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My AI Adoption Journey

mitchellh.com

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Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#251

Post by wiether »

tmtvl wrote: post #217
libraryofbabel wrote: post #53

This is such a lovely balanced thoughtful refreshingly hype-free post to read. 2025 really was the year when things shifted and many first-rate developers (often previously AI skeptics, as Mitchell was) found the tools had actually got good enough that they could incorporate AI agents into their workflows. It's a shame that AI coding tools have become such a polarizing issue among developers. I understand the reasons…

I will give Claude Code a trial run if I can run it locally without an internet connection. AI companies have procured so much training data through illegal means you have to be insane to trust them in even the smallest amount.

You can run OpenCode in a container restricted to local network only and communicating with local/self-hosted models.

Claude Code is linked to Anthropic's hosted models so you can't achieve this.

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#252

Post by wiether »

chrysoprace wrote: post #93
libraryofbabel wrote: post #53

This is such a lovely balanced thoughtful refreshingly hype-free post to read. 2025 really was the year when things shifted and many first-rate developers (often previously AI skeptics, as Mitchell was) found the tools had actually got good enough that they could incorporate AI agents into their workflows. It's a shame that AI coding tools have become such a polarizing issue among developers. I understand the reasons…

I think for a lot of people the turn off is the constant churn and the hype cycle. For a lot of people, they just want to get things done and not have to constantly keep on top of what's new or SOTA. Are we still using MCPs or are we using Skills now? Not long ago you had to know MCP or you'd be left behind and you definitely need to know MCP UI or you'll be left behind. I think. It just becomes really tiring, especi…

> Or if a company provides a model that's as good value that can be used with OpenCode.

OpenAI's Codex?

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#253

Post by latexr »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #249
latexr wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't call architects 'vibe architects' even though (…) > We don't call builders 'vibe builders' for (…) > When was the last time (…) None of those are the same thing. At all. They are still all deterministic approaches. The architect’s library of things doesn’t change every time they use it or present different things depending on how they hold it. It’s useful because it’s predictable. Same for all your other e…

I think the word predictable is doing a bit of heavy lifting there. Lets say you shovel some dirt, you’ve got a lot of control over where you get it from and where you put it.. Now get in your big digger’s cabin and try to have the same precision. At the level of a shovel-user, you are unpredictable even if you’re skilled. Some of your work might be out a decent fraction of the width of a shovel. That’d never happen…

That’s another dishonest comparison. Predictability is not the same as precision. You don’t need to be millimetric when shovelling dirt at a construction site. But you do need to do it when conducting brain surgery. Context matters.

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#254

Post by SatvikBeri »

tudelo wrote: post #114
noosphr wrote: post #113

I've been building systems like what the OP is using since gpt3 came out. This is the honeymoon phase. You're learning the ins and outs of the specific model you're using and becoming more productive. It's magical. Nothing can stop you. Then you might not be improving as fast as you did at the start, but things are getting better every day. Or maybe every week. But it's heaps better than doing it by hand because you…

First off, appreciate you sharing your perspective. I just have a few questions. > I've gone back to managing the context window in Emacs because I can't be bothered to learn how to deal with another model family that will be thrown out in six months. Can you expand more on what you mean by that? I'm a bit of a noob on llm enabled dev work. Do you mean that you will kick off new sessions and provide a context that yo…

One thing to keep in mind is that the core of an LLM is basically a (non-deterministic) stateless function that takes text as input, and gives text as output.

The chat and session interfaces obscure this, making it look more stateful than it is. But they mainly just send the whole chat so far back to the LLM to get the next response. That's why the context window grows as a chat/session continues. It's also why the answers tend to get worse with longer context windows – you're giving the LLM a lot more to sift through.

You can manage the context window manually instead. You'll potentially lose some efficiencies from prompt caching, but you can also keep your requests much smaller and more relevant, likely spending fewer tokens.

