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AI coding is gambling

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Re: AI coding is gambling

#171

Post by ModernMech »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #146
thendrill wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see alot of people get really confused between the act of writing code VS. programming... Programming is willing the machine to do something... Writing code is just that writing code, yes sometimes you write code to make the machine do something and other times you write code just to write code ( for example refactoring, or splitting logic from presentation etc.) Think about it like this... Everyone can write words…

Programming is writing code. There's nothing to confuse because that's what the word means.

They're saying writing code is programming but not all programming is writing code. What is Scratch?

Re: AI coding is gambling

#172

Post by throw4847285 »

simonw wrote: post #153
throw4847285 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two major mistakes here. The first is equating human and LLM intelligence. Note that I am not saying that humans are smarter than LLMs. But I do believe that LLMs represent an alien intelligence with a linguistic layer that obscures the differences. The thought processes are very different. At top AI firms, they have the equivalent of Asimov's Susan Calvin trying to understand how these programs think, beca…

> And, if we're being honest, the way people talk about interns is weirdly dehumanizing, and the fact that they are always trotted out in these AI debates is depressing. Yeah, I agree with that. That thought crossed my mind as I was posting this comment, but I decided to go with it anyway because I think this is one of those cases where I think the comparison is genuinely useful. We delegate work to humans all the ti…

True. I think that's why my second point is much stronger. The main issue is not delegation, or human vs machine intelligence. It's the instant feedback.

Human collaboration has always been slow and messy. Large tech companies have always looked for ways to speed up the feedback loop, isolating small chunks of work to be delegated to contractors or offshore teams. LLMs have supercharged that. If you have a skilled prompter you can get to a solution of good enough quality by rapidly iterating, asking for output, correcting the prompt, etc.

That is good in that if you legitimately have good ideas and the block is execution speed. But if the real blocker is elsewhere, it might give you the illusion of progress.

I don't know. Everything is changing too fast to diagnose in real time. Let's check back in a year.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#173

Post by applfanboysbgon »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #92

All of this new capability has made me realize that the reason i love programming _isn't_ the same as the OP. I used to think (and tell others) that I loved understanding something deeply, wading through the details to figure out a tough problem. but actually, being able to will anything I can think of into existence is what I love about programming. I do feel for the people who were able to make careers out of falli…

> but I finally feel like I'm _good_ at programming, which is insane

Yes, it is insane. You couldn't torture this confession out of me. But that's the drug they're selling you, isn't it? You don't even write code, but you're getting a self-inflated sense of worth. It must be addicting! Of course, whether or not the programs you prompt are actually good surely has no relation to whether you feel they're good, since you're not the one writing them, and apparently were not capable of writing them before so are not qualified to review them very much.

> having tools that can finally match the speed my ideas come to me

Anyone can be an "ideas guy". We laughed at those people, because having ideas is not the hard part. The hard part was in all of the hundreds and thousands of little details that go into building the ideas into something actually worthwhile, and that hasn't changed. LLMs can build an idea into a prototype in a weekend. I am still waiting to see LLMs build an idea into something other people use at scale, once, ever, other than LLM wrappers. Either every person who is all-in on vibes only has ideas that consist of making .md files and publishing them as a "meta agent framework", or LLMs are not actually doing a great job of translating ideas into tangibly useful software.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#174

Post by lunar_mycroft »

simonw wrote: post #95
lunar_mycroft wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Interns learn. LLMs only get better when a new model comes out, which will happen (or not) regardless of whether you use them now. 2. Who here thinks that having interns write all/almost all of your code and moving all your mid level and senior developers to exclusively reviewing their work and managing them is a good idea?

I don't know that the "humans learn, LLMs don't" argument holds any more with coding agents. Coding agents look at existing text in the codebase before they act. If they previously used a pattern you dislike and you tell them how to do differently, the next time they run they'll see the new pattern and are much more likely to follow that example. There are fancier ways of having them "learn" - self-updating CLAUDE.md…

In some ways these methods are similar to the model "learning", but it's also fundamentally different than how models are trained and how humans learn. If a human actually learns something, they're retain that even if they no longer have access to what they learned it from. And LLM won't (unless trained by the labs not to, which is out of scope). If you stop giving it the instructions, it won't know how to do the thing you were "teaching" it to do any more.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#175

Post by krupan »

Verdex wrote: post #111
DiscourseFan wrote: post #101

When a code doesn't compile, it doesn't kill anyone. But if a Waymo suddenly veers off the road, it creates a real threat. Waymos had to be safer than real human drivers for people to begin to trust them. Coding tools did not have to be better than humans for them to be adopted first. Its entirely possible for a human to make a catastrophic error. I imagine in the future, it will be more likely that a human makes suc…

My understanding is that waymo has gone on the record to say that they have human operators that remotely drive the vehicle in scenarios where their automated system is confused. Which I assert is semantically equivalent to saying: Human drivers (even when operating at the diminished capacity of not even being present in the car) are less likely to make errors driving a car than AIs.

