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An Honest Review of AI Programming

mropert.github.io

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Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#21

Post by rglover »

Sharlin wrote: post #5
lnenad wrote: post #2

> An Honest Review > I do admit that this approach immediately triggered my contrarian side and made me very defiant of any AI tool. Makes sense. > While this could be partially remedied by always asking for a primary source or citation, I dislike the idea that one has to add magical incantations to their queries to get the right results. It’s a good laugh to make fun of “make no mistake” memes, until you start havin…

It's more like a hammer that never drives nails straight unless you hold it in a specific uncomfortable manner. You shouldn't be required to tell an information retrieval tool to actually retrieve information rather than making it up!

> You shouldn't be required to tell an information retrieval tool to actually retrieve information rather than making it up!

And therein lies the problem: perception. LLMs are treated like information retrieval tools but in reality are probability machines that return plausible/mostly accurate information.

They're not searching, they're inferring and then guessing. That the guesses are often quite good means that we can easily fool ourselves with whatever it spits out. We call it hallucination but it's a feature, not a bug.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#22

Post by joshribakoff »

lnenad wrote: post #18
Sharlin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like a hammer that never drives nails straight unless you hold it in a specific uncomfortable manner. You shouldn't be required to tell an information retrieval tool to actually retrieve information rather than making it up!

> It's more like a hammer that never drives nails straight unless you hold it in a specific uncomfortable manner. I mean sure, pick any analogy, still doesn't change the fact that there are right uses and wrong uses; right ways to use it and wrong ways to use it. > information retrieval tool How is an LLM this? It's a non-deterministic word generator.

An LLM is not what the public was “sold”, they were “sold” a personified agent. That is the gap.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#23

Post by joshribakoff »

lnenad wrote: post #20
K0balt wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, hammers are bad screwdrivers. They are faster at driving screws and require less finesse to do so, but are really bad at taking them out, often break the screw, and often result in a fastening that superficially looks correct but fails to perform well under stress. Two new types of screw, the ring-shank nonhelical fastener and the rivet, however, are changing everything. Soon, using screwdrivers will be r…

I don't really see your point. You're still using the screwdriver and it's up to you to use it when it makes sense, see if it's doing it's job properly, fix issues it creates etc... If it's not doing a good job for your particular screw don't use it. But don't say it's a horrible tool since you choose to not use it properly. There is a middle ground between CEOisms "LLMs are literally Jesus" and people similar to thi…

Part of the entire premise of the article is that many people aren’t being given a choice, so this is a really weird deflection. I disagree about the author not recognizing a middle ground.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#25

Post by hahahaa »

Sharlin wrote: post #8
daishi55 wrote: post #3

> “Agentic workflow” (or whatever they’re calling it at the time you’re reading this article) > Unlike the silver bullets of the past (like microservices or NoSQL) > Hallucinations are an inherent property of how LLMs work. > It’s all marketing and buzzwords Not a serious article or thinker. I can get this stuff on Reddit if I want to read thrice-regurgitated cliches about AI.

I'd like to hear actual rebuttals to those quotes.

> Hallucinations are an inherent property of how LLMs work.

While technically true the hallucination rates on modern models is low and other checks can ensure that by the time a human sees it it is most likely solid.

For research there is more danger as there is less feedback loop other than other LLM scrutinising the first. For research I get it to come to a conclusion but provide me with links so I can judge. More like advanced search.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#26

Post by lnenad »

joshribakoff wrote: post #22
lnenad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more like a hammer that never drives nails straight unless you hold it in a specific uncomfortable manner. I mean sure, pick any analogy, still doesn't change the fact that there are right uses and wrong uses; right ways to use it and wrong ways to use it. > information retrieval tool How is an LLM this? It's a non-deterministic word generator.

An LLM is not what the public was “sold”, they were “sold” a personified agent. That is the gap.

We're not talking about "the public". The person writing the article is a very experienced software engineer. There shouldn't be a gap in understanding.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#27

Post by lnenad »

joshribakoff wrote: post #23
lnenad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see your point. You're still using the screwdriver and it's up to you to use it when it makes sense, see if it's doing it's job properly, fix issues it creates etc... If it's not doing a good job for your particular screw don't use it. But don't say it's a horrible tool since you choose to not use it properly. There is a middle ground between CEOisms "LLMs are literally Jesus" and people similar to thi…

Part of the entire premise of the article is that many people aren’t being given a choice, so this is a really weird deflection. I disagree about the author not recognizing a middle ground.

> Part of the entire premise of the article is that many people aren’t being given a choice

Yeah, "part", but that's not the part I wrote about?

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#28

Post by FrustratedMonky »

abirch wrote: post #13
internet2000 wrote: post #4

3,300 words but nothing new to say.

I'm not disappointed in the article, there are many of them out there. I'm disappointed that this is near the top of HN. I lazily outsource my information hunter and gathering to HN.

Maybe you guys just shouldn't read blogs.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#29

Post by CuriouslyC »

joshribakoff wrote: post #19
abirch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using an LLM and not an agentic workflow then you're doing things wrong in 2026. My agents have to pass tests meaning that if their LLM hallucinates, the agent tools capture it and not me.

Some people have the agent hallucinating its own meaningless tests

Hence the advice to read the tests? Interesting how people make the argument that AI code is garbage and can't be trusted (it's inelegant and poorly structured, sure, but that's a different matter), and how the only option isn't to just spot check the work, but to laboriously write it by hand.

Re: An Honest Review of AI Programming

#30

Post by CuriouslyC »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #28
abirch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disappointed in the article, there are many of them out there. I'm disappointed that this is near the top of HN. I lazily outsource my information hunter and gathering to HN.

Maybe you guys just shouldn't read blogs.

It'd be nice if blog authors categorized their posts into "old man shaking fist at clouds" vs "something I searched for on the internet, legitimately never found it, and decided to write it myself"
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