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#255

Post by wiether »

hollowturtle wrote: post #226

I don't understand how Agents make you feel productive. Single/Multiple agents reading specs, specs often produced with agents itself and iterated over time with human in the loop, a lot of reviewing of giant gibberish specs. Never had a clear spec in my life. Then all the dancing for this apperantly new paradigm, of not reviewing code but verifying behaviour, and so many other things. All of this to me is a total UN…

> Never had a clear spec in my life.

To me part of our job has always been about translating garbage/missing specs in something actionnable.

Working with agents don't change this and that's why until PM/business people are able to come up with actual specs, they'll still need their translators.

Furthermore, it's not because the global spec is garbage that you, as a dev, won't come up with clear specs to solve technical issues related to the overall feature asked by stakeholders.

One funny thing I see though, is in the AI presentations done to non-technical people, the advice: "be as thorough as possible when describing what you except the agent to solve!". And I'm like: "yeah, that's what devs have been asking for since forever...".

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#256

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

lawgimenez wrote: post #230
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I think this somewhat answers my question. Is this individual a solo developer? “Triaging GitHub issues” sounds a bit like open source solo developer. Guess I’m just desperate for an article about how organizations are actually speeding up development using agentic AI. Like very practical articles about how existing development processes have been adjusted to facilitate agentic AI. I remain unconvinced that agen…

Can't believe you don't know who the author is my man.

Generally don’t pay attention to names unless it’s someone like Torvalds, Stroustrop, or Guido. Maybe this guy needs another decade of notoriety or something.

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#257

Post by snayan »

lelanthran wrote: post #232
snayan wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not really sure what you are getting at here. Are you suggesting that people should need to acquire some sort of credential to be allowed to code?

> Are you suggesting that people should need to acquire some sort of credential to be allowed to code? No, I am saying that you are comparing professional $FOO practitioners to professional $BAR practitioners, but it's not a valid comparison because one of those has review and safety built into the process, and the other does not. You can't use the assertion "We currently allow $FOO practitioners to use every single…

Thanks brother. I flew half way around the world yesterday and am jetlagged as fuck from a 12 hour time change. I'm sorry, my brain apparently shut off, but I follow now. Was out to lunch.

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#258

Post by SatvikBeri »

fergie wrote: post #194
rhubarbtree wrote: post #175

If the author is here, please could you also confirm you’ve never been paid by any AI company, marketing representative, community programme, in any shape or form?

He explicitly said "I don't work for, invest in, or advise any AI companies." in the article. But yes, Hashimoto is a high profile CEO/CTO who may well have an indirect, or near-future interest in talking up AI. HN articles extoling the productivity gains of Claude on HN do generally tend to be from older, managerial types (make of that what you will).

What made me feel old today: seeing a 36-year-old referred to as an older type

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#259

Post by latexr »

tptacek wrote: post #39
davidw wrote: post #36

This seems like a pretty reasonable approach that charts a course between skepticism and "it's a miracle". I wonder how much all this costs on a monthly basis?

As long as we're on the same page that what he's describing is itself a miracle .

It’s not. A miracle is “an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or preternatural cause”. Could we please stop trivialising and ignoring the meaning of words?

Re: My AI Adoption Journey

#260

Post by cadamsdotcom »

latexr wrote: post #253
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the word predictable is doing a bit of heavy lifting there. Lets say you shovel some dirt, you’ve got a lot of control over where you get it from and where you put it.. Now get in your big digger’s cabin and try to have the same precision. At the level of a shovel-user, you are unpredictable even if you’re skilled. Some of your work might be out a decent fraction of the width of a shovel. That’d never happen…

That’s another dishonest comparison. Predictability is not the same as precision. You don’t need to be millimetric when shovelling dirt at a construction site. But you do need to do it when conducting brain surgery. Context matters.

Sure. If you’re racing your runway to go from 0 to 100 users you’d reach for a different set of tools than if you’re contributing to postgres.

In other words I agree completely with you but these new tools open up new possibilities. We have historically not had super-shovels so we’ve had to shovel all the things no matter how giant or important they are.

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