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How I write software with LLMs

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Re: How I write software with LLMs

#21

Post by ashwinsundar »

simonw wrote: post #14
ashwinsundar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you aren't writing code, designing the system, creating architecture, or even writing the prompt, then you're not understanding shit. You're playing slots with stochastic parrots The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I'd have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can't fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until i…

Your Karpathy quote there is out of context. It starts with: https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding. If you're paying attention to the code that's being produced you can guide it towards being just as high q…

It's appropriate for the commenter I was replying to, who asked how they can understand things, "while having never even read most of their code."

I like AI-assisted programming, but if I fail to even read the code produced, then I might as well treat it like a no-code system. I can understand the high-levels of how no-code works, but as soon as it breaks, it might as well be a black box. And this only gets worse as the codebase spans into the tens of thousands of lines without me having read any of it.

The (imperfect) analogy I'm working on is a baker who bakes cakes. A nearby grocery store starts making any cake they want, on demand, so the baker decides to quit baking cakes and buy them from the store. The baker calls the store anytime they want a new cake, and just tells them exactly what they want. How long can that baker call themself a "baker"? How long before they forget how to even bake a cake, and all they can do is get cakes from the grocer?

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#22

Post by akhrail1996 »

Genuine question: what's the evidence that the architect → developer → reviewer pipeline actually produces better results than just... talking to one strong model in one session?

The author uses different models for each role, which I get. But I run production agents on Opus daily and in my experience, if you give it good context and clear direction in a single conversation, the output is already solid. The ceremony of splitting into "architect" and "developer" feels like it gives you a sense of control and legibility, but I'm not convinced it catches errors that a single model wouldn't catch on its own with a good prompt.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#23

Post by xhale »

Hi, anyone has a simple example/scaffold how to set up agents/skills like this? I’ve looked at the stavrobots repo and only saw an AGENTS.md. Where do these skills live then?

(I have seen obra/superpowers mentioned in the comments, but that’s already too complex and with an ui focus)

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#24

Post by lelele »

jumploops wrote: post #20

This is similar to how I use LLMs (architect/plan -> implement -> debug/review), but after getting bit a few times, I have a few extra things in my process: The main difference between my workflow and the authors, is that I have the LLM "write" the design/plan/open questions/debug/etc. into markdown files, for almost every step. This is mostly helpful because it "anchors" decisions into timestamped files, rather than…

> The main difference between my workflow and the authors, is that I have the LLM "write" the design/plan/open questions/debug/etc. into markdown files, for almost every step. > > This is mostly helpful because it "anchors" decisions into timestamped files, rather than just loose back-and-forth specs in the context window.

Would you please expand on this? Do you make the LLM append their responses to a Markdown file, prefixed by their timestamps, basically preserving the whole context in a file? Or do you make the LLM update some reference files in order to keep a "condensed" context? Thank you.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#25

Post by roncesvalles »

borski wrote: post #12
silisili wrote: post #10

I'm not sure the notion I keep seeing of "it's ok, we still architect, it just writes the code"(paraphrased) sits well with me. I've not tested it with architecting a full system, but assuming it isn't good at it today... it's only a matter of time. Then what is our use?

LLMs can build anything. The real question is what is worth building, and how it’s delivered. That is what is still human. LLMs, by nature of not being human, cannot understand humans as well as other humans can. (See every attempt at using an LLM as a therapist) In short: LLMs will eventually be able to architect software. But it’s still just a tool

FWIW I find LLMs to be excellent therapists.

The commercial solutions probably don't work because they don't use the best SOTA models and/or sully the context with all kinds of guardrails and role-playing nonsense, but if you just open a new chat window in your LLM of choice (set to the highest thinking paid-tier model), it gives you truly excellent therapist advice.

In fact in many ways the LLM therapist is actually better than the human, because e.g. you can dump a huge, detailed rant in the chat and it will actually listen to (read) every word you said.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#26

Post by eclipxe »

indigodaddy wrote: post #7
marcus_holmes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that reference you give is pretty dated now, based on a talk from August which is the Beforetimes of the newer models that have given such a step change in productivity. The key change I've found is really around orchestration - as TFA says, you don't run the prompt yourself. The orchestrator runs the whole thing. It gets you to talk to the architect/planner, then the output of that plan is sent to another agent, aut…

Can you bolt superpowers onto an existing project so that it uses the approach going forward (I'm using Opencode), or would that get too messy?

Yes. But gsd is even better - especially gsd2

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#28

Post by PAndreew »

silisili wrote: post #10

I'm not sure the notion I keep seeing of "it's ok, we still architect, it just writes the code"(paraphrased) sits well with me. I've not tested it with architecting a full system, but assuming it isn't good at it today... it's only a matter of time. Then what is our use?

Others have already partially answered this, but here’s my 20 cents. Software development really is similar to architecture. The end result is an infrastructure of unique modules with different type of connectors (roads, grid, or APIs). Until now in SW dev the grunt work was done mostly by the same people who did the planning, decided on the type of connectors, etc. Real estate architects also use a bunch of software tools to aid them, but there must be a human being in the end of the chain who understands human needs, understands - after years of studying and practicing - how the whole building and the infrastructure will behave at large and who is ultimately responsible for the end result (and hopefully rewarded depending on the complexity and quality of the end result). So yes we will not need as many SW engineers, but those who remain will work on complex rewarding problems and will push the frontier further.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#29

Post by thenthenthen »

Haha love the Sleight of hand irregular wall clock idea. I once had a wall clock where the hand showing the seconds would sometimes jump backwards, it was extremely unsettling somehow because it was random. It really did make me question my sanity.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#30

Post by borski »

roncesvalles wrote: post #25
borski wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs can build anything. The real question is what is worth building, and how it’s delivered. That is what is still human. LLMs, by nature of not being human, cannot understand humans as well as other humans can. (See every attempt at using an LLM as a therapist) In short: LLMs will eventually be able to architect software. But it’s still just a tool

FWIW I find LLMs to be excellent therapists. The commercial solutions probably don't work because they don't use the best SOTA models and/or sully the context with all kinds of guardrails and role-playing nonsense, but if you just open a new chat window in your LLM of choice (set to the highest thinking paid-tier model), it gives you truly excellent therapist advice. In fact in many ways the LLM therapist is actually…

Please, please, please don’t make this mistake. It is not a therapist. At best, it might be a facsimile of a life coach, but it does not have your best interests in mind.

It is easy to convince and trivial to make obsequious.

That is not what a therapist does. There’s a reason they spend thousands of hours in training; that is not an exaggeration.

Humans are complex. An LLM cannot parse that level of complexity.

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