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How I write software with LLMs

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Re: How I write software with LLMs

#111

Post by dgb23 »

PAndreew wrote: post #28
silisili wrote: post #10

I'm not sure the notion I keep seeing of "it's ok, we still architect, it just writes the code"(paraphrased) sits well with me. I've not tested it with architecting a full system, but assuming it isn't good at it today... it's only a matter of time. Then what is our use?

Others have already partially answered this, but here’s my 20 cents. Software development really is similar to architecture. The end result is an infrastructure of unique modules with different type of connectors (roads, grid, or APIs). Until now in SW dev the grunt work was done mostly by the same people who did the planning, decided on the type of connectors, etc. Real estate architects also use a bunch of software…

The "grunt work" is in many cases just that. As long as it's readable and works it's fine.

But there are a substantial amount cases where this isn't true. The nitty gritty is then the important part and it's impossible to make the whole thing work well without being intimate with the code.

So I never fully bought into the clean separation of development, engineering and architecture.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#112

Post by cpt_sobel »

dmos62 wrote: post #108
cpt_sobel wrote: post #72

In the plethora of all these articles that explain the process of building projects with LLMs, one thing I never understood it why the authors seem to write the prompts as if talking to a human that cares how good their grammar or syntax is, e.g.: > I'd like to add email support to this bot. Let's think through how we would do this. and I'm not not even talking about the usage of "please" or "thanks" (which this part…

I choose to talk in a respectful way, because that's how I want to communicate: it's not because I'm afraid of retaliation or burning bridges. It's because I am caring and conscious. If I think that something doesn't have feelings or long-term memory, whether it's AI or a piece of rock on the side of a trail, it in no way leads me to be abusive to it. Further, an LLM being inherently sycophantic leads to it mimmickin…

My wondering was never about being abusive, rather just having a dry tone and cutting the unnecessary parts, some sort of middle ground if you will. Prompting "yo chatgeepeetee whats good lemme get this feature real quick" doesn't make sense to me mostly because it's anthrophomorphizing it, and it's the same concept of unnecessary writing as "Good morning ChatGPT, would you please help me with ..."

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#113

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lbreakjai wrote: post #106

It's interesting to see some patterns starting to emerge. Over time, I ended up with a similar workflow. Instead of using plan files within the repository, I'm using notion as the memory and source of truth. My "thinker" agent will ask questions, explore, and refine. It will write a feature page in notion, and split the implementation into tasks in a kanban board, for an "executor" to pick up, implement, and pass to…

No criticism or anything, but it really does feel / sound like you (and others who embraced LLMs and agentic coding) aspire to be more of a product manager than a coder. Thing is, a "real" PM comes with a lot more requirements and there's less demand for them - more requirements in that you need to be a people person and willing to spend at least half your time in meetings, and less demand because one PM will organize the work for half a dozen developers (minimum).

Some people say LLM assisted coding will cost a lot of developers' jobs, but posts like this imply it'll cost (solve?) a lot of management / overhead too.

Mind you I've always thought project managers are kinda wasteful, as a software developer I'd love for Someone Else to just curate a list of tasks and their requirements / acceptance criteria. But unfortunately that's not the reality and it's often up to the developers themselves to create the tasks and fill them in, then execute them. Which of course begs the question, why do we still have a PM?

(the above is anecdotal and not a universal experience I'm sure. I hope.)

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#114

Post by fleetfox »

akhrail1996 wrote: post #22

Genuine question: what's the evidence that the architect → developer → reviewer pipeline actually produces better results than just... talking to one strong model in one session? The author uses different models for each role, which I get. But I run production agents on Opus daily and in my experience, if you give it good context and clear direction in a single conversation, the output is already solid. The ceremony…

Even for reducing the context size it's probably worth it. If you have to go back back and forth on both problem and implementation even with these new "large" contexts if find quality degrading pretty fast.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#115

Post by bob1029 »

cpt_sobel wrote: post #72

In the plethora of all these articles that explain the process of building projects with LLMs, one thing I never understood it why the authors seem to write the prompts as if talking to a human that cares how good their grammar or syntax is, e.g.: > I'd like to add email support to this bot. Let's think through how we would do this. and I'm not not even talking about the usage of "please" or "thanks" (which this part…

With current models this isn't as big of a deal, but why risk being an asshole in any context? I don't think treating something like shit simply because it's a machine is a good excuse.

