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LLMs reward expertise

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Re: LLMs reward expertise

#431

Post by knollimar »

MattGaiser wrote: post #334
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…

What terminology is required to make Claude Code write code? My experience with friends has been the opposite. A PM friend made a custom tool. A friend who has never written a line of computer code has an app. If you tell Claude Code "I want a website that does X, Y, and Z" it will write code.

Especially if the path is well trodden.

"Make me a kanban board for construction tasks. I want you to walk me through the process of hosting it" worked for me.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#432

Post by raptor111 »

I very much agree, but at the same time I feel like those type of shortcomings are fundamental and will be somehow fixed within the next year. The AI companies would just go bankrupt otherwise...

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#433

Post by TonyStr »

andsoitis wrote: post #269
shukantpal wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, is a offline chess page not an app? It seems like it would be closer to an app.

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

You misunderstand the meaning of static web pages. Here's a short explanation of the terms: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_developme...

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#434

Post by roncesvalles »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #403
roncesvalles wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the correct way to LLM is to constantly trial-and-error in new/branched contexts. Remember the LLM is not a human employee. You don't have to say "yes and" to whatever crap they produced so as to not hurt their feelings or infringe upon their creative autonomy, nor do you have to defend the correctness of your original instructions so that they don't think less of you for asking them to chase the wrong goose. I…

> The only way I can maintain my pace of branched trial-and-error is by using claude.ai/chat and manually extricating code fragments to and from my codebase. The human is still the best harness for production-level code. That’s been the way I do it. I suppose that it will be considered “quaint,” soon enough, but I have found it to be effective.

And the best part is, I don't spend more than $20 a month on LLMs. Going manual and constantly branching keeps the contexts super lean.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#436

Post by [deleted] »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #405
tpoacher wrote: post #376

Both the article and some of the discussions here share a lot of commonalities with doctors taking a medical history. There is a certain skill in guiding the conversation towards useful outputs, while not dictating the exact outputs to a patient who is eager to please with their responses. E.g., medical history taking protocol always says to start with open ended (albeit structured) questions, and converge towards mo…

Counterpoint, some doctors will zoom in on the most likely problem and misdiagnose. This is in part due to pressure on the health care system (where I live anyway); you can only get a GP appointment for 10 minute blocks, which really isn't a lot. But when a 30-some year old shows up at a rheumatologist with joint pain they will likely go to unusual (at that age) but not unheard of rheumatism/arthritis, not hypermobil…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#437

Post by bonsai_spool »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #405
tpoacher wrote: post #376

Both the article and some of the discussions here share a lot of commonalities with doctors taking a medical history. There is a certain skill in guiding the conversation towards useful outputs, while not dictating the exact outputs to a patient who is eager to please with their responses. E.g., medical history taking protocol always says to start with open ended (albeit structured) questions, and converge towards mo…

Counterpoint, some doctors will zoom in on the most likely problem and misdiagnose. This is in part due to pressure on the health care system (where I live anyway); you can only get a GP appointment for 10 minute blocks, which really isn't a lot. But when a 30-some year old shows up at a rheumatologist with joint pain they will likely go to unusual (at that age) but not unheard of rheumatism/arthritis, not hypermobil…

I think endometriosis is common enough that it would be caught earlier ("Oh, does your joint pain get worse right before you menstruate? Tell me more"), but your point is reasonable.

I counter with the platitude that common things are common - especially in fields like primary care, the amount of wasted effort one would expend in pursuing unusual explanations for every presenting symptom is considerable. We thus have to examine patients over time and trust that they will tell us if things have indeed not followed the course of the initial diagnosis.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#438

Post by massysett »

bartread wrote: post #429
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…

Interesting, but... wrong tool, wrong job. And by tool, I mean web based chat interface, not LLMs in general. (Maybe wrong delivery mechanism, if you like.) Your friend needed an agent, not a chatbot. I use Claude within VS Code (as per many others) but I certainly wouldn't recommend that for a beginner. They needed a tool that's specifically aimed at people who want to build software but don't know the first thing a…

The whole point is that the friend wouldn’t know what an agent is. The friend would have heard that AI is changing the world and she would have went into ChatGPT or maybe Claude or Gemini. Presuming that the ideal is that anyone should be able to use these tools for anything (which I do not agree with) the chatbot needs to say “you need to use my agent mode.”

This is not a wrong tool, wrong job issue. The issue is that people think any moron can use an LLM and get professional results.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#439

Post by datenyan »

bartread wrote: post #429
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…

Interesting, but... wrong tool, wrong job. And by tool, I mean web based chat interface, not LLMs in general. (Maybe wrong delivery mechanism, if you like.) Your friend needed an agent, not a chatbot. I use Claude within VS Code (as per many others) but I certainly wouldn't recommend that for a beginner. They needed a tool that's specifically aimed at people who want to build software but don't know the first thing a…

Isn’t that kinda the point, though? If you already lack the required knowledge to ask a web-based chat UI (which, as an aside, is almost exclusively referring to ChatGPT Free for the average user) to build a HTML page, how could you possibly know to go search for Lovable, let alone figure out agents?

I feel as though the gap between the theoretical power of LLMs and what the average user knows of them and their capability have already widened so far that it’s irreconcilable.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#440

Post by _joel »

bartread wrote: post #429
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…

Interesting, but... wrong tool, wrong job. And by tool, I mean web based chat interface, not LLMs in general. (Maybe wrong delivery mechanism, if you like.) Your friend needed an agent, not a chatbot. I use Claude within VS Code (as per many others) but I certainly wouldn't recommend that for a beginner. They needed a tool that's specifically aimed at people who want to build software but don't know the first thing a…

Circular dependency detected. You must first know the thing to be able to know the thing.
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