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LLMs reward expertise

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Re: LLMs reward expertise

#281

Post by petra »

krisoft wrote: post #191

I did a test a few months ago. A friend of mine wanted to develop what i understood to be a simple single page web app. But since she didn’t have any software engineering experience she asked me to help. Around that time everyone was talking about how literally anyone can develop software with LLMs i asked her if she could give it a try first, and if I could watch the attempt. I was fully expecting that writing the c…

So maybe your friend need a role reversal: A prompt guiding the llm to act as a consultant, guiding people in implementing a software project, asking questions, creating a shared understanding, limiting scope or creating milestones.

That seems like something that could be done using an llm, not that complicated probably.

And maybe, in other fields as well.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#282

Post by fragmede »

roncesvalles wrote: post #276
coder-3 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've seen plenty of examples of apps successfully vibe coded by non technical people, including apps making real revenue. Your friend could start with telling the LLM that they are a non technical person who wants to make an app and it will explain all the successive steps.

>We've seen plenty of examples of apps successfully vibe coded by non technical people, including apps making real revenue. Have we? Or is this just something that people say now, without citation?

Plinq.

Plinq was made on Lovable, https://www.aieatingtheworld.com/articles/non-technical-foun...

Couple more on https://buildthedamnthing.com/resources/articles/case-studie...

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#283

Post by annzabelle »

lopsotronic wrote: post #253
abixb wrote: post #73

The amplifying mirror analogy works best here. LLMs are ultimately a reflection of your own interactions with its weights, the tone you use, the structure with which you construct your prompt, aspects of an issue you tend to focus on, your breadth of vocabulary and world knowledge and whatnot. People who (carefully) use it as an extension of their own mind and senses will very likely thrive, and those who use it as a…

As an unapologetic generalist[1] this has also been my experience. Many tools that would have been "eh maybe if I get bored over Thanksgiving holiday" have become "hold on, gimme fifteen minutes". Tiny, isolated, but awesomely useful CLI scriptlets, for me, seem to be the sweet spot. Little shining rays spreading out from the veins of my own familiarity. The downside, the Achilles Heel of LLMs, so far as I can tell,…

I've found Claude Code absolutely amazing for the sorts of 100-500 line data cleaning/analysis/visualization tasks that used to take me a couple hours to knock out. They're often self contained (boss wants a graphic for a slide or some numbers), and I tell it which packages I would prefer it to use.

On the other hand, I've been using it to make small changes to a ~4000 line codebase, and it takes a lot of wrangling to keep changes in scope.

Today I'm translating a 5,000 line VB6 codebase to C#, and I've been spending the day chopping up the job, passing it to Claude, and manually validating it.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#284

Post by redrove »

yieldcrv wrote: post #254
krisoft wrote: post #191

I did a test a few months ago. A friend of mine wanted to develop what i understood to be a simple single page web app. But since she didn’t have any software engineering experience she asked me to help. Around that time everyone was talking about how literally anyone can develop software with LLMs i asked her if she could give it a try first, and if I could watch the attempt. I was fully expecting that writing the c…

copying and pasting code? a few months ago? 2025 called and wants its test back

Exactly, sounds to me like OP is the one with the LLM skill issue.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#285

Post by andsoitis »

Tepix wrote: post #275
andsoitis wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this hypothetical chess page do? And how’s does it do it if it is static?

It uses javascript. Still a static file. Lets you play chess

Don’t you update the DOM to render the pieces as they’re moved?

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#286

Post by duskdozer »

smnplk wrote: post #262
Lerc wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it performs the overall function but the code is a mess, then you can ask the model to describe parts of it, the structures and what the structures are for. When it shows you something that is messed up, suggest a better framing for the same thing and ask the model to implement the better framing without regressing on already passing tests. I'm going through this right now on a very difficult to implement task, th…

This sounds like coding manually would take less time.

But coding manually would use fewer tokens.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#287

Post by ninjahawk1 »

This is true for output but as well for learning, if you speak to an LLM trying to get it to give you a certain answer, it’ll find a way to tell you you’re right. If you’re truth seeking and attempting to understand it step by step as it’s going, you’ll likely learn what it’s doing as it’s doing it, meaning you’re basically distilling that information into your own local LLM (also know as the brain).

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#288

Post by tmikaeld »

fragmede wrote: post #282
roncesvalles wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We've seen plenty of examples of apps successfully vibe coded by non technical people, including apps making real revenue. Have we? Or is this just something that people say now, without citation?

Plinq. Plinq was made on Lovable, https://www.aieatingtheworld.com/articles/non-technical-foun... Couple more on https://buildthedamnthing.com/resources/articles/case-studie...

The problem with lovable, from someone with insider knowledge, is that many of the apps existed even before appearing there and where ported to the platform to ride the hype wave.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#289

Post by wesleywt »

coder-3 wrote: post #273
krisoft wrote: post #191

I did a test a few months ago. A friend of mine wanted to develop what i understood to be a simple single page web app. But since she didn’t have any software engineering experience she asked me to help. Around that time everyone was talking about how literally anyone can develop software with LLMs i asked her if she could give it a try first, and if I could watch the attempt. I was fully expecting that writing the c…

We've seen plenty of examples of apps successfully vibe coded by non technical people, including apps making real revenue. Your friend could start with telling the LLM that they are a non technical person who wants to make an app and it will explain all the successive steps.

No we haven't

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#290

Post by strange_quark »

RideOnTime22 wrote: post #260
champagnepapi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder the same thing. I think we've already seen some of this happening, however the consequences haven't been large enough to the organization, for example: - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/20/meta-ai-a... - https://tech.yahoo.com/articles/ai-code-wreaked-havoc-amazon... - https://alexeyondata.substack.com/p/how-i-dropped-our-produc... We can only hope that engineers working in safety critical sy…

As long as people keep gaslighting by sayting those events are just "skill issues," I doubt there will sadly be a catalyst.

Yeah, this will never happen until governments step in and cause these companies real pain. I mean just look at Crowdstrike. They caused billions and billions in economic damage due to their incompetence, and nothing happened. In fact, their stock is close to an all time high.
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