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The Harness Is the Thing

scott-fryxell.github.io

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Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#111

Post by liampulles »

DenisM wrote: post #108
liampulles wrote: post #100

One will lose the opportunity to develop domain understanding if they do not get into the weeds of thinking through the problem. I use Claude plan mode to do relatively small changes and even then I find that if I actually try and think through the problem and solve it myself that I find good metaphors that will aid future work, and I will discover tangential issues which are then important to look at.

Do you explicitly ask for metaphors? I wonder if we need a list of things to tell AI to stay sharp, like this one. Sometimes I tell the model existing design is stupid and then it explains reasoning to me.

I don't bother, because again, the value is in me thinking.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#113

Post by [deleted] »

bluegatty wrote: post #97
criley2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but just because you achieve results you consider acceptable with this method doesn't mean everyone does. I don't work where we can ship slop. I don't work where PRs can be merged based on what the agents say. I work where a human has to read and approve and own every single line of code. I work where the stakes are actually high, so the cost of not using the best tools in terms of human time are big. A si…

Yours was the casual dismissal; and based on a misunderstanding of what can be achieved. Based your arbitrary dismissal and unwillingness to even try to consider new patterns with which you may be unfamiliar - it may be difficult to communicate with you. I have the advantage of 'certainty' because I have the evidence over many projects / team members. We ship near perfect code. In addition to the hints above, we do t…

[deleted]

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#114

Post by epolanski »

This whole "a single dev can do what teams could" has been true for decades lol.

Plenty of devs developed anything from operating systems, enterprise software or videogames on their own.

I still see no evidence that this has changed significantly.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#116

Post by jayGlow »

sho wrote: post #99
AirMax98 wrote: post #3

Reading this really makes me wish that I had a slightly better workflow. I'm really soley dependent of Fable to the point that I don't use other models, and I've already sort of hit a point where I'm running into usage limits every week. I am really living on borrowed time — when Anthropic finally collapses their 50% usage increase at the end of August, I'll definitely be forced to switch my workflow. When that happe…

If you find yourself wishing for more Fable at the subscription rates, just buy another 20x account? I'm currently on 3, spaced out on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Just as one is running out the next resets. Problem solved! I feel the value I get far exceeds $600/m. It's a straight expected value calculation for me and I'm happy to pay. I wish they'd make it easier though - just sell me a 100x account for $1k/m and…

what kind of workflow are you using the requires that many tokens? I rarely hit my limit with the $100 a month plan and I use fable pretty frequently although it usually acts as an orchestrator while the actual work is done by lesser models usually.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#117

Post by bonoboTP »

douglee650 wrote: post #49

Author states, “Single developer projects can build to the caliber and consistency of large development teams.” When I, as a single person, can produce a project in one month that would have taken a team of four people three months to produce, why would I care about token cost? I’m now spending $500/month instead of $40,000 month to get the same thing 3x faster. $500 for a project instead of $120,000. (Assumes my cos…

> use frontier all the time

Agreed. You may think that the task is simple, but a brainfart of a dumb model overlooking something can cost you more in time and effort (if you relied on the output of the wrong code and now have to go back to regenerate), that it just doesn't make sense to use non-frontier for anything but hobby projects.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#118

Post by sfryxell »

dingaling911 wrote: post #81
dmantis wrote: post #76

> Single developer projects can build to the caliber and consistency of large development teams. Yet the simple blog website static page saying that looks very weird and broken on the desktop firefox. How large should be a development team to make proper margins in 2026?

This problem is easily solved. "Check that the blog looks the same in XYZ browsers". I have LLMs align stuff for me all the time because I'm too lazy. It takes the screenshot, changes the code, code auto reloads and boom, done.

Yes, something like this is a good skill for me to add to the critic phase. This is my first post with the blog redesign, and I will admit I am 100% using hacker news as QA.

Excellent feedback, Thank you.

Re: The Harness Is the Thing

#120

Post by sfryxell »

noir_lord wrote: post #79
dmantis wrote: post #76

> Single developer projects can build to the caliber and consistency of large development teams. Yet the simple blog website static page saying that looks very weird and broken on the desktop firefox. How large should be a development team to make proper margins in 2026?

I was a little "what a weird nitpick" then I opened it on FF and yeah... that's awful . Normally I'd just switch into FF reader view when it's that badly done but that doesn't work either.

Could this be an extension? I already have a , but I'm not sure what extensions are common in firefox
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