made those choices incoherently. There'll be strange validations applied inconsistently to some user inputs but not others…

> reason vibe coding specifically prohibits reading the generated code Wait what? Are there rules to vibe coding now? Are we no true Scotsmanning slop now?

The term vibe coding actually originated from a tweet from Andrej Karpathy and so there is actually a sort of definition of the term. He said vibe coding is where you "forget the code exists":

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?lang=en

So if you "read the diff" it isn't vibe coding, at least not by Karpathy's definition.

Obviously it's not a "rule" and you can still call it vibe coding if you want to. Maybe the meaning of the term has evolved since his tweet anyway.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#194

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #13
tekacs wrote: post #6

I've said for a long time that composability in software is a bit like playing Tetris: the lines have to clear. I feel like that gives an even more literal tower-rising metaphor, and that's what it feels like people using agents naively (and software engineers of lower skill or earlier-career), end up violating. Agents are getting better at folding things into themselves, especially if you direct them to... but unfor…

The upper bound on program complexity used to be the power of the human mind. "Vibe coding" can break through that barrier. But not because the problem being solved needs that complexity. Because the process does not drive itself towards compact abstractions. It's the AI-powered version of the scaling problem Brooks described back in "The Mythical Man-Month". The combinatoric problems get worse with scale. Concretely…

[deleted]

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#196

Post by stavros »

sph wrote: post #191
stavros wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this in two days: https://www.writelucid.cc/

Does this speed of development only apply to the early stages, or will it slow down as the codebase grows? I have yet to see these 100x improvements (and the claims themselves keep getting bigger) on anything more than prototype scale, rather than month-long projects. No doubt AI boosters will claim we have found an O(1) productivity enhancer that is somehow two orders of magnitude better than anything else before. T…

To me, it applies as long as you can keep the state of the system in your head (so, same as we always did architecture).

For example, I built this over a month or so and never hit a slowdown or quality issue:

https://github.com/skorokithakis/stavrobot

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#197

Post by ozozozd »

mattmatheus wrote: post #120
ssivark wrote: post #27

The core thesis of this essay is reminiscent of the Lisp Curse [1] / Bipolar Lisp Programmer [2]. It's been a few years since I read these, but if I recall the argument there, it was that Lisp makes it so easy to build stuff and scratch exactly your own itch, that there's no real strong push for lisp programmers to come together and collaborate to build non-trivial and general purpose artifacts. And that is why the l…

Assembly programmers made the same argument. It seems that we revisit this same trope each time the practice of software engineering undergoes a paradigm shift. Some have a harder time with the transition than others.

Are you implying the author of one of the best, if not the best performing agentic coding harness is having a hard time with vibecoding as a new paradigm?

I’d look him up.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#198

Post by ozim »

sph wrote: post #190
segmondy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a matter of time. Go download gpt2 or llama2 and be shocked at how bad they are compared to today. They were entirely "useless" yet we marveled at them. Go examine GPT3.5/gpt4 out which was all the rage and then marvel at how a qwen27b or gemma31b model mops the floor today. My point is that the models will eventually learn to have a great model of software system in their head, just a matter of time and proper…

There is no Moore’s law for AI that shows that the previous rate of improvement will likely apply to the future. It’s all wishful thinking.

There is bunch of rich and powerful assholes trying to protect their investments.

I am pretty sure rate of improvement will be there quite long in the future — even if it will be smoke and mirrors ;)

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#199

Post by slopinthebag »

qsera wrote: post #34
pixl97 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since Nov 30, 2022 BC everything has become… more complex. FTFY Increasing complexity is the story of mankind. It's the story of civilization. Someone from 20,000 BC would wander around the earth trying to find food, trying not to freeze, and trying not to get eaten. Someone from 5,000 BC would be trying to grow food, hoping it rains, and hoping disease didn't wipe out the village. The second one increases the compl…

>LLMs be able to coordinate their understanding I think the next time I see "LLMs" and "Understanding" in the same sentence, I am going to lose it....

Saying an LLM understands something is like saying my biology textbook understands biology. It's a complete category error.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#200

Post by slopinthebag »

a2dam wrote: post #59
qsera wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LLMs be able to coordinate their understanding I think the next time I see "LLMs" and "Understanding" in the same sentence, I am going to lose it....

You should be less upset over semantics that everyone else has usefully settled on. LLMs understand things fine.

Right and my math textbook understands integration.
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