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I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

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Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#201

Post by alfalfasprout »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #144
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, in my experience, if there is the slightest error in the first sentence of the chain of thought, it tends to get worse and worse. I've had prompts that would generate a reasonable response in llama, but turn out utter garbage in Deepthink.

But how is this any different from real humans? They are not always right either. Sure, humans can understand things better, but are we really going to act like LLMs can't get better in the next year? And what about the next 6 months? I bet there are unknown startups like Deepseek that can push the frontier further.

The ways in which humans err are very different. You have a sense of your own knowledge on a topic and if you start to stray from what you know you're aware of it. Sure, you can lie about it but you have inherent confidence levels in what you're doing.

Sure, LLMs can improve but they're ultimately still bound by the constraints of the type of data they're trained on and don't actually build world models through a combination of high bandwidth exploratory training (like humans) and repeated causal inference.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#202

Post by KronisLV »

schmookeeg wrote: post #44
KronisLV wrote: post #16

In my experience LLMs will help you with things that have been solved thousands of times before and are just a matter of finding some easily researched solution. The very moment when you try to go off the beaten path and do something unconventional or stuff that most people won't have written a lot about, it gets more tricky. Just consider how many people will know how to configure some middleware in a Node.js projec…

Brilliant. I have fought the "lowest cognitive load" code-style fight forever at my current gig, and I just keep losing to the "watch this!" fancytowne code that mids love to merge in. They DO outnumber me, so... fair deuce I suppose. There is value in code being readable by Juniors and LLMs -- hell, this Senior doesn't want to spend time figuring out your decorators, needless abstractions and syntax masturbation. I…

While I think this comment got flagged (probably for the way it was worded), you aren't wrong! A good way I've heard a similar thought expressed is that code should be not only easy to maintain, but also throw away and replace, which more or less urges you towards writing the easiest things you can get away with (given your particular performance requirements and other constraints).

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#203

Post by tacticalDonut »

swatcoder wrote: post #140
EarthMephit wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that LLMs are almost comically bad at projects that have a hardware component like RaspberryPi or Pico, or Ardunio. I think that its because often the libraries you use are niche or have a a few similar versions, the LLM really commonly hallucinated solutions and would continually suggest that library X did have that capability. I think because often in hardware projects you often hit a point where you can't d…

Actually, it's because many of the people writing tutorials and sharing answers about that stuff don't know what the hell they're doing or grasp the fundamentals of how those systems work and so most of the source material the LLM's are trained on is absolute garbage. Public Arduino, RPi, Pico communities are basically peak cargo cult, with the blind leading the blind through things they don't understand. The noise i…

Any book or course recommendations for someone who has a senior SWE background but has never touched hardware/embedded systems?

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#204

Post by x0x0 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #179
janderson215 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that you’re both using LLMs the same way you’d use SO and that’s the reason you see such similarities? The reason I ask is because it doesn’t not match my experience. It feels more like I’m able to Matrix-upload docs into my brain like Trinity learning to fly a helicopter.

I am using it like stack overflow in the sense that I’m solving a problem and I’m using it to answer questions when I’m in an unfamiliar or non-obvious place in the problem space. If I have a question about a first order language or framework feature or pattern, it works great. If I have a question about a second order problem, like an interaction between language or framework features, or a logical inconsistency in…

Same. I use it to bootstrap my writing a react native app from pretty low familiarity with React.

It's pretty good at writing screens in broad strokes. You will have to fill in some details.

The exact details of correctly threading data through; or prop drilling vs alternatives; the rules around wrapping screens to use them in React Navigation? It's terrible at them.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#206

Post by zackproser »

potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

This

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#207

Post by justinclift »

BalinKing wrote: post #190
satvikpendem wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs fall over miserably at even very simple pure math questions They are language models, not calculators or logic languages like Prolog or proof languages like Coq. If you go in with that understanding, it makes a lot more sense as to their capabilities. I would understand the parent poster to mean that they are able to ask and rapidly synthesize information from what the LLM tells them, as a first start rather t…

Of course that's fair advice in itself, but the parent specifically equated them to a "college professor."

Maybe that should be "college art professor" then? :)

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#208

Post by justinclift »

simonw wrote: post #72
talldayo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. That's complicated, but I wouldn't say the resulting software is complex. You gave an LLM a repetitive, translation-based job, and you got good results back. I can also believe that an LLM could write up a dopey SAAS in half the time it would take a human to do the same. But having the right paramet…

A tool that can "write up a dopey SAAS in half the time it would take a human to do" is a pretty incredible thing to add to your toolbox!

Pity about the direct injection SQL vulnerabilities though?

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#209

Post by dagw »

jrmg wrote: post #145
EarthMephit wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that LLMs are almost comically bad at projects that have a hardware component like RaspberryPi or Pico, or Ardunio. I think that its because often the libraries you use are niche or have a a few similar versions, the LLM really commonly hallucinated solutions and would continually suggest that library X did have that capability. I think because often in hardware projects you often hit a point where you can't d…

I was just today trying to fix some errors in an old Linux kernel version 3.x.x .dts file for some old hardware, so that I could get a modern kernel to use it. ChatGPT seemed very helpful at first - and I was super impressed. I thought it was giving me great insight into why the old files were now producing errors … except the changes it proposed never actually fixed anything. Eventually I read some actual documentat…

Eventually I read some actual documentation...

For the best of both worlds make the LLM first 'read' the documentation, and then ask for help. Make a huge difference in the quality and relevance of the answers you get.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#210

Post by ASalazarMX »

almostdeadguy wrote: post #198
janderson215 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that you’re both using LLMs the same way you’d use SO and that’s the reason you see such similarities? The reason I ask is because it doesn’t not match my experience. It feels more like I’m able to Matrix-upload docs into my brain like Trinity learning to fly a helicopter.

I'm sorry, what?

> It feels more like I’m able to Matrix-upload docs into my brain like Trinity learning to fly a helicopter

Did you puzzle about this sentence specifically? Imagine you don't know jack about flying helicopters, then Tank uploads the Helicopter Pilot Program (TM) directly to your brain; it would feel like magic.

Conversely, if you know a lot about helicopters, just not enough to fly a B-212, and the program includes instructions like "Press (Y) and Left Stick to hover", you'd know it's confabulating real world piloting with videogames.

That's the same with LLMs, you need to know a lot of the field to ask the right questions, and recognize/correct slop or confabulation, otherwise they seem much more powerful and smart than they really are.

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