They reward expertise but not for long. Let's not kid ourselves into coping for a little longer.
LLMs reward expertise
301–310 of 606 posts
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#302This is something that really needs to be formally studied. I'm inclined to say that this matches my own experience, but I can't rule out confirmation bias on my part. As a meticulous person generally looking for a very specific code outcome, I prompt in a way intended to get exactly the thing I have in mind, and my results reflect that. But on the other hand, I have coworkers who type ten-word prompts with very limi…
Meanwhile all I do is vibecode. I get the outcomes I want though.
I see vibe coded apps as requirement documents. Rarely do I have to engineer.
If my job gave me some actual tasks, then maybe I'd engineer something. But at home? Vibe coding all the way. I'm open to engineering, but I need a compelling reason such as: the app is fundamentally broken and an LLM is going in circles. When the only user is me, there are not many performance issues to think about or fix, so that helps. Moreover, certain systems don't need to exist (though they might soon since now I have a smattering of apps that I need to manage).
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#303The 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…
> 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 replacement for their minds and their senses will struggle. Claude code is entirely vibed. Someone posted some of the prompts they used: barely comprehensible typo-addled half phrases. This seems to be the opposite of your experience.
I am sure some variant of the infinite monkey theorem applies. Anthropic devs have unlimited access to Claude, so they are no doubt lazy when it comes to prompt writing and just brute-force the agent to do what they want.
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
when someone describes a static site/app they generally mean there is no backend. not that the frontend is a static image
for example you can service static sites from S3 that have HTML/CSS/JS but no API or DB
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#305I 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…
> They didn’t even get to that point. Because my friend didn’t have the vocabulary to ask the AI to write code. What harness did you use? In e.g. claude, there are two modes: 1. Spit out code 2. Draft a plan, ask questions, GOTO 1 You literally have to go out of your way to get it NOT to write code. I keep mine on a tight-ish leash because it modify code way too happily even when there's no intention or instruction t…
Harness? I am an avid HN reader but even I don't yet fully understand how this word is used in the AI context. Which is exactly the point of the OP.
It all boils down to naming things and cache invalidation, /s
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#306I 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…
> They didn’t even get to that point. Because my friend didn’t have the vocabulary to ask the AI to write code. What harness did you use? In e.g. claude, there are two modes: 1. Spit out code 2. Draft a plan, ask questions, GOTO 1 You literally have to go out of your way to get it NOT to write code. I keep mine on a tight-ish leash because it modify code way too happily even when there's no intention or instruction t…
How should his friend know what a harness is?
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
OTOH my wife's friends got drunk and made "tinder for horse purchases". They prompted to read typical horse advertisements (we're all horse people) and create an app with mock tinder like entries to swipe right and left to buy horses. A web app was produced with lots of mock "Hi i'm Dominique and i love running through fields and having a bucking good time" type entries complete with silly horse photos. A huge amount…
> The little apps i made here and there before AI are being outdone by a bunch of drunk people on a whim! Yes, but the premise of the article is you should be able to outdo a bunch of drunk people with your 30 years experience, if you use AI too.
The article doesn't hold the universal truth.
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#308They reward expertise but not for long. Let's not kid ourselves into coping for a little longer.
What makes you think that they will get good at driving themselves? Can they now train on their own outputs? Doesn't seem like it
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#309The LLM knows how to solve problems in any way you want. This is not a good thing
Re: LLMs reward expertise
#310I 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…
> They didn’t even get to that point. Because my friend didn’t have the vocabulary to ask the AI to write code. What harness did you use? In e.g. claude, there are two modes: 1. Spit out code 2. Draft a plan, ask questions, GOTO 1 You literally have to go out of your way to get it NOT to write code. I keep mine on a tight-ish leash because it modify code way too happily even when there's no intention or instruction t…
> my friend is a novice and needs extra help with things like: copy pasting the code into a text file
I don't think this is using an agent harness.