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It's not empowering to hand off the details

davidnicholaswilliams.com

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Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#131

Post by theshrike79 »

wavemode wrote: post #38
iamleppert wrote: post #21

This same argument could be applied to anything. Layers of abstraction exist for a reason, because at a certain point, we can only deal with so many things at once. We have to be able to delegate "the details" to others -- be that a person, a company, or an AI model. Does "not getting into the details" mean you have to understand how the GCC compiler works when you write C code? Do you need to be an expert in machine…

You're confusing translation and interpretation. A compiler is merely translating your code into a lower-level form. (There is a degree of heuristic-based interpretation that goes into generating good code, but the code's observable behavior is not allowed to change.) But an LLM has to interpret your words and make judgment calls about the logical details, which is a very different thing. An LLM sufficiently intellig…

And a human interprets bug tickets and specifications, turning them into code by making judgement calls.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#132

Post by skydhash »

theshrike79 wrote: post #125
skydhash wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I commission a part specified as 10.00 ± 0.01 mm, I can verify it with a calibrated micrometer But there is someone that needs to design that part, specify the material needed and a few other things. The actual verification is fast because someone has compiled the list of checks. And compiling that list of checks is hard work. In other words, where '10.00 ± 0.01 mm' comes from is very important. That's why peopl…

No, the code isn't what defines it. It's the tests and specs around it. Code should never be the only source of truth. Another shitty analogy: baking. Saying "code is the medium of the definition" is like saying "the cake is the medium of the recipe". So anyone wanting to make the cake or change how it's made should just dive into the cake and start analysing it. That's why we have recipes, and even they can be modif…

> That's why we have recipes, and even they can be modified as long as the exepectation is met: It has to be sweet, soft, covered in something white and must have strawberries inside

How sweet? How thick should be the covering? What’s the ratio in strawberry? Even for someone taste, which is subjective, expectations may be precisely defined.

Code is the most precise form of specs. It is not what the computer runs. The computer has no concepts of functions, objects, value types, files, buttons,… We have tools that takes code and transform into what the computer can understand.

What you say is specs is merely some doodling which always need to be properly transform into good engineering drawings. Or someone’s humming that needs to be written properly in a music sheet.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#133

Post by lelanthran »

kenforthewin wrote: post #56
lelanthran wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's what I want: I want AI as an assistant that helps me make decisions, and ensures that I'm in the driver's seat. You aren't going to get that. Why would they even offer you that? You're going to be the meatbag peripheral to an AI.

Is this not literally just Claude Code? I don't understand the hysteria.

> Is this not literally just Claude Code?

And that is literally how a large number of programmers, including Anthropic themselves, are using CC - they are simply a meatbag peripheral to CC.

> I don't understand the hysteria.

Maybe ask an LLM to explain it to you using analogies? They can explain anything, even if they are wrong.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#135

Post by jreynar »

Completely agree. The worst sort of manager is the one who wants to stay "high level" and proposes things that either aren't possible or are vastly harder than their idea to "just do X" suggests. And the root cause is them not knowing the details.

What gets me excited about AI is that you can hand off some of the detailed work, specifically the repetitive sort. As a sales person, you ought to know how to create a quote for a customer. But creating the 50th one for the same product for the same number of seats becomes drudgery. As a software engineer, you should know how to fix (or at least you should have back in the day) a buffer overrun, but it gets tedious to fix hundreds of them (and I know since I was at Microsoft when we paused Office development to do just that, for months). I bet there's an example for every role.

And the benefit of having an AI handle those details -- not the first time, but once you're a master and the AI has become trusted -- is that you can focus on things that require a human being's attention. More creative, more collaborative tasks. Conveniently those tend to be more rewarding than fixing another teensy bug or writing another formulaic email.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#136

Post by flogistonical »

brindleth wrote: post #68
flogistonical wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not delivering features at 10x the speed. There's a limit to the amount of code I can (and should) be submitting for review. My point exactly > But the features I'm building are _better_, and the effort is less. Can we cash that check or is it gonna trade heavily discounted like all grand claims on AI since all software all around us together with the economy and the Earth's life supporting systems keep degradi…

> My point exactly No it wasn't. You said the claims were only based on quantity. I'm saying the opposite. I deliver the same quantity, with higher quality. > Can we cash that check or is it gonna trade heavily discounted like all grand claims on AI since all software all around us together with the economy and the Earth's life supporting systems keep degrading every year? I'm not sure what evidence I could offer you…

Saying "nuh uh" after I pointed out something that is plain to see isn't much of an argument. Show us better than? Where is the unequivocally better software, or anything really, "AI" enabled you to do?

Or is it just claims that amount to "trust me" or "look at all these repos/web apps"?

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#137

Post by flogistonical »

sedawkgrep wrote: post #83
flogistonical wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me, it's "I can do this now; yesterday I could not." Yeah. More. Better? How would you be able to tell? Can you show us better? Or only more?

To me, being able to do something I could not, is unequivocally better.

Cool. Can you show us some great new things you have done with AI?

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#138

Post by inigyou »

trescenzi wrote: post #96
inigyou wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boilerplate details mean we've failed as an industry. Why haven't we already got the computer to automate all the boring bits without AI?

I really enjoy working with Gleam which is a rather boilerplate heavy language. However most of the work is managed by a really well built LSP. If you're writing a strongly type language it's easy to programmatically manage all of the boilerplate. You could you an LLM but why bother when it's a so formulaic.

Yeah, like imports in Java too. Any IDE lets you type List and it imports java.util.List - or java.awt.List if you select that one instead!

That's not what's really being discussed here though. Since it's already automated, you don't need to automate it with AI.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#139

Post by butlike »

RGS1811 wrote: post #19

I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…

They're going to run into the problem we have in music production where the song is 'done,' but the producer can't stop adding magic (sugar, fun sounds, more effects, etc.) and the song becomes an overproduced, over magicked mess.

The developers of chatbot technology have or are about to hit an inflection point where the tool is essentially done, then they're going to add too much sugar trying to make it some sort of god tool where it becomes overly complicated, overly convoluted, with dodgy results and too much magic.

Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details

#140

Post by wavemode »

theshrike79 wrote: post #131
wavemode wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing translation and interpretation. A compiler is merely translating your code into a lower-level form. (There is a degree of heuristic-based interpretation that goes into generating good code, but the code's observable behavior is not allowed to change.) But an LLM has to interpret your words and make judgment calls about the logical details, which is a very different thing. An LLM sufficiently intellig…

And a human interprets bug tickets and specifications, turning them into code by making judgement calls.

Correct
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