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The human-in-the-loop is tired

pydantic.dev

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Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#121

Post by dsego »

Terr_ wrote: post #37

> I felt that one in my bones. I was up until nearly 2am recently, prompting, because I was so close to getting a plan right. Or so I thought. [...] And it's addictive in a way that makes the isolation worse. Right, it's more like pulling the lever on slot machine. Oooh, 677, bad luck, do a ritual and try again, and maybe this time... Sure, regular programming also has a feedback loop, but normal errors are--as much…

Yes, and now they don't have to agree, they ask an LLM, and we get half baked plans and quarterly goals and are left to figure it out ourselves. So the stakeholders have some ideas, some half assed designs get put together by an LLM, stories are generated by an LLM, technical details are filled in by an LLM, the implementation and code review are LLM. I can already notice the lack of critical thinking and scrutiny in the whole process, we're offloading all thinking and just creating these artifacts, designs, documentation, code, to what purpose I'm not sure. I'm having trouble even keeping up with everything going on. Of course, plans are more likely to change at any minute and we'll just rewrite everything on a whim.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#122

Post by user43928 »

zem wrote: post #3

unlike the op, I've been having a wonderful time using claude, both at work and for my own personal projects, so I will share what has worked for me, just in case it resonates with anyone else. my anecdotal advice is to avoid the entire "agent" temptation, and treat the LLM as a code generator. have a single session running at a time. come up with a plan, iterate on it until you are satisfied, then tell it to execute…

I've also been having a wonderful time with the other approach, churning out reams of code for a mobile app.

It is taxing, the context switching is not easy. It takes effort to keep up with 3-5 conversations, remember what you deployed to the device, what is to be tested, and what feedback needs to be provided.

At the end of the day I am proud of the results, and I feel like I achieved something.

Contrary to popular belief it is still often hard work to vibecode.

Lots of QA work, UX decisions, debugging and steering efforts, as well as weighing architectural concerns and what should or should not be refactored.

While the code basically writes itself, the app still does not create itself on its own. Not to mention business and market research, as well as App Store Optimization.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#124

Post by bob1029 »

j1elo wrote: post #119
georgemcbay wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. Features might be easier to create, but I rarely ever get the feeling of I did that anymore from writing software. "I told the LLM to do that" is different and far less satisfying for me.

We're just getting used to the invention of the washing machine. All clothes are equally cleansed on average, with good enough results even if afterwards some particular pieces need a bit of extra care, while before we had to clean them all one by one and paying attention to minutia and details on each piece's needs. Nowadays you just control a couple buttons and hope for the best. Better to find joy in other parts o…

> Better to find joy in other parts of the process!

I recommend the joy of helping the customer get what they truly want. Spend more time on client calls and intercept additional hot potatoes now that we have extra free time to work with.

The technology is a blank canvas. These LLMs are like 600DPI color laser printers. The customer cannot tell the difference between hand painted and LLM generated at even a short distance. Once you get your head out of the worry that not hand painting everything is somehow an abdication of your professional capacity, you may find this whole thing goes a lot better. Try to think of it more like a heavy equipment operator climbing into the cab of a Caterpillar D9. You could do the job by hand, but the customer would probably get upset with how long it takes. Why not just finish the damn thing? Fire the infernal machine up for a few minutes and then move onto the next task.

You may find that by using the big scary machines that you get to engage with far more interesting technology problems than if you had insisted on hand coding. The only real difference is that you get to enjoy the problems from the comfort of an air conditioned cabin rather than a hot, muddy field.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#125

Post by HackerThemAll »

The 2 a.m. prompting bogs down to FOMO of not being fast enough with ideas, and that some other people will implement it faster and one won't make the share of money they envisioned.

I certainly don't have this problem. Even with LLM assistance, my hobby projects experience slow, steady growth, but it's done on my terms. I code when I have a mood, with or without LLM.

