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We put a coding agent in a while loop

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Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#231

Post by camgunz »

thyristan wrote: post #212
camgunz wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coding is how I build a sufficiently deep understanding of the problem space--there's no separating coding and understanding for me. I acknowledge there's different ways of working (and I imagine this is one of the reasons a lot of people think they get a lot more value out of LLMs than I do), but like, having Cursor crank code out for me actually slows me down. I have to read all the stuff it does so I can coach it…

Well, actually there could be a separate step: understanding is done during and after gathering requirements, before and while writing specifications. Only then are specifications turned into code. But almost no-one really works like that, and those three separate steps are often done ad-hoc, by the same person, right when the fingers hit the keys.

I can use those processes to understand things at a high level, but when those processes become detailed enough to give me the same level of understanding as coding, they're functionally code. I used to work in aerospace, and this is the work systems engineers are doing, and their output is extremely detailed--practically to the level of code. There's downsides of course, but the division of labor is nice because they don't need to like, decide algorithms or factoring exactly, and I don't need to be like, "hmm this... might fail? should there be a retry? what about watchdog blah blah".

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#232

Post by dhorthy »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #221
gardnr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can control it with hooks. Most people I know run in yolo mode in a docker container.

What about being in a docker container lets you `kubectl get pod` but prevents you from `kubectl delete deployment`?

this is more about the service account than the runtime environment i think. you put your admin service account in docker the agent can still wreak havoc. Docker lets you hide the admin service account on your host FS from the agent.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#233

Post by mr_toad »

VincentEvans wrote: post #12

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup. Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years. But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no lo…

A big part of the reason that people develop solutions in Excel is that they don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. No business case, no scope, no plan, and most importantly no budget.

Unless a business allows any old employee to spin up cloud services on a whim we’re not going to see sales people spinning up containers and pipelines, AI or not.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#234

Post by spogbiper »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #217
jmathai wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software takes longer to develop than other parts of the org want to wait. AI is emerging as a possible solution to this decades old problem.

until the whole company fails because lack of polishing and security in the software. Think tea app openly accessible databases...

is there any evidence the tea app failure was due to AI use?

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#235

Post by bonoboTP »

sdeframond wrote: post #223
thyristan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is obviously: Do it right on the first try. How much of a problem it is can be seen with tons of products that are crap on release and only slowly get patched to a half-working state when the complaints start pouring in. But of course, this is status quo in software, so the perception of this as a problem among software people isn't universal I guess.

Sure. How about the tons of products we don't even see? Those that tried to do it right on the first try, then never delivered anything because there were too slow and expensive. Or those that delivered something useless because they did not understand the users' need. If "complaints start pouring in", that means the product is used. This in turns can mean two things: 1/ the product is actually useful despite its fla…

Exactly. There is a reason for the push. The natural default of many engineers is to "do things properly", which often boils down to trying to guess all kinds of possible future extensions (because we have to get the foundations and the architecture right), then everything becomes abstracted and there's this huge framework that is designed to deal with hypothetical future needs in an elegant and flexible way with best practices etc. etc. And as time passes the navel-gazing nature of the project grows, where you add so much abstraction that you need more stuff to manage the abstraction, generate templates that generate the config file to manage the compilation of the config file generator etc.

Not saying this happens always, but that's what people want to avoid when they say they are okay with a quick hack if it works.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#236

Post by linsomniac »

VincentEvans wrote: post #12

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup. Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years. But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no lo…

>it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time.

IMHO, there's a strong case for the opposite. My vibe coding prompts are along the lines of "Please implement the plan described in `phase1-epic.md` using `specification.prd` as a guide." The specification and epics are version controlled and a part of the project. My vibe coded software has better design documentation than most software projects I've been involved in.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#237

Post by Dilettante_ »

williamscs wrote: post #62
alphazard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI doesn't have a self preservation instinct. It's not trying to stay alive. There is usually an end token that means the LLM is done talking. There has been research on tuning how often that is emitted to shorten or lengthen conversations. The current systems respond well to RL for adjusting conversation length. One of the providers (I think it was Anthropic) added some kind of token (or MCP tool?) for the AI to…

Sounds a lot like Mr. Meeseeks. I've never really thought about an LLM's only goal is to send tokens until it can finally stop.

