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Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

worksonmymachine.substack.com

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Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#211

Post by ChadNauseam »

baxter001 wrote: post #192
dustincoates wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repl.it is so hit or miss for me, and that's that is so frustrating. Like, it can knock out something in minutes that would have taken me an afternoon. That's amazing. Then other times, I go to create something that is suggested _by them below the prompt box_ and it can't do it properly.

The fact that you think it was suggested _by_ them is I think where your mental model is misleading you. LLMs can be thought of metaphorically as a process of decompression, if you can give it a compressed form for your scenario 1 it'll go great - you're actually doing a lot of mental work to arrive at that 'compressed' request, checking technical feasibility, thinking about interactions, hinting at solutions. If you…

I don't think that the suggestions in the prompt box are being automatically generated on the fly for everyone. At least I don't see why they would be. Why not just have some engineers come up with 100 prompts, test them to make sure they work, and then hard-code those?

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#212

Post by skydhash »

rhdunn wrote: post #116
zwnow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are relaxing and the AI is coding? Neat! Way to replace yourself, hope you won't cry after your job once it is gone.

I'm using AI assistants as an interactive search and coding assistant. I'm still driving the development and implementing the code. Where I use it for is: 1. Remembering what something is called -- in my case the bootstrap pills class -- so I could locate it in the bootstrap docs. Google search didn't help as I couldn't recall the right name to enter into it. For the AI I described what I wanted to do and it gave the…

Why I don't bother with LLMs for the above is:

1. I usually just pull up the docs for the CSS framework, give it a quick look over to know what it offers and the nomenclature and then keep it open for all the code examples.

2. I've serialized json in enough languages to know the pain points, so what I usually do is locate the module/library responsible for that in that language. And then give the docs/code sample a quick lookover to know where things are.

3. With nice IDEs, you launch the debugger and you have a nice stack frame to go through. In languages with not so great tooling, you hope for a trace.

It's not that your workflow won't yield result. But I prefer to be able to answer 5 successive why's about the code I'm working on. With PRs taking hours and days to be merged, it's not like I'm in an hurry.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#213

Post by refactor_master »

ikerino wrote: post #78
lordnacho wrote: post #15

I'm loving the new programming. I don't know where it goes either, but I like it for now. I'm actually producing code right this moment, where I would normally just relax and do something else. Instead, I'm relaxing and coding. It's great for a senior guy who has been in the business for a long time. Most of my edits nowadays are tedious. If I look at the code and decide I used the wrong pattern originally, I have to…

Hot take: Junior devs are going to be the ones who "know how to build with AI" better than current seniors. They are entering the job market with sensibilities for a higher-level of abstraction. They will be the first generation of devs that went through high-school + college building with AI.

Like the iPad babies and digital natives myth? I don’t think that really went anywhere. So a new generation of… native prompters? Ehhh.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#216

Post by skydhash »

majormajor wrote: post #46
ivanjermakov wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Search has just become Chat I think chat-like LLM interfacing is not the most efficient way. There has to be a smarter way.

I think Photoshop is a good guide here. Famously complicated interface with a million buttons and menus. Now there's more buttons for the AI tools. Because at the end of the day, using a "brush" tool to paint over the area containing the thing you want it to remove or change in an image is MUCH simpler than trying to tell it that through chat. Some sort of prompt like "please remove the fifth person from the left sta…

> Famously complicated interface with a million buttons and menus.

Photoshop is quite nice for an expert tool. Blender is the complicated one where you have to get a full-sized keyboard and know a handful of shortcuts to have a normal pace.

> The former could have a lot of value for casual amateur use; it's not going to replace the precise, high-functionality tool for professional use.

I was just discussing that in another thread. Most expert works are routine, and they will build workflows, checklists, and processes to get them to be done with the minimum cognitive load. And for that you need reliability. Their focus are on the high leverage decision points. Take any digital artist's photoshop settings, They will have a specific layout, a few document templates, their tweaked brushes. And most importantly, they know the shortcuts because clicking on the tiny icons takes too much times.

The trick is not about being able to compute, it's knowing the formula and just give the parameters to a computer that will do the menial work. It's also not about generating a formula that may or may not be what we want.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#217

Post by Mtinie »

roxolotl wrote: post #200
nirvanatikku wrote: post #9

This article is spot on. I had stumbled upon Kidlin’s Law—“If you can write down the problem clearly, you’re halfway to solving it”. This is a powerful guiding principle in today’s AI-driven world. As natural language becomes our primary interface with technology, clearly articulating challenges not only enhances our communication but also maximizes the potential of AI. The async approach to coding has been most fasc…

The challenge is that clearly stating things is and always has been the hard part. It’s awesome that we have tools which can translate clear natural language instructions into code but even if we get AGI you’ll still have to do that. Maybe you can save some time in the process by not having to fight with code as much but you’re still going to have to create really clear specs which, again, is the hard part.

Excellent. That’s what we should be doing, with or without AI. It’s hard, but it’s critical.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#218

Post by pkoird »

d00mB0t wrote: post #38

"I'd wander into my office, check what Claude had built, test it real quick. If it worked, great! Commit and push." Man, I'm going to make so much money as a Cybersecurity Consultant!

Potentially. But also remember what they say about self-driving cars, that it'd make fewer and fewer mistakes than a real driver.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#220

Post by gronglo »

wiremine wrote: post #138

I've been experimenting with model-based development lately, and this resonated strongly with me. The section "What Even Is Programming Anymore?" hit on a lot of the thoughts and feels I've been going through. I'm using all my 25+ years of experience and CS training, but it's _not_ programming per se. I feel like we're entering an era where we're piloting a set of tools, not hand crafting code. I think a lot of peopl…

> I think a lot of people (who love crafting) will be leaving the industry in the next 5 years, for better or worse.

I think you're spot on. It was once necessary to acquire knowledge in order to acquire productivity. This made knowledge valuable and worth attaining. Now, with LLMs, we we can skip the middle man and go straight to the acquisition of productivity. I'd call it the democratisation of knowledge, but it's something more than that — knowledge just isn't needed anymore.

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