The quote at the center of this posting uses poetic language like "dialogue" to make a certain class of work seem virtuous. I find it very difficult to take this kind of framing seriously. What are the data to back this up? We are at the phase of LLM use where the data on productivity gains and their impact hasn't arrived yet. Postings like this fill the vacuum with fuzzy language.
Computer Says No
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Computer Says No
#22> This is a great insight. For software engineers coding is the way to fully grasp the business context. > By programming, they learn how the system fits together, where the limits are, and what is possible. From there they can discover new possibilities, but also assess whether new ideas are feasible. Maybe I have a different understanding of "business context", but I would argue the opposite. AI tools allow me to s…
It’s perplexing; like the majority of people who insist using AI coding assistance is guaranteed going to rob you of application understanding and business context aren’t considering that not every prompt has to be an instruction to write code. You can, like, ask the agent questions. “What auth stack is in use? Where does the event bus live? Does the project follow SoC or are we dealing with pasta here? Can you trace these call chains and let me know where they’re initiated?”
If anything, I know more about the code I work on than ever before, and at a fraction of the effort, lol.
Re: Computer Says No
#23The gist ("product becomes a black box") applies to any abstraction. It could apply to high-level languages (including so-called "low-level" languages like C), and few people criticize those. But LLMs are particularly insidious because they're a particularly leaky abstraction. If you ask an LLM to implement something: - First, there's only a chance it will output something that works at all - Then, it may fail on edg…
How is this different than giving a person requirements and asking them to implement something.
Re: Computer Says No
#24For those unaware, the title is a reference to a Little Britain skit
Re: Computer Says No
#25The gist ("product becomes a black box") applies to any abstraction. It could apply to high-level languages (including so-called "low-level" languages like C), and few people criticize those. But LLMs are particularly insidious because they're a particularly leaky abstraction. If you ask an LLM to implement something: - First, there's only a chance it will output something that works at all - Then, it may fail on edg…
> Even if LLMs get better, English itself is a bad programming language, because it's imprecise and not modular.
I absolutely agree. I've only dabbled in AI coding, but every time I feel like I can't quite describe to it what I want. IMO we should be looking into writing some kind of pseudocode for LLMs. Writing code is the best way to describe code, even if it's just pseudocode.
Re: Computer Says No
#26I love the framing here. However, I think what a lot of people don't realize is the reason a lot of executives and business users are excited about AI and don't mind developers getting replaced is because product is already a black box.
They'll start minding when things start breaking. In the mean time I'll work on stuff AI is still not so great at.
Re: Computer Says No
#27If your computer says No just ditch it and buy a non-Apple computer.
One with Windows 11?
A bit OT: Only if you can return the licence in return for payback. I did this (checks wiki entry...) 16 years ago [1] with a server which came with a Windows Home Server licence. It was not so much about the actual licence costs - I got about $68/€48 after having sent in all licence details/stickers/labels/etc - but about sending the message that I did not want to be forced to use Windows (the hardware was not available without the licence).
That server did its job for about 10 years with a few upgrades - more drives and a faster CPU - and really only needed replacement because of the low max memory limit. Its successor ended up being a DL380 G7 which is still in use, the Scaleo Home Server annex Intel SS4200 now waits in the barn for potential re-use as a backup server.
[1] http://ss4200.pbworks.com/w/page/5122767/Windows%20refund%20...
Re: Computer Says No
#28If you are a painter, you don't need to know chemical formulas for the pigments you're using to have a direct touch to your creation.
For me, that material conciousness in computers was always in grasping the way system works holistically. To feel the system. To treat it as almost a living organism.
Re: Computer Says No
#29To an extend, AI can help with explaining what the code does. So, computer says why it says "no".
Or says random stuff pretending it is the reason.
Re: Computer Says No
#30> This is a great insight. For software engineers coding is the way to fully grasp the business context. > By programming, they learn how the system fits together, where the limits are, and what is possible. From there they can discover new possibilities, but also assess whether new ideas are feasible. Maybe I have a different understanding of "business context", but I would argue the opposite. AI tools allow me to s…
It’s perplexing; like the majority of people who insist using AI coding assistance is guaranteed going to rob you of application understanding and business context aren’t considering that not every prompt has to be an instruction to write code. You can, like, ask the agent questions. “What auth stack is in use? Where does the event bus live? Does the project follow SoC or are we dealing with pasta here? Can you trace…
The project managers and CEOs who are vibe-coding apps on the weekend don't know what an "auth stack" is, much less that they should consider which auth stack is in use. Then when it breaks, they hand their vibe-coded black box to their engineers and say "fix this, no mistakes"