One could argue that having an LLM churn out code is not programming.
r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
171–180 of 236 posts
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#172Good decision. AI programming is fundamentally different from programming and as such the discussions merit to have separate forums. If r/programming wants to be the one solely focusing on programming then power to them. Discussing both in combination also makes sense, but the value of reddit is having a subreddit for anything and “just programming” should be on the list.
Sure, but if r/programming can't include the combination/hybrid then the whole subreddit is likely doomed to obsolescence. That genie's not going back into the lamp. (Heck, I've leaned on LLMs to generate damned SwiftUI code for me.)
Sheer nonsense. Handcoding is thriving and will easily survive long into the future, especially after the bubble bursts (which is already happening).
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
There genuinely is a lot of interesting discussion to be had about LLMs, and I know this is true because I discuss things with my coworkers daily and learn a lot. I do admit that conversation online about LLMs is frequently lacking. I think it's a bit like politics - everyone has an opinion about it, so unfortunately online discourse devolves to the lowest common denominator. Hey guys, have you noticed that if you us…
For me, almost every single time a conversation like this happens in real life it boils down to the one side claiming that "This is the future" and "Don't get left behind" followed by a torrent of hype and buzzwords. So no, there is no interesting conversations to be had about LLM programming anymore.
Maybe you struggle to have good conversations because I just provided an anecdote and you immediately stated that my anecdote is false? If this is how you typically interact with people I’m not surprised you’re not having interesting conversations.
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Favourite genres of posts on HN in the past 2 years: * “I am bullish about AI” * “I am an AI skeptic, [long rambling], but overall, I am bullish about AI” It’s amazing how even criticism of the technology somehow ends up being a hype post. At least there are still places on the Internet where we can have a serious discussion about the downsides.
As someone who wrote recently wrote the latter post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183527 ), the more nuanced approach that "AI has good and bad things" is a more real-world reflective approach than an absolute "AI is good" or "AI is bad", and at the least it's more conductive for civil discussion.
"Asbestos has good and bad things"
"Assault rifles in the hands of ordinary citizens has good and bad things"
"Everyday chemicals in the food supply has good and bad things"
Look, some issues require nuance. Others don't. It's gaslighting to tell activists who consider Big AI to be a net negative for society (by an order of magnitude!) that their position isn't "real-world reflective".
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you consider "serious", as that seems to be the main differentiator here. I know plenty of serious (multiple years of development and users, and began prior to LLMs) projects that have devs using LLMs for development.
That makes me curious, would you like to list them?
They aren't anything particularly special, most projects I interact with have at least 1 dev who uses LLMs in some capacity.
The two I was thinking of when I posted are the Minecraft modpack GregTech: New Horizons, and an Old School Runescape plugin.
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s juvenile to consider all LLM assisted coding as vibecoding. I’m not going to expand here because this topic is about as much fun to discuss as politics, but coding assistant tools are just tools. If you give a regular person a race car, they will crash it about as fast as their vibecoded app crashes. Give the same race car to a pro age it’s a different story. I still think this was the right decision by the prog…
Nah I think it really is more nuanced than that. It is true that a non-technical person's vibe-coded side-hustle is completely different than how a professional developer may ship genAI code, but we're willfully glossing over the real problem that professionals are pushing out TONS of genAI code that's closer to vibes than it is to the pre-AI expectations on pushing to prod.
Devs that are pushing crappy code using these tools are
1) devs who would have pushed shut code anyways
2) getting stress from above to push code faster with AI
Good devs will learn to use these tools effectively.
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#177I gave up on r/programming after an article I wrote (thoughtfully, without AI, even though the content might not have been super interesting) got mod-slapped with a stickied comment "This content is low quality, stolen, blogspam, or clearly AI generated". Ironically, that comment was added three months after I posted the article, when it was nowhere near the front page anymore, in a clearly automated and AI-driven re…
Reddit is a low-quality platform, the sorts of people who would be interested in moderating a popular subreddit like r/programming are even less fit to be moderators than the average moderator is. It would be better if people completely stopped using the platform.
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Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope: > Timing just worked out this way. New month, ideal timing for testing a new rule.
Or so one says. (Not necessarily saying that it was a bad decision.)
What evidence of malice supports your claims here?
(Evidence-free conspiracy theories are generally unwelcome at HN.)
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully this does not devolve into ‘nuh-uh’-‘it is too’ but I disagree. Even putting aside the AI engineering part where you use a model as a brick in your program. Classic programming is based on assumption that there is a formal strict input language. When programming I think in that language, I hold the data structures and connections in my head. When debugging I have intuition on what is going on because I know…
This is the same argument that people used to have against compilers
It is not. One version of a compiler on one platform transforms a specific input into an exact and predictable artefact.
A compiler will tell you what is wrong. On top of that the intent is 100% preserved even when it is wrong.
An LLM will transform an arbitrarily vague input into an output. Adding more specification may or may not change the output.
There is a fundamental difference between asking for “make me a server in go that answers with the current time on port 80” and actually writing out the code where you _have to_ make all decisions such as “wait in what format” beforehand. (And using the defaults is also making a decision - because there are defaults)
Compilers have undefined behaviour. UB exists in well defined places.
Even a 100% perfect LLM that never makes mistakes has, by definition, UB everywhere when spec lacks.
Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes me curious, would you like to list them?
They aren't anything particularly special, most projects I interact with have at least 1 dev who uses LLMs in some capacity. The two I was thinking of when I posted are the Minecraft modpack GregTech: New Horizons, and an Old School Runescape plugin. https://github.com/gtnewhorizons https://github.com/osrs-reldo/tasks-tracker-plugin
I see. I would not consider these to be serious projects.
I'm sure they give people joy, and contain some decent problem solving, but they are both small extensions to existing software, and are not really solving interesting new problems or creating their own systems.