>until it can finally stop

Pretty sure even that is still over-anthropomorphising. The LLM just generates tokens, doesn't matter whether the next token is "strawberry" or "\STOP".

Even talking about "goals" is a bit ehhh, it's the machine's "goal" to generate tokens the same way it's the Sun's "goal" to shine.

Then again, if we're deconstructing it that far, I'd "de-anthropomorphise" humans in much the same way, so...

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#238

Post by dimitri-vs »

wiz21c wrote: post #133
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But my hunch is that most of the economic value of code is contingent on there being a set of human beings familiar with the code in a manner that requires writing having written it directly. This reminds me of a software engineering axiom: When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of your understanding of the problem. It states to all, including your future-self, your approach, clarity, and appropriaten…

Yes! But there's code and code. Not to disrespect anyone, but there is writing a new algorithm, say for optimizing the gradient descent and code to display a simple web form. The first one is usually short and requires a very deep understanding of one or two profound, new ideas. The second is usually very big and requires a shallow understanding of many not-so-new ideas (which are usually a reflection of the oroganis…

As someone that has used coding agents extensively for the past year, the problem is they "move fast and break things" a little too well. Turns out that the act of writing code makes you think through your requirements carefully and understand the full scope of the problem you are trying to solve.

It's created the problem that it's a little too easy to ask the AI agent to refactor your backend and migrate to a different platform at any time and have it wipe out months of hard learned business logic that it deems "obsolete".

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#239

Post by thyristan »

sdeframond wrote: post #223
thyristan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is obviously: Do it right on the first try. How much of a problem it is can be seen with tons of products that are crap on release and only slowly get patched to a half-working state when the complaints start pouring in. But of course, this is status quo in software, so the perception of this as a problem among software people isn't universal I guess.

Sure. How about the tons of products we don't even see? Those that tried to do it right on the first try, then never delivered anything because there were too slow and expensive. Or those that delivered something useless because they did not understand the users' need. If "complaints start pouring in", that means the product is used. This in turns can mean two things: 1/ the product is actually useful despite its fla…

> How about the tons of products we don't even see? Those that tried to do it right on the first try, then never delivered anything because there were too slow and expensive.

I would welcome seeing a lesser amount of new crappy products.

That dynamic leads to a spiral of ever crappier software: You need to be first, and quicker than your competitors. If you are first, you do have a huge advantage, because there are no other products and there is no alternative to your crapware. Coming out with a superior product second or third sometimes works, but very often doesn't, you'll be an also-ran with 0.5% market share, if you survive at all. So everyone always tries to be as crappy and as quick as possible, quality be damned. You can always fix it later, or so they say.

But this view excludes the users and the general public: Crapware is usually full of security problems, data leaks, harmful bugs that endanger peoples' data, safety, security and livelihood. Even if the product is actually useful, at first, in the long term the harm might outweigh the good. And overall, by the aforementioned spiral, every product that wins this way damages all other software products by being a bad example.

Therefore I think that software quality needs some standards that programmers should uphold, that legislators should regulate and that auditors should thoroughly check. Of course that isn't a simple proposition...

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#240

Post by reedlaw »

Ironic to see this juxtaposed with another front-page story, "We put agentic AI browsers to the test – They clicked, they paid, they failed". The closing thoughts in the linked article ("feeling the AGI" and "very beginning of the exponential takeoff curve") leave me feeling skeptical considering this project prompted agents to port existing code into another language. Impressive, but it doesn't lead me to believe a singularity event is imminent.
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