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They lied to you. Building software is hard

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Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#101

Post by krainboltgreene »

adam_arthur wrote: post #51

LLMs have clearly accelerated development for the most skilled developers. Particularly when the human acts as the router/architect. However, I've found Claude Code and Co only really work well for bootstrapping projects. If you largely accept their edits unchanged, your codebase will accrue massive technical debt over time and ultimately slow you down vs semi-automatic LLM use. It will probably change once the appro…

> LLMs have clearly accelerated development for the most skilled developers.

Have they so clearly? What's the evidence?

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#102

Post by bitwize »

AuthAuth wrote: post #91
bdangubic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds of talking to my nephew at Thanksgiving years ago. He was studying for an exam after the holidays and I was looking at his screen open to a Google Doc which looked like his study notes except - they were being edited as I was watching - by someone else. I asked about it and he goes “we have a single Google Doc where all students collaborate on the study notes.” My mind was blown, I was also using Google…

All students collaborating on notes kind of defeats the point no? As I see it study notes are reminders to link you back to when you were reviewing the material. If you never wrote the notes you wont get that connection back to the material.

On the one hand, this is the kind of closed mind the zen guy in the root comment was talking about.

On the other hand, you're probably right...

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#103

Post by mnky9800n »

gdubs wrote: post #48

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and it goes: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” There's such a wide divergence of experience with these tools. Often times people will say that anyone finding incredible value in them must not be very good. Or that they fall down when you get deep enough into a project. I think the reality is th…

I was talking about this with someone today, that before perhaps there is an exactness you expect. But actually, what really matters is "good enough." And if AI written code takes you to "good enough" according to whatever metric you've set, then what exactly is the problem? Because a lot of the technical part of the job is taking X data, doing f(x) transformation to that data, and thus Y is born and handed to the next step. So if it passes whatever metric you have set to make sure that going from X to Y handles Z% of the problem space, and doesn't create downstream issues (probably this should be part of your metric), then you have done your job. And yes, of course sometimes the job will require you writing the code yourself because that level if precision is necessary. But why should we consider that always to be the case? And thus, actually, there are probably new programming languages and paradigms to consider that we haven't thought of yet that makes this kind of problem solving more efficient. Because right now we are not super effective at juggling both the human and the machine's problem space context. Except some experts who say they can orchestrate tens of agents all at once doing whatever. I dunno. I think right now is exciting and not hand wringing. A computer is meant to help you think. Why shouldn't new computational tools bring excitement?

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#104

Post by thegrim000 »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #101
adam_arthur wrote: post #51

LLMs have clearly accelerated development for the most skilled developers. Particularly when the human acts as the router/architect. However, I've found Claude Code and Co only really work well for bootstrapping projects. If you largely accept their edits unchanged, your codebase will accrue massive technical debt over time and ultimately slow you down vs semi-automatic LLM use. It will probably change once the appro…

> LLMs have clearly accelerated development for the most skilled developers. Have they so clearly? What's the evidence?

Most people's "truth" nowadays is what they've heard enough people say is true. Not objective data/measures. What people believe is true, and say is true, IS truth, to them.

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#105

Post by bsoles »

gdubs wrote: post #98
bsoles wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last 25 years of building commercial software, but being a programming enthusiast since I was 15 years old, I came to the conclusion that self-improvement (in the sense of gaining real expertise in a field, building a philosophy of things, and doing the right things) is in direct opposition to creating "value" in the corporate/commercial sense of today. Using AI/LLMs, you perhaps will create more commercial…

Why are you so certain that LLMs/AI can't be used as a tool to learn and grow? Like Herbie Hancock once said, a computer is a tool, like an axe. It can be used for terrible things, or it can be used to build a house for your neighbor. It's up to people how we choose to use these tools.

> Why are you so certain that LLMs/AI can't be used as a tool to learn and grow?

Because every other post in here, for example, starts with "I vibe coded..." and not with "I learned something new today on ChatGPT".

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#106

Post by nerdsniper »

bsoles wrote: post #105
gdubs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so certain that LLMs/AI can't be used as a tool to learn and grow? Like Herbie Hancock once said, a computer is a tool, like an axe. It can be used for terrible things, or it can be used to build a house for your neighbor. It's up to people how we choose to use these tools.

> Why are you so certain that LLMs/AI can't be used as a tool to learn and grow? Because every other post in here, for example, starts with "I vibe coded..." and not with "I learned something new today on ChatGPT".

I’m vibe coding apps that help me explore stuff and learn things. That’s their specific purpose.

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#107

Post by saulpw »

bitwize wrote: post #102
AuthAuth wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All students collaborating on notes kind of defeats the point no? As I see it study notes are reminders to link you back to when you were reviewing the material. If you never wrote the notes you wont get that connection back to the material.

On the one hand, this is the kind of closed mind the zen guy in the root comment was talking about. On the other hand, you're probably right...

Perhaps wisdom is closing your mind to common stupidity.

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#108

Post by prewett »

I wonder if 3D printing is a good analogy. The promise was "you can print anything you want!" From my observation, the reality is that you can 3D print cheap plastic crap that looks like voxel rendering made manifest. This turns out to be handy in a lot of situations, like making custom jigs for something, but you're not going to be 3D printing custom jewelry, or custom furniture. Sure, you hear stories about how SpaceX is 3D printing rocket engines, but you can't afford a machine like that, and even if you could, you won't be printing custom jewelry with it.

So, sure, some people are going to be using AI to create professional software, but they aren't going to tell you about all the engines that blew up along the way, and who knows which ones are going to blow up in the future. But custom utility software might get a whole lot more common.

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#109

Post by sgarland »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #50
dfabulich wrote: post #45

This article includes a graph with a negative slope, claiming that AI tools are useful for beginners, but less and less useful the more coding expertise you develop. That doesn't match my experience. I think AI tools have their own skill curve, independent of the skill curve of "reading/writing good code." If you figure out how to use the AI tools well, you'll get even more value out of them with expertise. Use AI to…

That sounds exhausting . I'd rather spend my time thinking about the problem and solving it, than thinking about how to get some software to stochasticaly select language that appears like it is thinking about the problem to then implement a solution I'm going to have to check carefully. Much of the LLM hype cycle breaks down into "anyone can create software now", which TFA makes a convincing argument for being a lie…

Agreed. My work is mandating Claude Code usage this week for everyone. I spent all day today getting it to write tickets, code, and tests for something I knew how to do. I don’t understand the appeal. Telling the AI “commit those changes and then push,” then waiting for the result, takes way longer than gcmsg && gp.

Re: They lied to you. Building software is hard

#110

Post by sgarland »

vineethy wrote: post #66

strongly disagree with this article. I think using the tools can actually directly lead to a junior engineer getting closer to a senior engineer. Telling junior engineers that they have to get better at typing out code in order to be better engineers misses what actually makes someone a better engineer. It's worth actually being specific about what differentiates a junior engineer from a senior engineer. There's two…

> It's worth actually being specific about what differentiates a junior engineer from a senior engineer. There's two things: communication and architecture.

Uhhh… also skills and abilities? You won’t develop either of those by repeatedly asking an AI to solve problems for you.

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