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Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

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Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#231

Post by baq »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #207
baq wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO there's usually a lot of necessary complexity that is irrelevant to the actual problem; logging, observability, error handling, authn/authz, secret management, adapting data to interfaces for passing to other services, etc. Diagrams and pseudocode allow to push those inconveniences into the background and focus on flows that matter.

Precisely that. As you say, this complexity is both necessary and irrelevant to the actual problem. Now, I claim that the main thing that's stopping advancement in our field is that we're making a choice up front on what is relevant and what's not. The "actual problem" changes from programmer to programmer, and from hour to the next. In the morning, I might be tweaking the business logic; at noon, I might be debuggin…

I'd love this to be possible. We're analyzing projections from the solution space to the understandability plane when discussing systems - but going the other way, from all existing projections to the solution space, is what we do when we actually build software. If you're saying you want to synthesize systems from projections, LLMs are the closest thing we've got and... it maybe sometimes works.

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#232

Post by TeMPOraL »

baq wrote: post #231
TeMPOraL wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely that. As you say, this complexity is both necessary and irrelevant to the actual problem. Now, I claim that the main thing that's stopping advancement in our field is that we're making a choice up front on what is relevant and what's not. The "actual problem" changes from programmer to programmer, and from hour to the next. In the morning, I might be tweaking the business logic; at noon, I might be debuggin…

I'd love this to be possible. We're analyzing projections from the solution space to the understandability plane when discussing systems - but going the other way, from all existing projections to the solution space, is what we do when we actually build software. If you're saying you want to synthesize systems from projections, LLMs are the closest thing we've got and... it maybe sometimes works.

Yeah, LLMs seem like they'll allow us to side-step the difficult parts by synthesizing projections instead of maintaining them. I.e. instead of having a well-defined way to go back and forth between a specific view and underlying code (e.g. "all the methods in all the classes in this module, as a database", or "this code, but with error handling elided", or "this code, but only with types and error handling", or "how components link together, as a graph", etc.), we can just tell LLMs to synthesize the views, and apply changes we make in them to the underlying code, and expect that to mostly work - even today.

It's just hell of an expensive way to get around doing it. But then maybe at least a real demonstration will convince people of the utility and need of doing it properly.

But then, by that time, LLMs will take over all software development anyway, making this topic moot.

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#233

Post by pegasus »

WD-42 wrote: post #219
TeMPOraL wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mistake was going after programmers, instead of going after programming languages , where the actual problem is. UML may be ugly and in need of streamlining, but the idea of building software by creating and manipulating artifacts at the same conceptual level we are thinking at any given moment, is sound. Alas, we've long ago hit a wall in how much cross-cutting complexity we can stuff into the same piece of plai…

I’ve heard this many times before but I’ve never heard an argument that rebukes the plain fact that text is extremely expressive, and basically anything else we try to replace it with less so. And it happens that making a von Neumann machine do precisely what you want requires a high level of precision. Happy to understand otherwise!

How so? Even just hypertext is more expressive than plain text. So is JSON, or any other data format or programming language which has a string type for that matter.

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#234

Post by TeMPOraL »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #221
TeMPOraL wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one that isn't > 90% fluff and human interaction sounds.

Conversations with Tyler Cowen, Complex Systems with patio11 are two off the top of my head that concentrate on useful information, and certainly aren't "> 90% fluff and human interaction sounds". Unless of course people talking in any capacity is human interaction sounds, in which case, yes, every podcast is > 90% human interaction sounds.

Thanks. I didn't realize 'patio11 even has a podcast, I'll definitely want to listen to that one.

> Unless of course people talking in any capacity is human interaction sounds, in which case, yes, every podcast is > 90% human interaction sounds.

No, I specifically mean all the thing that is not content - hellos, jokes, emoting, interrupting, exchanging filler commentary, etc. It may add character to the show, but from the POV of efficiently summarizing a topic, it's fundamentally even worse than the enterprisey BS fluff in the example in question.

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#235

Post by handfuloflight »

hn8726 wrote: post #208
handfuloflight wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that solve the problem of closed models being better than open models?

There is no problem. OP said we should be using open _agents_, not open _models_. You can use an open agent with any model, open or closed, while using something like Claude Code locks you in to one model vendor

I know what OP said and I asked a question in turn.

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#236

Post by throwawayoldie »

xorcist wrote: post #230
bigiain wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years before UML/Java it was "4th Generation Languages" that were going to bring "Application Development Without Programmers" to businesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...

The 4GL was mostly reporting languages, as I remember. Useful ones, too. I still feel we haven't been even close to utilizing specialized programming languages and toolkits. Put another way, I am certain that Unity has done more to get non-programmers to develop software than ChatGPT ever will.

I'd argue first prize for that goes to Excel (for a sufficiently broad definition of "develop software").

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#237

Post by WD-42 »

pegasus wrote: post #233
WD-42 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard this many times before but I’ve never heard an argument that rebukes the plain fact that text is extremely expressive, and basically anything else we try to replace it with less so. And it happens that making a von Neumann machine do precisely what you want requires a high level of precision. Happy to understand otherwise!

How so? Even just hypertext is more expressive than plain text. So is JSON, or any other data format or programming language which has a string type for that matter.

Those are all still text.

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#238

Post by datameta »

eru wrote: post #170
datameta wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human speech evolved with biological constraints and through neurological adaptions to emit and understand the nonlinear output that has lexically fuzzy areas to the untrained ear. So I think it's a rather "lossy" analog to digital conversion because the computer is simulating understanding of a form of information transfer that it itself is not constrained by (digital systems don't have vocal cords and could transmi…

You could say that about any form of human communication at all.

Does every other form of human communication have an analog in digital systems that has both the capability to be "better" while also putting a lot of resources into modeling the relatively nonlinear human version?

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#239

Post by godelski »

lunarboy wrote: post #29
godelski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A constant reminder: you can't have wizards without having noobs. Every wizard was once a noob. No one is born that way, they were forged. It's in everybody's interest to train them. If they leave, you still benefit from the other companies who trained them, making the cost equal. Though if they leave, there's probably better ways to make them stay that you haven't considered (e.g. have you considered not paying new…

I'm sure people (esp engineers) know this. But imagine you're starting a company: would you try to deploy N agents (even if shitty), or take a financial/time/legal/social risk with a new hire. When you consider short-term costs, the math just never works out in favor of real humans.

Every single time I post my comment I get this response...

1) There is no universal rule for anything. It doesn't have to apply to every single case. No one is saying a startup needs to hire juniors. No one is saying you have to hire only juniors. We haven't even talked about the distribution tbh. That's very open to interpretation because it is implicit that you will have to modify that based on your context.

2) Lots of big companies still act like they're startups. You're right, that short term "the math" doesn't work out. But it does on the medium and long term. So basically as long as you aren't working at the bootstrapping stage of a startup, you want to start considering this. Different distributions for different stages, of course.

But you shouldn't sacrifice long term rewards for short term ones. You are giving up larger rewards...

Re: Snorting the AGI with Claude Code

#240

Post by godelski »

TuringNYC wrote: post #52
godelski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A constant reminder: you can't have wizards without having noobs. Every wizard was once a noob. No one is born that way, they were forged. It's in everybody's interest to train them. If they leave, you still benefit from the other companies who trained them, making the cost equal. Though if they leave, there's probably better ways to make them stay that you haven't considered (e.g. have you considered not paying new…

>> A constant reminder: you can't have wizards without having noobs. Try telling that to companies with quarterly earnings. Very few resist the urge to optimize for the short term.

  > Try telling that to companies with quarterly earnings.
Who do you think I'm saying it to?
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