Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What it feels like to work with Mythos

oneusefulthing.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 337 posts

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#181

Post by magarnicle »

petesergeant wrote: post #45
matneyx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Claude's defense (and I cannot believe I'm defending it), I know no single dev who could create what it did (Concord), from a 19-page design document, in 9.5 working hours. We're gonna go back to the days where our bosses ask why we're just sitting around, but instead of saying "compiling," we'll just say, "waiting for Claude."

Sadly I didn't get very many answers to my Ask HN, "What are you doing during inference?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944917

Drawing.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#183

Post by phil21 »

bathtub365 wrote: post #158
an0malous wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s true, I think these authors are making a much stronger claim that AI is proficient or even an expert at software engineering. This author describes how complex and sophisticated their software is, and the only value he’ll concede to “coders” is that there might be a few bugs they’d need to fix. Imagine not being an architect and using Claude to put together a building plan, then concluding it’s b…

Why do they even need coders to fix these bugs? It would be an order of magnitude (at least) to ask Claude to find and fix them, and it will likely be successful. Building in the physical world has physical and time constraints that cannot be overcome, which is one of the reasons architecture (and engineering) are so important in this domain. In software development these constraints were only inherent when people we…

> I think the entire definition of technical debt has changed. I’ve been sceptical of these tools and still approach their output with caution.

This very well summarizes my current thinking on the subject as well. And most of my career has been playing the role of technical debt nazi. Much to the detriment of my earning potential.

Does AI make incredibly inefficient code most of the time? Yup. But it does it at lightspeed with minimal effort.

I think many software engineers forget they exist to get real things done (in many cases at least) and they are a cost center for most businesses. If your end product is not selling software, very few people actually Doing the Thing(tm) will give a single solitary care about code quality or maintainability when they can just spend 30 minutes and $15 worth of tokens to fix it.

It won't take over everything, but I've already seen otherwise very intelligent go-getter type folks who are not technical or know how to code made extremely useful things for themselves and their small little enterprises. And this will seemingly only get better and more efficient.

For someone who really does love the idea of well architected and future-proof code this is just icky to even say or consider. But I'm coming around to this is the future for the majority of software for most places. And it may have the ability to seriously even the playing field for small enterprises in some industries.

I'm currently using it to implement a zillion side projects at home I've been "meaning to get to" for years. It makes incredibly silly unmaintainable code most of the time - but I learned to not care, and just tell the AI bot to fix it/add to it as I go along. Worst-case I spend a single night deleting it all and starting from zero to "refactor" an entire thing.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#184

Post by rgmerk »

theturtletalks wrote: post #29

This is what he built: https://isochronic-passage-chart.netlify.app/ Doesn’t work too well on mobile but looks interesting

It put the chart title directly on top of Australia.

Which just about sums up my experience with using LLMs to code, really (though not with these state-of-the-art models, admittedly) - it's amazing what they can do, but left to their own devices they'll make boneheaded decisions.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#185

Post by andai »

eithed wrote: post #38

What I find fascinating that there is so little substance in this article about the quality of produced code and the medium. Is the code documented and tested? Is it understandable and extendable? Is it secure? What language, framework, database was used? Author mentions judgement and taste - well, is the code tasteful? Will the model rearchitecture the entire thing if I ask it to add new functionality, spending anot…

These days it's uneconomical for human to verify AI generated code. So we ask the AI to do it. Like when we asked the FBI to audit itself and they found no problems :)

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#186

Post by aix1 »

eithed wrote: post #143
chickensong wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don't care about the ingredients or engineering of asphalt, only if the road does its job well or is filled with potholes. Outside of the software industry, nobody gives a shit about code or databases.

I agree. But if I'm paying for the road (even as a taxpayer) I get angry that after a year it's full of potholes and that there are unnecessary signs warning about penguin crossing, making it cost 2 times more than it should have (and dont get me started why this road is really a highway leading to my house). I'd want certain qualities. And this article is basically = you will get a road, built quickly But yes, you a…

> And this article is basically = you will get a road, built quickly

That's not how I am reading it. You will get a road built exactly to your spec, quickly. So no penguin crossings unless you ask for them.

I am also not entirely sure how the pothole argument translates.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#187

Post by aix1 »

ImaCake wrote: post #178
theturtletalks wrote: post #29

This is what he built: https://isochronic-passage-chart.netlify.app/ Doesn’t work too well on mobile but looks interesting

It's fun and it looks good regardless of whether its 100% correct (It would certainly take me more than 9 hours of work to do better than this). Making these bespoke tools possible for most people is a big deal.

The UI is full of glitches: the legend that's placed right on top of Australia, the title that doesn't fit in the box, the crosshair that doesn't accurate track the cursor, the pixellated fonts along the perimeter, the unreadable colour combinations in the overlay, the rendering glitches along the axes when you flip from tab to tab and so on and so forth.

It's like someone took a beatiful, intricate piece of vintage jewellry and made a slapdash imitation out of cheap plastic.

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#188

Post by swader999 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #142
warkdarrior wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pay me significantly more Ha ha, that's how you negotiate yourself out of a job!

Fire me then, I can bring someone else drastically more value with AI tooling.

"I can bring your competitors drastically more value with AI tooling"

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#189

Post by majormajor »

qaq wrote: post #92
cgearhart wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m starting to realize that LLMs are really good at building low-stakes projects. Your questions mostly presume that the stakes are higher. The software will last a long time; the requirements will evolve; we can’t tolerate mistakes; etc. The trick to getting good at using LLMs for software is to learn how to make _all_ projects low-stakes.

You don't need LLM for that. You make _all_ projects low-stakes by working on green field project using (insert buzzword soup of the day) and leaving for a new green field opportunity (that requires experience with buzzword soup of the day) before the project ships.

In the LLM world you never get a chance to get paid to work on those greenfield projects because the person with the idea is churning the prototyping and discovery work themselves.

If you want to get paid to work on software, you get involved after its found success and the stakes get higher.

(Which assumes there are still significant areas where economies of scale reward that vs everybody just having their own DIY version of everything.)

Re: What it feels like to work with Mythos

#190

Post by majormajor »

rpdillon wrote: post #136
cgearhart wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m starting to realize that LLMs are really good at building low-stakes projects. Your questions mostly presume that the stakes are higher. The software will last a long time; the requirements will evolve; we can’t tolerate mistakes; etc. The trick to getting good at using LLMs for software is to learn how to make _all_ projects low-stakes.

This is really insightful, but I think it also extends to making the project either low stakes or low complexity. I have this lurking feeling that the preferable architecture for software will change as a result of LLMs because they're good at working on low complexity modular components more than they are on high complexity million-line code bases.

They aren't necessarily as great at building low-complexity high-modularity components, though. ;)

Unless you know enough to tell them to! And keep them honest about it...

Post reply on HN