Recently I bought a Claude subscription only to use it for 3 days to speed up some coding. Then I cancelled it and stopped. My creative days ended, and I got to other stuff. I know I'll lose 27 days of possibilities, but I couldn't care less. If I'm in the mood to code with AI, I'll buy another month, maybe only for another couple of days.

People, stop accelerating at full throttle, find some real joy in life. It's not about the amount of lines, features or products shipped, let alone about amount of dollars you brag about, if they need this much effort and sacrifice.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#126

Post by DanielHB »

appplication wrote: post #32

> Here's a term for what I think is happening: the human reward function problem. In machine learning, a reward function tells an agent what good looks like. Writing code by hand was never easy, but it was full of small rewards. Solving a problem in your head. Understanding a gnarly bit of logic. Watching the code compile. The feeling of control. LLM-assisted programming has automated much of the work that generated…

You put it in a good way, I have been saying this for my partner that I don't fear my job is at risk. I fear I am going to hate my job soon.

I am coping a bit by still doing stuff by hand, especially stuff where prompting the LLM doesn't save that much time. And what I call "adding good taste" to LLM output where I move things around to structure them in a more human-understandable way (by hand usually).

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#127

Post by DanielHB »

thinkindie wrote: post #78
appplication wrote: post #32

> Here's a term for what I think is happening: the human reward function problem. In machine learning, a reward function tells an agent what good looks like. Writing code by hand was never easy, but it was full of small rewards. Solving a problem in your head. Understanding a gnarly bit of logic. Watching the code compile. The feeling of control. LLM-assisted programming has automated much of the work that generated…

I think it all depends on your personal driver: personally I rather see a product I built in whatever way used by ever growing number of people because they find it useful. It means that the time I spent working on that helped other people solving a problem (hopefully). That’s why a was always keen on cutting some corners when and where necessary in order to think about the user first and the code beauty second. Of c…

You don't understand what the OP said, your brain can get a intrinsic reward from seeing users use your LLM work. But LLM remove all the little intrinsic rewards from coding elegant systems to get to the point where you see users using your work.

It is all about the destination now where it used to be about the journey and the destination.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#128

Post by DanielHB »

georgemcbay wrote: post #72
verdverm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's different between professional and personal projects, but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. I'm able to focus on a single project for a month and have something pretty good by the end. Doing rewrites to clean up and reorganize has never been easier, so I get to see and feel more of the design space in action. The can be…

> but I get that feeling more often as features are not only easier to create, but also come out more polished and consistent. Features might be easier to create, but I rarely ever get the feeling of I did that anymore from writing software. "I told the LLM to do that" is different and far less satisfying for me.

It is all about the destination now where it used to be about the journey and the destination.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#129

Post by taneq »

roomey wrote: post #107

We've started calling it "Human on the hook" instead of human in the loop in work. It is more accurate, in terms of, it only matters when something goes wrong. Edit:"On the hook" is a general expression that means if something goes wrong it lands on you as the responsibile party, generally in a negative way. As in, if it goes right, you don't get kudos, if it goes wrong, you're on the hook for it

Employee Role: Blameable Component.

Re: The human-in-the-loop is tired

#130

Post by encyclopedism »

hdjrudni wrote: post #92
thinkindie wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it all depends on your personal driver: personally I rather see a product I built in whatever way used by ever growing number of people because they find it useful. It means that the time I spent working on that helped other people solving a problem (hopefully). That’s why a was always keen on cutting some corners when and where necessary in order to think about the user first and the code beauty second. Of c…

I don't even want to put 'my' code or apps out into the wild anymore. I've built a a few things I think are useful and I'm using myself but I'm afraid it'll just get called slop or my only users will be bots. What's the point. So I don't get the joy out of sharing it nor the joy of the achievement. But I've widdled down what I thought was an endless backlog of features to nearly zero, I guess that's something.

If it's code built by an LLM it's almost inherently uninteresting in that 'anyone' can also generate the same slop. Beyond the initial novelty the 'achievement' really doesn't stretch that far.

Your slop, my slop, their slop it's all 'slop' and no one can really care about slop. The novelty is wearing thin fast

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