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Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

simonwillison.net

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Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#191

Post by lukan »

rane wrote: post #184
lukan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding" I more often heard the argument, they are not useful for them. I agree. If a LLM would be trained on my codebase and the exact libaries and APIs I use - I would use them daily I guess. But currently they still make too many misstake and mess up different APIs for example, so not useful to me, except for small experiments. But if I…

The idea is that you give the libraries and APIs as context with your prompt.

Thank you. But that doesn't work for me.

If you mean just the name of the version in the prompt? No way.

If you mean all the libary and my code in the contextwindow?

Way too small.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#192

Post by cjbgkagh »

fragmede wrote: post #143
cjbgkagh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would the new applications be for? I figure that it’ll be far easier to build apps for use by LLMs than building apps for people to use. I don’t think there will be this large increase of induced demand, the whole world just got a lot more efficient and that’s probably a bad thing for the average person.

take some process that you, or someone you know does right now that involves spreadsheets and copy-pasting between various apps. hiring a software engineer to build an app so it's just a [do-it] button previously didn't make sense because software engineer time was too expensive. Now, that app can be made, so the HR or whatever person doesn't need to waste their time on automatable tasks.

I'm pretty sure a LLM can be taught to press a button

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#193

Post by butlike »

jeswin wrote: post #86
simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

> That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I worry about junior developers. It will be a while before vocational programming courses retool to teach this new way of writing code, and these are going to be te…

CS Fundamentals are CS fundamentals, whether you're writing the B-tree or spot-checking it.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#194

Post by sarasasa28 »

jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

I mean, I don't know when do you retire in your countries. Here, it's at 65 years old (ridiculous)

I am 30 and even before AI, I NEVER thought for a moment I would get to keep coding until I am f*king 65, lol

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#195

Post by faizshah »

20k wrote: post #139
WhitneyLand wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time AI achieves something new/productive/interesting, cue the apologists who chime in to say “well yeah but that really just decomposes into this stuff so it doesn’t mean much”. I don’t get why people don’t understand that everything decomposes into other things. You can draw the line for when AI will truly blow your mind anywhere you want, the point is the dominoes keep falling relentlessly and there’s no end…

The thing is, that's not true at all. AI is great for some tasks, and poor for other tasks. That's the reason to break it down like this, because people are trying to explain where AI will and won't revolutionise things, instead of following along with the already-popping AI bubble uncritically For example: AI's smash translation. They won't ever beat out humans, but as an automated solution? They rock. Natural langu…

I just wrote up a very similar comment. It’s really nice to see that there are other people who understand the limits of LLM in this hype cycle.

Like all the people surprised by Deepseek when it has been clear for the last 2 years there is no moat in foundation models and all the value is in 1) high quality data that becomes more valuable as the internet fills with AI junk 2) building the UX on top that will make specific tasks faster.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#196

Post by butlike »

LeFantome wrote: post #173
sitkack wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have already entered a new paradigm of software development, where small teams build software for themselves to solve their own problems rather than making software to sell to people. I think selling software will get harder in the future unless it comes with special affordances.

I think some of the CEOs have it right on this one. What is going to get harder is selling “applications” that are really just user friendly ways of getting data in and out of databases. Honestly, most enterprise software is just this. AI agents will do the same job. What will still matter is software that constrains what kind of data ends up in the database and ensures that data means what it is supposed to. That so…

Maybe, but it's the same argument trickling down. You'll need the CRUD-apps because you hired Cindy to press the button, and if shit goes pear-shaped, you can point to Cindy in the post-mortem. If it's some AI agent pressing the button to egress data from the database, and there's an anomaly, then it's a systemic failure at a macro level at that company, which is harder to write a press release about.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#197

Post by AlwaysRock »

simonw wrote: post #52
jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

Yup. People who know how to use it, and who work on tasks where LLM code is generally functional, are getting more done in less time.

I don't trust companies to translate that to, "We can do more now" rather than, "We can do more with less people now" though.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#198

Post by bigpingo »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #102
20k wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh it performed a 1:1 conversion of ARM NEON to wasm SIMD, which with the greatest will in the world is pretty trivial work. Its something that ML is good at, because its the same problem area as "translate this from english to french", but more mechanistic This is a task that would likely have taken as long to write by hand as the AI took to do it, given how long the actual task took to execute. 98% of the work is f…

Every time AI achieves something new/productive/interesting, cue the apologists who chime in to say “well yeah but that really just decomposes into this stuff so it doesn’t mean much”. I don’t get why people don’t understand that everything decomposes into other things. You can draw the line for when AI will truly blow your mind anywhere you want, the point is the dominoes keep falling relentlessly and there’s no end…

I have always had the same line:

AI will blow my mind when it solves an unsolved mathematical/physics/scientific problem, i.e: "AI, give me a proof for (or against) the Riemann hypothesis"

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#199

Post by simonw »

bigpingo wrote: post #198
WhitneyLand wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time AI achieves something new/productive/interesting, cue the apologists who chime in to say “well yeah but that really just decomposes into this stuff so it doesn’t mean much”. I don’t get why people don’t understand that everything decomposes into other things. You can draw the line for when AI will truly blow your mind anywhere you want, the point is the dominoes keep falling relentlessly and there’s no end…

I have always had the same line: AI will blow my mind when it solves an unsolved mathematical/physics/scientific problem, i.e: "AI, give me a proof for (or against) the Riemann hypothesis"

That happened back in 2023: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/14/1085318/google-d...

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#200

Post by AlwaysRock »

aibot923 wrote: post #178
simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

It's interesting. Maybe I'm in the bigtech bubble, but to me it looks like there isn't enough work for everyone already. Good projects are few and far between. Most of our effort is keeping the lights on for the stuff built over the last 15-20 years. We're really out of big product ideas.

Good projects !== work

There is a lot of work. Plenty of it just isnt super fun or interesting.

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