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I hate AI side projects

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Re: I hate AI side projects

#121

Post by chuckadams »

jpmitchell wrote: post #60

For me at least, the advent of coding AI has just forced me to finally accept a truth that I probably always knew: that I'm an average (at best) software developer, and that I don't have anything truly unique or impressive to contribute to the field. My side projects were always just for myself. I love computing, and programming. If anything I'm better able to appreciate that now that I no longer care if my work has…

That was both depressing and uplifting at the same time. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#122

Post by selridge »

btrettel wrote: post #81
selridge wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the same question CANNOT be asked of source code because it can execute. You might as well ask for a record of the conversations between two engineers while code was being written. That's what the chat is. I have a pre-pre-alpha project which already has potentially hundreds of "prompts"--really turns in continuing conversations. Some of them with 1 kind of embedded agent, some with another. Some with agents on th…

> maybe you don't have the necessary perspective to understand what you're asking for. I disagree. Thinking about this more, I can give an example from my time working as a patent examiner at the USPTO. We were required to include detailed search logs, which were primarily autogenerated using the USPTO's internal search tools. Basically, every query I made was listed. Often this was hundreds of queries for a particul…

> LLM prompts and responses, if not automatically logged, can easily be automatically logged.

What will you do with what you’ve logged? Where is “the prompt” when the chat is a chat? What prompt “made” the software?

If you’re assuming that it is prompt > generation > release, that’s not a correct model at all. The model is *much* closer to conversations between engineers which you’ve indicated would be burdensome to log and noisy to review.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#123

Post by dang »

selridge wrote: post #119
dang wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe you don't have the necessary perspective to understand what you're asking for Please don't cross into personal attack. You're making fine points, and that's enough. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Btw, I think this is a particularly good point: "You might as well ask for a record of the conversations between two engineers while code was being written. That's what the chat is." That's a good r…

"maybe you don't have the necessary perspective to understand what you're asking for" this is in no way a personal attack. It's just a statement that's true. I didn't imply anything about them or their character or limitations, but they might not have the necessary perspective if that's the question they are asking. I think it's critically important people figure out what they want to learn from what's being shared.…

> I think it's critically important people figure out what they want to learn from what's being shared.

> What do you need from submitters here? Even setting aside the burden of supplying it, what do you hope to learn?

I appreciate your comments on this - they are the most interesting responses I've seen so far about this question (so I hope the meta stuff doesn't get too much in the way).

The hope is to make the submissions of AI-generated Show HNs more interesting than they are when someone submits just a repo with generated code and a generated README.

The question is what could, at least in principle, be supplied that could have this desired effect.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#124

Post by dang »

selridge wrote: post #119
dang wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe you don't have the necessary perspective to understand what you're asking for Please don't cross into personal attack. You're making fine points, and that's enough. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Btw, I think this is a particularly good point: "You might as well ask for a record of the conversations between two engineers while code was being written. That's what the chat is." That's a good r…

"maybe you don't have the necessary perspective to understand what you're asking for" this is in no way a personal attack. It's just a statement that's true. I didn't imply anything about them or their character or limitations, but they might not have the necessary perspective if that's the question they are asking. I think it's critically important people figure out what they want to learn from what's being shared.…

(I thought I'd fork my reply to keep the meta stuff separate from the interesting stuff)

I believe you that it wasn't your intention, but when you address someone in the second person while commenting negatively on their perspective and understanding, it's going to land with a lot of readers (as it did with me) as personally pejorative. It's common for commenters (me too of course) not to perceive the provocations in their own posts, while being extra sensitive to the provocations in others' posts. If the skew is 10x both ways, that's quite a combination. It's necessary to remember and compensate for the skew, a la "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear".

Edit: total coincidence but I just noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115097 and made a similar reply there. I thought you might find this amusing, as I did.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#125

Post by btrettel »

selridge wrote: post #122
btrettel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe you don't have the necessary perspective to understand what you're asking for. I disagree. Thinking about this more, I can give an example from my time working as a patent examiner at the USPTO. We were required to include detailed search logs, which were primarily autogenerated using the USPTO's internal search tools. Basically, every query I made was listed. Often this was hundreds of queries for a particul…

> LLM prompts and responses, if not automatically logged, can easily be automatically logged. What will you do with what you’ve logged? Where is “the prompt” when the chat is a chat? What prompt “made” the software? If you’re assuming that it is prompt > generation > release, that’s not a correct model at all. The model is * much* closer to conversations between engineers which you’ve indicated would be burdensome to…

> What will you do with what you’ve logged?

Could be a wide variety of things. I'd be interested in how rigorously a software was developed, or if I can learn any prompting tricks.

> Where is “the prompt” when the chat is a chat?

> The model is much closer to conversations between engineers which you’ve indicated would be burdensome to log and noisy to review.

I disagree. Yes, prompts build on responses to past prompts, and prompts alone are not the full story. But exactly the same thing is true at the USPTO if you replace "prompts" with "search queries" and no one is claiming that their autogenerated search logs are burdensome.

Also, the burden in actual conversations would come from the fact that such conversations are often not recorded in the first place. And now that I think about it, some organizations do record many meetings, so it might be easier than I'm thinking.

> What prompt “made” the software?

All of them.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#126

Post by nly »

> Most of my past side projects would take me a few minutes or hours to build with Claude Code. Today, they’re not worth talking about.

Chances are they were never worth talking about, but that doesn't mean the journey wasn't worth it.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#127

Post by [deleted] »

selridge wrote: post #120
dang wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know! We'd have to figure something out along the way. Btw I realize "prompt" is no longer the right word for this but I don't know what a better term would be. "Conversation with LLM" is too clumsy.

I really have no idea. There's almost no good mapping from conversation to code. Take e.g. https://github.com/Protonk/PAWL There's...thousands of conversations in dozens of different configurations over months to make that. What...out of that do you want to know? What do you deserve to know by dint of my making a submission? Those aren't rhetorical. I think if you can answer those two, that's a fair start. Good luck…

[deleted]

Re: I hate AI side projects

#128

Post by LEDThereBeLight »

dang wrote: post #115
selridge wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Share the prompts” How would that be feasible for a project of any complexity whatsoever?

I don't know! We'd have to figure something out along the way. Btw I realize "prompt" is no longer the right word for this but I don't know what a better term would be. "Conversation with LLM" is too clumsy.

The submitter could decide and curate what is useful to be shared, whether that’s exact message logs, or the subagents and skills they think made the difference.

Re: I hate AI side projects

#129

Post by LEDThereBeLight »

frizlab wrote: post #99
tjr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's quite at trillions to zero, but I do think the numbers are way, way out of balance so far. I'm still at the point where, if AI disappeared tomorrow, I would be, at worst, mildly inconvenienced.

> if AI disappeared tomorrow, I would be, at worst, mildly inconvenienced And I think the same is true for quite a lot of people. It’s a thing I said a few months ago while discussing with someone about AI. “If AI was to go away, would you care? Compare with if smartphones were to go away.” Most people would not blink twice if AI were to be removed. Try to remove their phones, would not be the same!

It’s not a helpful comparison because it’s too early. If the first iPhone went away, no one would care. Once software is rearchitected around AI, it will look a lot different. Your phone won’t need UIs that are as complex, because we can just tell AI what to change or open or do.
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