Also consider the insanity of intentionally feeding bullshit into an information engine and expecting good things to come out the other end. The fact that they often perform well despite the ugliness is a miracle, but I wouldn't depend on it.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#116

Post by pegasus »

cpt_sobel wrote: post #88
tarsinge wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasoning is by being polite the LLM is more likely to stay on a professional path: at its core a LLM try to make your prompt coherent with its training set, and a polite prompt + its answer will score higher (gives better result) than a prompt that is out of place with the answer. I understand to some people it could feel like anthropomorphising and could turn them off but to me it's purely about engineering. Ed…

> If the result of your prompt + its answer it's more likely to score higher i.e. gives better result that a prompt that feels out of place with the answer Sure seems like this could be the case with the structure of the prompt, but what about capitalizing the first letter of sentence, or adding commas, tag questions etc? They seem like semantics that will not play any role at the end

That's orthography, not semantics, but it's still part of the professional style steering the model on the "professional path" as GP put it.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#117

Post by xnorswap »

dgb23 wrote: post #98
cpt_sobel wrote: post #72

In the plethora of all these articles that explain the process of building projects with LLMs, one thing I never understood it why the authors seem to write the prompts as if talking to a human that cares how good their grammar or syntax is, e.g.: > I'd like to add email support to this bot. Let's think through how we would do this. and I'm not not even talking about the usage of "please" or "thanks" (which this part…

I can't speak for everyone, but to me the most accurate answer is that I'm role-playing, because it just flows better. In the back of my head I know the chatbot is trained on conversations and I want it to reflect a professional and clear tone. But I usually keep it more simple in most cases. Your example: > I'd like to add email support to this bot. Let's think through how we would do this. I would likely write as:…

I agree, it's just easier to write requirements and refine things as if writing with a human. I no longer care that it risks anthropomorphising it, as that fight has long been lost. I prefer to focus on remembering it doesn't actually think/reason than not being polite to it.

Keeping everything generally "human readable" also the advantage of it being easier for me to review later if needed.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#118

Post by cpt_sobel »

jstanley wrote: post #93
cpt_sobel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying, but I'm not talking about swearing at the model or anything, I'm only implying that investing energy in formulating a syntactically nice sentence doesn't or shouldn't bring any value, and that I don't care if I hurt the model's feelings (it doesn't have any). Note, why would the author write "Email will arrive from a webhook, yes." instead of "yy webhook"? In the second case I wouldn't be im…

"yy webhook" is much less clear. It could just as easily mean "why webhook" as "yes webhook". It's also actually more trouble to formulate abbreviated sentences than normal ones, at least for literate adults who can type reasonably well.

I confidently assume that the model has been trained on an ungodly amount of abbreviated text and "yy" has always meant "yeah".

> literate adults who can type reasonably well

For me the difference is around 20 wpm in writing speed if just write out my stream of thoughts vs when I care about typos and capitalizing words - I find real value in this.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#119

Post by cpt_sobel »

bob1029 wrote: post #115
cpt_sobel wrote: post #72

In the plethora of all these articles that explain the process of building projects with LLMs, one thing I never understood it why the authors seem to write the prompts as if talking to a human that cares how good their grammar or syntax is, e.g.: > I'd like to add email support to this bot. Let's think through how we would do this. and I'm not not even talking about the usage of "please" or "thanks" (which this part…

With current models this isn't as big of a deal, but why risk being an asshole in any context? I don't think treating something like shit simply because it's a machine is a good excuse. Also consider the insanity of intentionally feeding bullshit into an information engine and expecting good things to come out the other end. The fact that they often perform well despite the ugliness is a miracle, but I wouldn't depen…

I neither talked about feeding bullshit into it, nor treating it like shit. Around half of the commenters here seem to be missing the middle ground, how is prompting "i need my project to do A, B, C using X Y Z" treating it like shit?

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#120

Post by [deleted] »

cpt_sobel wrote: post #72

In the plethora of all these articles that explain the process of building projects with LLMs, one thing I never understood it why the authors seem to write the prompts as if talking to a human that cares how good their grammar or syntax is, e.g.: > I'd like to add email support to this bot. Let's think through how we would do this. and I'm not not even talking about the usage of "please" or "thanks" (which this part…

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