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Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

danieldelaney.net

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Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#261

Post by lucasmullens »

godelski wrote: post #242
wiremine wrote: post #190

I'm going to take a contrarian view and say it's actually a good UI, but it's all about how you approach it. I just finished a small project where I used o3-mini and o3-mini-high to generate most of the code. I averaged around 200 lines of code an hour, including the business logic and unit tests. Total was around 2200 lines. So, not a big project, but not a throw away script. The code was perfectly fine for what we…

> I focus on the high-level code, and let the model focus on the lower level code. Tbh the reason I don't use LLM assistants is because they suck at the "low level". They are okay at mid level and better at high level. I find it's actual coding very mediocre and fraught with errors. I've yet to see any model understand nuance or detail. This is especially apparent in image models. Sure, it can do hands but they still…

> But with coding models they ignore context of the codebase and the results feel more like patchwork.

Have you tried Cursor? It has a great feature that grabs context from the codebase, I use it all the time.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#262

Post by xenodium »

I've been experimenting with "paged chats" UX and find myself using it fairly fluidly https://xenodium.com/llm-iterate-and-insert

Been experimenting with the same approach but for "paged shells" (sorry for the term override) and this seems to be a best of both worlds kinda thing for shells. https://xenodium.com/an-experimental-e-shell-pager That is, the shell is editable when you need it to be (during submission), and automatically read-only after submission. This has the benefit of providing single-character shortcuts to navigate content. n/p (next/previous) or tab/backtab.

The navigation is particularly handy in LLM chats, so you can quickly jump to code snippets and either copy or direct output elsewhere.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#263

Post by Bjorkbat »

This kind of reminds me of back when the hype cycle was focused on Messenger apps and the idea of most online behavior being replaced with a chatbot. God I hated the smug certainty of (some, definitely not all!) UX designers at the time proclaiming that chat was the ultimate interface.

Absolutely insane that all the doors unlocked by being able to interact with a computer graphically, and yet these people have visions of the future stuck in the 60s.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#264

Post by t_mann »

staplers wrote: post #148
t_mann wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but what is a good pattern to leverage AI tools for coding (assuming that they have some value there, which I think most people would agree with now)? I could see two distinct approaches: - "App builders" that use some combination of drag&drop UI builders, and design docs for architecture, workflows,... and let the UI guess what needs to be built "under the hood" (a little bit in the spirit of where UML class dia…

Ok, but what is a good pattern to leverage AI tools for coding? Actual product stakeholders are not likely to spill their magic sauce and give free consultancy.

That's no reason to not discuss potentially cool ideas, unless you think their input is so indispensable that any debate is futile without them.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#266

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ryandrake wrote: post #200
TeMPOraL wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comment made sense 3 years ago. LLMs already solved "intuitive understanding", and the realtime multimodal variants (e.g. the thing behind "Advanced Voice" in ChatGPT app) handle tone of voice in both directions. As for nonverbal cues, I don't know yet - I got live video enabled in ChatGPT only few days ago and didn't have time to test it, but I would be surprised if it couldn't read the basics of body language…

> We need an interface to operate a tool, not an interface to an agent that operates a tool for us. Excellent comment and it gets to the heart of something I've had trouble clearly articulating: We've slowly lost the concept that a computer is a tool that the user wields and commands to do things. Now, a computer has its own mind and agency, and we "request" it to do things and "communicate" with it, and ask it to ru…

> Now, a computer has its own mind and agency, and we "request" it to do things and "communicate" with it, and ask it to run this and don't run that.

FWIW this happens what happens with modern steering wheels as well. Power steering is its own complicated subsystem that isn't just about user input. It has many more failure modes than an old-fashioned, analog steering wheel. The reason folks feel like "Mr. Computer" has a mind of its own is because of the mismatch between user desire and effect. This is a UX problem.

I also think chat and RAG are the biggest two UX paradigms we've spent exploring when it comes to LLMs. It's probably worth folks exploring other UX for LLMs that are enabling for the user. Suggestions in documents and code seem to be a UX that more people enjoy using but even then there's a mismatch.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#267

Post by cortesoft »

throwup238 wrote: post #221
ryandrake wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the things I don't like about Chat are the same things I don't like about pair (or team) programming. I've always thought of programming as a solitary activity. You visualize the data structures, algorithms, data paths, calling flow and stack, and so on, in your mind, with very high throughput "discussions" happening entirely in your brain. Your brain is high bandwidth, low latency. Effortlessly and instantly…

At the same time, putting your ideas to words forces you to make them concrete instead of nebulous brain waves. I find that the chat interface gets rid of the downsides of pair programming (that the other person is a human being with their own agency*) while maintaining the “intelligent” pair programmer aspect. Especially with the new r1 thinking output, I find it useful to iterate on the initial prompt as a way to m…

> At the same time, putting your ideas to words forces you to make them concrete instead of nebulous brain waves.

I mean, isn’t typing your code also forcing you to make your ideas concrete

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#268

Post by croes »

empath75 wrote: post #14
croes wrote: post #5

Natural language isn’t made to be precise that’s why we use a subset in programming languages. So you either need lots of extra text to remove the ambiguity of natural language if you use AI or you need a special precise subset to communicate with AI and that’s just programming with extra steps.

AIs actually are very good at this. They wouldn't be able to write code at all otherwise. If you're careful in your prompting, they'll make fewer assumptions and ask clarifying questions before going ahead and writing code.

AI is a little bit like Occam‘s razor, when you say hoofbeats, you get horses. Bad if you need Zebras.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#269

Post by larodi »

wiremine wrote: post #190

I'm going to take a contrarian view and say it's actually a good UI, but it's all about how you approach it. I just finished a small project where I used o3-mini and o3-mini-high to generate most of the code. I averaged around 200 lines of code an hour, including the business logic and unit tests. Total was around 2200 lines. So, not a big project, but not a throw away script. The code was perfectly fine for what we…

I would actually join you, as my longstanding view on coding is that it is best done in pairs. Sadly humans and programmers in particular are not so ready to work arms-by-arms, and it is even more depressing that it now turns AI is pairing us.

Perhaps there's gonna be post-AI programming movement where people actually stare at the same monitor and discuss while one of them is coding.

As a sidenote - we've done experiments with FOBsters, and when paired this way, the multiply their output. There's something about psychology of groups and how one can only provide maximum output when teaming.

Even for solo activities, and non-IT activities, such as skiing/snowboard, it is better to have a partner to ride with you and discuss the terrain.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#270

Post by pc86 »

lucasmullens wrote: post #261
godelski wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I focus on the high-level code, and let the model focus on the lower level code. Tbh the reason I don't use LLM assistants is because they suck at the "low level". They are okay at mid level and better at high level. I find it's actual coding very mediocre and fraught with errors. I've yet to see any model understand nuance or detail. This is especially apparent in image models. Sure, it can do hands but they still…

> But with coding models they ignore context of the codebase and the results feel more like patchwork. Have you tried Cursor? It has a great feature that grabs context from the codebase, I use it all the time.

I can't get the prompt because I'm on my work computer but I have about a three-quarter-page instruction set in the settings of cursor, it asks clarifying questions a LOT now, and is pretty liberal with adding in commented pseudo-code for stuff it isn't sure about. You can still trip it up if you try, but it's a lot better than stock. This is with Sonnet 3.5 agent chats (composer I think it's called?)

I actually cancelled by Anthropic subscription when I started using cursor because I only ever used Claude for code generation anyway so now I just do it within the IDE.

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