This is getting off topic but they did not say the remote humans drive the cars. The cars always drive themselves, the remote humans provide guidance when the car is not confident in any of the decisions it could make. The humans define a new route or tell the car it's ok to proceed forward

Re: AI coding is gambling

#176

Post by MrScruff »

zer00eyz wrote: post #102
acedTrex wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I get a huge rush of dopamine seeing LLMs build out complex features very quickly I dont think i've read a sentence on this website i can relate to less. I watch the LLM build things and it feels completely numb, i may as well be watching paint dry. It means nothing to me.

I wonder if the difference here is age/experience or what you're working on/in. When I was 20, writing code was interesting, by the time I was 28 it became "solving the problem" and then moved on to "I only really enjoy a good disaster to clean up". All of my time has been spent solving other peoples problems, so I was never invested in the domain that much.

Yeah, I used to enjoy writing code but after a while I realised I actually more enjoy creating tools that I (and other people) liked to use. Now I can do that really quickly even with my very limited free time, at a higher level of abstraction, but it's still me designing the tool.

And despite the amount of people telling me the code is probably awful, the tools work great and I'm happily using them without worrying about the code anymore than I worry about the assembly generated by a compiler.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#177

Post by MattGaiser »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #104
itsgrimetime wrote: post #92

All of this new capability has made me realize that the reason i love programming _isn't_ the same as the OP. I used to think (and tell others) that I loved understanding something deeply, wading through the details to figure out a tough problem. but actually, being able to will anything I can think of into existence is what I love about programming. I do feel for the people who were able to make careers out of falli…

> but I finally feel like I'm _good_ at programming, which is insane, because I literally haven't written a line of code myself in months This is exactly the sort of mentality that makes me hate this technology You finally feel good at programming despite admitting that you aren't actually doing it Please explain why anyone should take this seriously?

Different definitions of programming.

OP defines it as getting the machine to do as he wants.

You define it as the actual act of writing the detailed instructions.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#178

Post by deepfriedrice »

bensyverson wrote: post #114
deepfriedrice wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the perfect metaphor? Playing correctly/optimally is +EV. But nobody starts there, and many people don't ever get there. The main difference is that you're exploiting your own weaknesses, rather than others'. Limitations in typing speed, information gathering, pattern recognition.

In that case, couldn't you substitute painting, horseback riding or knitting? Nothing about poker has anything to do with agentic coding except "it's something you can learn."

In poker some people are gambling. Some may be self-ware, but many aren't and misunderstand why they win or lose. Poker inconsistently and unreliably rewards gambling, much like vibe-coding.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#179

Post by simplyluke »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #146
thendrill wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see alot of people get really confused between the act of writing code VS. programming... Programming is willing the machine to do something... Writing code is just that writing code, yes sometimes you write code to make the machine do something and other times you write code just to write code ( for example refactoring, or splitting logic from presentation etc.) Think about it like this... Everyone can write words…

Programming is writing code. There's nothing to confuse because that's what the word means.

Is it? I wouldn't consider punch cards writing code but they were certainly programming. Programming is a broader concept than code in a text file.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#180

Post by jsLavaGoat »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #160
smlacy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the analogy but which 2 is AI coding? Fast & Cheap (but not Good?) - I wouldn't really say that AI coding is "cheap" Cheap & Good (but not Fast) - Again, not really "cheap" Fast & Good (but not Cheap) - This seems like maybe where we're at? Is this a bad place?

It's not cheap or good, it's just fast.

It's fast. It's cheap compared to employees. It's really the latter that people are upset about.

As for good. Well, how much software is really good? A lot of it is sewn together APIs and electron-like runtimes and 5,000 dependencies someone else wrote. Not exactly hand-crafted and artisanal.

I'm sure everyone here's projects are the exception, but engineering is always about meeting the design requirements. Either it does or it doesn't.

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