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AI coding

geohot.github.io

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Re: AI coding

#271

Post by simianparrot »

enraged_camel wrote: post #208
matt3D wrote: post #70

This is a more extreme example of the general hacker news group think about AI. Geohot is easily a 99.999 percentile developer, and yet he can’t seem to reconcile that the other 99.999 percent are doing something much more basic than he can ever comprehend. It’s some kind of expert paradox, if everyone was as smart and capable as the experts, then they wouldn’t be experts. I have come across many developers that beha…

>> Geohot is easily a 99.999 percentile developer Really? "The best model of a programming AI is a compiler... You give it a prompt, which is “the code”, and it outputs a compiled version of that code. Sometimes you’ll use it interactively, giving updates to the prompt after it has returned code, but you find that, like most IDEs, this doesn’t work all that well and you are often better off adjusting the original pro…

Programming languages, "the code", are languages specifically designed to concisely convey intent to a compiler.

If you do not understand his point, you need to read more about our field.

Re: AI coding

#272

Post by sitzkrieg »

brulard wrote: post #246
sitzkrieg wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no one is disagreeing. you just havent discovered the true costs yet

what is the cost of enabling someone to create little pieces of software if he otherwise wouldn't? I'm no advocate of vibe coding serious commercial software, but to do little DIY stuff - absolutely.

its awesome and fun but people throwing shit they dont understand how it 100% works online is a tale as old as people paying attention. which apprentnly isnt that long. fuck off

Re: AI coding

#273

Post by somewhereoutth »

lubujackson wrote: post #259
somewhereoutth wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we didn't do this with spreadsheets or word processors - and those tools really did replace small armies of clerical and secretarial workers.

The difference is AI is closing on doing the EXACT work with the EXACT info as a junior dev. Give an LLM a Jira ticket and a codebase and it can push a PR. Spreadsheets are great, but that was a tool that minimized effort but didn't remove it. LLMs can directly replace a remote junior with no visible difference already.

> Give an LLM a Jira ticket and a codebase and it can push a PR

Not really though can it, unless that codebase and Jira happens to pattern match correctly somewhere.

I'd say that the difference is just that LLMs have a natural language interface (for good or for ill).

Re: AI coding

#274

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

leptons wrote: post #262
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used it when it was called Ritalin. It interacts with alcohol, too. Interesting stuff (not exactly the same stuff, but damn similar). A lot of it. Other stuff, too, that makes it look like a cup of weak tea, but it’s been 45 years. I’m pretty familiar with the illusion of productivity.

Adderall is not Ritalin. They may both be stimulants, but they are different. They have different active ingredients, mechanisms of action, durations of action. Not really that similar in my experience. Ritalin is kind of weak, honestly. >I’m pretty familiar with the illusion of productivity II do not have ADHD and I'm familiar with successfully using Aderrall for actual productivity. YMMV. Turns out not everyone's b…

Eh. Not worth arguing over. I know the drill.

I just make sure there's a place to go, if the wheels fall off.

Cheers.

Re: AI coding

#275

Post by h4ch1 »

faangguyindia wrote: post #56

AI coding is working really good for us. My teammate shared 3 phase workflow we are using on our team to deliver project at rapid phase. It's shared on ClaudeCode subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/s/iy058fH4sZ I've been using it for months with great success

This is just basic spec based development, don't see what's so interesting about this. People have been using this method for quite a while, even Kiro now uses this for its entire process.

Re: AI coding

#276

Post by h4ch1 »

8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote: post #118

Just started using Claude Code recently. It seems to speed up feature development but requires one to have a good understanding of the codebase to guide it and be aware of edge cases it missed. Also, it doesn't seem to be able to take advantage of latest information or new SDK features unless deliberately informed. Not sure if I'm doing it right, but I resorted to feeding it documentation when it can't seem to someth…

Dunno how it'll work with Claude Code, but I use the context7 MCP to feed up-to-date docs in copilot.

Sometimes that also doesn't work so I make a guiding document using whatever llms.txt the framework/language/platform offers or just wget the entire documentation, condense it into a single text file and use that while prompting.

Seems to work ok, especially for Svelte 5 where most LLMs except Gemini don't give me runes from the get-go.

Re: AI coding

#277

Post by mlrtime »

folkrav wrote: post #185
matt3D wrote: post #70

This is a more extreme example of the general hacker news group think about AI. Geohot is easily a 99.999 percentile developer, and yet he can’t seem to reconcile that the other 99.999 percent are doing something much more basic than he can ever comprehend. It’s some kind of expert paradox, if everyone was as smart and capable as the experts, then they wouldn’t be experts. I have come across many developers that beha…

> the general hacker news group think about AI I’m surprised to see this. From my perspective, reading comments and seeing which posts rise to the top, HN as a whole seems pretty bullish on the tech as whole…

We don't want to admit it but HN has similar characteristics as many other platforms; echo chamber / group think. You see it over and over again.

HN participants (generally speaking) are against: AI, Crypto, HFT. I've worked in 2/3 of these industries so have first hand experience. My basic summary is that the average commenter here has a lot of misinformation on these topics (as a insider).

Re: AI coding

#278

Post by johnnyyyy »

georgehotz wrote: post #256
dsiegel2275 wrote: post #148

So I have all kinds of problems with this post. First, the assertion that the best model of "AI coding" is that it is a compiler. Compilers deterministically map a formal language to another under a spec. LLM coding tools are search-based program synthesizers that retrieve, generate, and iteratively edit code under constraints (tests/types/linters/CI). That’s why they can fix issues end-to-end on real repos (e.g., SW…

Author here. I agree with this comment, but if I wrote more like this my blog post would get less traction. "LLM coding tools are search-based program synthesizers," in my mind this is what compilers are. I think most compilers do far too little search and opt for heuristics instead, often because they don't have an integrated runtime environment, but it's the same idea. "Plenty of effective engineering tools are sto…

In your blog post: “Most people do not care to find the truth, they care about what pumps their bags”

in your HN comment: “I agree with this comment, but if I wrote more like this my blog post would get less traction.”

Seems like you also not care about the truth.

Re: AI coding

#279

Post by p2detar »

On a sidetrack, I was looking at the email address in the footer and wondered how cool it would have looked if geohot actually had a Hotmail address.

Re: AI coding

#280

Post by zurfer »

amirhirsch wrote: post #157

That METR study gets a lot of traction for its headline; and I doubt many people read the whole thing—it was long—but the data showed a 50% speed up for the one dev with the most experience with Cursor/AI, suggesting a learning curve and also wild statistical variation on a small sample set. An errata later suggested another dev who did not have a speedup had not represented their experience correctly, but still stro…

It was such a great study imo and rightfully deserves a lot of attention since it's a great alternative to twitter vibes.

But to stop here and say AI coding doesn't work will just not hold up well. We have a sample size of 16 developers for 250 tasks.

Here is my data point: adding AI to your engineering team really is like adding a new member. At first it slows everybody down: explain this, explain that, stupid mistake made that the experienced dev would have avoided. But over the months you learn how to get the most out of them: they speak fluently all programming languages, don't mind writing 20 tests or coming up with good industry ideas to your problems.

Over time I have come to appreciate that the market is rather smart and even hype has its place. You often have to cross a line to know you crossed it, especially with something as fuzzy and quickly changing as technological progress hitting the messy real world. But then again, we need the heretics to stay smart and not follow an emperor without clothes.

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