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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

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Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#181

Post by SoftTalker »

swat535 wrote: post #111
mdwelsh wrote: post #35

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…

> they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum

They won't gladly do it. They'll do it begrudgingly because there is nothing better, or they have no choice, and they need to get their work done.

Just because people use your AI-vomited garbage programs doesn't mean they like it.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#182

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

deathanatos wrote: post #167
notashelf wrote: post #152

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…

If this is your working environment, it sounds like quite an unusual place.

I literally can't imagine generating a script with an LLM without testing it at all.

Bash is one of those situations where LLMs can do really well. No human on Earth can remember all of the commands and even fewer humans can remember all of the switches for all of the commands.

This kind of remembering, searching, and assembling is exactly what LLMs are good at - as long as you're not writing a gigantic build system with hundreds of moving parts, in which case you should probably be using something more streamlined anyway.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#183

Post by assimpleaspossi »

notashelf wrote: post #146
boron1006 wrote: post #128

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…

One part of the answer is marketing it to people looking for an easy way out without having to do the work or thinking at all. There's value in that as shown in everything like things for the home that purport to make your daily life easier. LLMs market themselves in much the same way

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#184

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

notashelf wrote: post #146
boron1006 wrote: post #128

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…

They're "good enough", but they're not good. If you're trying to run a business, programmer skill isn't worth the money you spend, LLMs are cheaper. If you care about the quality of what you produce, they're trash.

Programming is no longer skilled labor. Quality is a hobby.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#185

Post by dwattttt »

aprdm wrote: post #175
timacles wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol. That's not true at all. And not how projects are done on startups or big companies. Execute fast or get nowhere, a series of small wins get you to live long term.

Long term projects that survived on short term wins are still around. But you're going to want to check how big the graveyard is of "project collapsed under tech debt from short term decisions" to see whether it's a good strategy.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#186

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #181
swat535 wrote: post #111

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…

> they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum They won't gladly do it. They'll do it begrudgingly because there is nothing better, or they have no choice, and they need to get their work done. Just because people use your AI-vomited garbage programs doesn't mean they like it.

They chose to pay for it, which is about the same as liking it, as far as business needs go.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#188

Post by [deleted] »

scotty79 wrote: post #144
devin wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite the opposite in my experience.

Who had historically the most taste? The rich or the poor? And who had the worst taste? The people who grew up in poverty mindset that got rich. These are widely shared, common cultural observations. You need a long term, persistent abundance to develop and even have a use for taste. I don't see why would software be any different.

[deleted]

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#189

Post by infinitebit »

I agree with the idea that the taste, for lack of a better word, was the only thing that ever mattered. What I disagree with is the idea that slop that is “good enough” is indistinguishable from something that is crafted is “indistinguishable by the market”. I think it is indistinguishable in the short term, but very distinguishable on a long enough time span. The same way that hacked together slop has always been “good enough” to close a ticket and even get someone a promotion, but later costs the company thousands of engineering hours to rewrite once it becomes completely unreliable, slow and impossible to modify. We’re just speed running that now. It’s the same battle engineers with “taste” have been fighting with sales teams and product managers and lazy teammates before LLMs, just in fast forward.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#190

Post by Brian_K_White »

notashelf wrote: post #146
boron1006 wrote: post #128

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…

Conversely, if they are good enough, why do they degrade frome consuming their own output?

How come humans consuming their own output gets better over time, but llms and any other form of ai consuming their own output only get worse?

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