171–180 of 573 posts
Honestly, a lot of people are denying this, but the latest models ARE at the point where their systems design generally surpasses mine because they have a better grasp of how the domain of any problem is typically solved.
This article resonated tremendously with me, speaking as someone who has been coding since the 1980s and had to develop my own taste the hard way, through lots and lots of mistakes. Whenever I see a software demo built by someone mostly using agents to do the work, I have to question whether it's any good on the inside - or whether any real intuition or judgment went into its design. On the flip side, maybe none of t…
For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form. People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work. I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say…
Surely there is more to software than CRUD apps
I don’t like the term taste, but the problem that I have is that LLMs don’t seem to work “good enough”. They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but stacking this on the scale of 3-4 devs over 6 months or so doesn’t seem to produce anything. One thing that I’m particularly frustrated with is the writing quality of LLMs. Like this is the thing that they should be able to do, but I would say almost everythi…
I'll risk sounding antagonistic and ask you this: if LLMs are not "good enough", why are they still around? Obviously "good enough" was a poor pick of words of words on my behalf---and I'll gladly own it---but they should be "good enough" for something if a significant amount of resources keep getting allocated to them. Yes on a very personal level you look at LLM-generated code and think to yourself "wow this is gar…
LLMs are also useful as a natural language interface. They're pretty useful for search (as RAG and autoresearch, not the glue-on-pizza Google search crap). They're good for filtering and classification against rules that can be specified in natural language instead of special syntax or by training dedicated models.
On the topic of taste, I think of this quote in Susan Sontag's "Notes On 'Camp'" often: “For taste governs every free — as opposed to rote — human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to deve…
i see parallels to zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance as well, who's whole thesis if i can recall is something like, "quality cannot be put into words." Its a pre-rational thing that, try as you might, can't be pinned down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Breaking down long term problems into small shorter problems we can solve one after another until the long term problem is solved is the essence of engineering.
No, the "essence" of engineering is having a cohesive vision for a larger plan. No quality large scale project can exist without it. And any seasoned engineer should understand by now that no SOTA LLM can produce quality engineering at scale.
Execute fast or get nowhere, a series of small wins get you to live long term.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that means they're good enough for the short them. This is why I find it such an interesting question to wield, but also, it is why my wording was poor in the post.
Short term can, IME, be very short. I've seen people generate, say, a bash script with an LLM. It's generated: short term, the problem is "solved": we've generated a bash script. … but does it work? Someone comes along, reviews it, "this is garbage, and does not do what it says it purports to do". Perhaps it even gave an output: the script computed … something, but it's just GIGO. But that "check if this works" frict…
Hard disagree on "Good enough", most things are mediocre at best. Despite the massive AI boom I can at best count on one hand "fresh" products made with AI that are meaningful in day-to-day usage. Not to mention most of them seem to be targeting AI-space itself instead of bridging some actual business use case. Just look at all the products on ShowHN, you can "tell" a vibed product in seconds.
If you are waiting for someone else to make a good product for you with AI, you are missing out. The best AI products have userbase of one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form. People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work. I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say…
Would this apply to software that runs oil refinery plants, or video games or an fighter jet flight stabilization systems? Surely there is more to software than CRUD apps
Hard disagree on "Good enough", most things are mediocre at best. Despite the massive AI boom I can at best count on one hand "fresh" products made with AI that are meaningful in day-to-day usage. Not to mention most of them seem to be targeting AI-space itself instead of bridging some actual business use case. Just look at all the products on ShowHN, you can "tell" a vibed product in seconds.
This article resonated tremendously with me, speaking as someone who has been coding since the 1980s and had to develop my own taste the hard way, through lots and lots of mistakes. Whenever I see a software demo built by someone mostly using agents to do the work, I have to question whether it's any good on the inside - or whether any real intuition or judgment went into its design. On the flip side, maybe none of t…
For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form. People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work. I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say…
Slower load times means user won't use the product, won't click the buy button, or will simply leave.