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Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

martinfowler.com

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Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#231

Post by rolisz »

johnnienaked wrote: post #221
computerex wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology has always helped people. Are you one of the people that say optimizing compilers are bad? Do you not use the intellisense? Or IDEs? Do you not use higher level languages? Why not write in assembly all the time? No free lunch right. Yes there are trade offs, but at this point if you haven’t found a way to significantly amplify and scale yourself using llms, and your plan is to instead pretend that they are…

Technology does not always help people, in fact often it creates new problems that didn't exist before. Also telling someone to "adapt to the times" is a bit silly. If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it. A LOT of parallels with crypto, which is still trying to find its killer app 16 years later.

Paul Krugman (Nobel laureate in economy) said in 1998 that the internet is no biggie. Many companies needed convincing to adopt the internet (heck, some still need convincing).

Would you say the same thing ("If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it.") about the internet?

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#232

Post by creesch »

Difwif wrote: post #230
johnnienaked wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology does not always help people, in fact often it creates new problems that didn't exist before. Also telling someone to "adapt to the times" is a bit silly. If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it. A LOT of parallels with crypto, which is still trying to find its killer app 16 years later.

My parents could have said your first paragraph when I tried to teach them they could Google their questions and find answers. Technology moves forward and productivity improves for those that move with it.

> Technology moves forward and productivity improves for those that move with it.

It does not, technology regresses just as often and linear deterministic progress is just a myth to begin with. There is no guarantee for technology to move forward and always make things better.

There are plenty of examples to be made where technology has made certain things worse.

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#233

Post by nicce »

colordrops wrote: post #229
johnnienaked wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one seems to be able to grasp the possibility that AI is a failure

You've failed to figure out when and how to use it. It's not a binary failed/succeeded thing.

None of the copyright issues or suicide cases are handled in the court yet. There are many aspects.

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#234

Post by johnnienaked »

colordrops wrote: post #229
johnnienaked wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one seems to be able to grasp the possibility that AI is a failure

You've failed to figure out when and how to use it. It's not a binary failed/succeeded thing.

Metaverse was...

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#235

Post by johnnienaked »

Difwif wrote: post #230
johnnienaked wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology does not always help people, in fact often it creates new problems that didn't exist before. Also telling someone to "adapt to the times" is a bit silly. If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it. A LOT of parallels with crypto, which is still trying to find its killer app 16 years later.

My parents could have said your first paragraph when I tried to teach them they could Google their questions and find answers. Technology moves forward and productivity improves for those that move with it.

Why is productivity so important? When do regular people get to benefit from all this "progress?"

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#236

Post by brabel »

johnnienaked wrote: post #221
computerex wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology has always helped people. Are you one of the people that say optimizing compilers are bad? Do you not use the intellisense? Or IDEs? Do you not use higher level languages? Why not write in assembly all the time? No free lunch right. Yes there are trade offs, but at this point if you haven’t found a way to significantly amplify and scale yourself using llms, and your plan is to instead pretend that they are…

Technology does not always help people, in fact often it creates new problems that didn't exist before. Also telling someone to "adapt to the times" is a bit silly. If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it. A LOT of parallels with crypto, which is still trying to find its killer app 16 years later.

I don’t think anyone needs to be convinced at this point. Every developer is using LLM and I really can’t believe someone who has made a career out of automating things wouldn’t be immediately drawn to trying them at least. Every single company seems convinced and using it too. The comparison to crypto makes no sense.

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#237

Post by johnnienaked »

brabel wrote: post #236
johnnienaked wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology does not always help people, in fact often it creates new problems that didn't exist before. Also telling someone to "adapt to the times" is a bit silly. If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it. A LOT of parallels with crypto, which is still trying to find its killer app 16 years later.

I don’t think anyone needs to be convinced at this point. Every developer is using LLM and I really can’t believe someone who has made a career out of automating things wouldn’t be immediately drawn to trying them at least. Every single company seems convinced and using it too. The comparison to crypto makes no sense.

I need to be convinced.

Go ahead, convince me. Please describe clearly and concisely in one or two sentences the clear economic value/advantage of LLMs.

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#238

Post by computerex »

johnnienaked wrote: post #221
computerex wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology has always helped people. Are you one of the people that say optimizing compilers are bad? Do you not use the intellisense? Or IDEs? Do you not use higher level languages? Why not write in assembly all the time? No free lunch right. Yes there are trade offs, but at this point if you haven’t found a way to significantly amplify and scale yourself using llms, and your plan is to instead pretend that they are…

Technology does not always help people, in fact often it creates new problems that didn't exist before. Also telling someone to "adapt to the times" is a bit silly. If it helped as much as its claimed, there wouldn't be any need to try and convince people they should be using it. A LOT of parallels with crypto, which is still trying to find its killer app 16 years later.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#239

Post by globular-toast »

utyop22 wrote: post #157
jeppester wrote: post #107

In my company I feel that we getting totally overrun with code that's 90% good, 10% broken and almost exactly what was needed. We are producing more code, but quality is definitely taking a hit now that no-one is able to keep up. So instead of slowly inching towards the result we are getting 90% there in no time, and then spending lots and lots of time on getting to know the code and fixing and fine-tuning everything…

"but quality is definitely taking a hit now that no-one is able to keep up." And its going to get worse! So please explain to me how in the net, you are going to be better off? You're not. I think most people haven't taken a decent economics class and don't deeply understand the notion of trade offs and the fact there is no free lunch.

Yep, my strong feeling is that the net benefit of all of this will be zero. The time you have to spend holding the LLM hand is almost equal to how much time you would have spent writing it yourself. But then you've got yourself a codebase that you didn't write yourself, and we all know hunting bugs in someone else's code is way harder than code you had a part in designing/writing.

People are honestly just drunk on this thing at this point. The sunken cost fallacy has people pushing on (ie. spending more time) when LLMs aren't getting it right. People are happy to trade convenience for everything else, just look at junk food where people trade in flavour and their health. And ultimately we are in a time when nobody is building for the future, it's all get rich quick schemes: squeeze then get out before anyone asks why the river ran dry. LLMs are like the perfect drug for our current society.

Just look at how technology has helped us in the past decades. Instead of launching us towards some kind of Star Trek utopia, most people now just work more for less!

Re: Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

#240

Post by versteegen »

achierius wrote: post #156
CuriouslyC wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten Claude Code to make CUDA kernels and all kinds of advanced stuff that there's zero percent chance a junior would pull off. AI is like a super advanced senior wearing a blindfold. It knows almost everything, it's super fast, and it gets confused pretty quickly about things after you tell it.

You'd be surprised at what juniors can pull off. I have seen fresh-out-of-college new grads write performant GPU kernels that are used in real world library implementations for particular architectures.

Of course they can. It doesn't take that long to learn CUDA/etc and hardware details, read through some manuals and performance guides, do some small projects to solidify that knowledge. What you need is talent, and some months. That's why at university I saw plenty of students pull off amazing projects, and there's nothing eyebrow-raising in the slightest about starting a PhD a year after getting a bachelor's and writing software more sophisticated than most programmers would write in their career.

I think the programming profession overvalues experience over skill. However, when I was young I had no appreciation for what the benefits of experience are... including not writing terrible code.

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