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AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

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Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#271

Post by sharperguy »

AuthAuth wrote: post #54
zjp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call these "embarrassingly solved problems". There are plenty of examples of emulators on GitHub, therefore emulators exist in the latent spaces of LLMs. You can have them spit one out whenever you want. It's embarrassingly solved. There are no examples of what you tried to do.

Its license washing. The code is great because its already a problem solved by someone else. The AI can spit out the solution with no license and no attribution and somehow its legal. I hope American tech legislation holds that same energy once others start taking American IP and spitting it back out with no license or attribution.

To me, it's just further evidence that trying to assert ownership over a specific sequence of 1s and 0s is an entirely futile and meaningless endeavor.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#272

Post by surajrmal »

laserlight wrote: post #251
swordsith wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone not using version control or a IDE that will keep previous versions for a easy jump back is just being silly. If you're going to play with a kid who has a gun, wear your plates.

Once, I told a friend that it was stupid that Claude Code didn't have native IDE integration. His answer: “You don't need an IDE with Claude Code.” I've begun to suspect response that this technology triggers a kind of religion in some people. The technology is obviously perfect, so that any problems you might have are because of you.

I find that I vastly prefer Gemini CLI to antigravity, despite the latter being an ide. Others feel the opposite. I believe it comes down to how you are using AI. It's great they both options exist for both types of people.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#274

Post by jama211 »

le-mark wrote: post #9

I vibe coded a retro emulator and assembler with tests. Prompts were minimal and I got really great results (Gemini 3). I tried vibe coding the tricky proprietary part of an app I worked on a few years ago; highly technical domain (yes vague don’t care to dox myself). Lots of prompting and didn’t get close. There are literally thousands of retro emulators on github. What I was trying to do had zero examples on GitHub…

I dunno I get it to do stuff every day that’s never been done before, if you prompt really well, give loads of context, and take it slowly it’s amazing at it and still saves me a ton of time.

I always suspect the devil is in the details with these posts. The difference between smart prompting strategies and the way I see most people prompt ai is vast.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#275

Post by adrian_b »

AngryData wrote: post #208
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen many discussions stating patent hoarding has gone too far, and also that copyright for companies have gone way too far (even so much that Amazon can remove items from your purchase library if they lose their license to it). Then AI begins to offer a method around this over litigious system, and this becomes a core anti-AI argument. I do think it's silly to think public code (as in, code published to the pub…

I don't think people would care as much about AI reusing code or images or text so directly if people were allowed to do so too. The big problem I think comes in when AI is allowed to do things that humans can't. Right now if I publish a book that is 70% somebody else's book but slightly rehashed with certain key phrases and sentences or more as perfect copies, I would get sued and I would lose. Right now though if a…

Yes, this is exactly the problem.

Programming productivity has been crippled for decades by the inability to reuse code due to copyright restrictions.

Because of this, the same problems have been solved again and again for countless times, because the companies employing the programmers wanted to have their own "IP" covering the solution. As a programmer, you cannot reuse your own past programs, if they have been written when employed elsewhere, so that the past employer owns them now.

Now using AI one can circumvent all copyright laws, gaining in productivity about as much as what you could have done in the past, had you been permitted to copy and paste anything into your programs.

This would be perfectly fine if the programmers who do not use an AI agent were allowed to do the same thing, i.e. to search the training programs used by the AI and just copy and paste anything from there.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#276

Post by Jensson »

8note wrote: post #104
0000000000100 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are boned unless it was architected well. LLMs tend to stack a lot of complexity at local scopes, especially if the neighboring pages are also built poorly. E.g pumping out a ton of logic to convert one data structure to another. Like a poorly structured form with random form control names that don’t match to the DTO. Or single properties for each form control which are then individually plugged into the req…

you could also use some code styling agent scripts that make todo lists of everywhere where there's bad architecture, and have it run through fixing those issues until its to your liking. theyre reasomable audit tools for finding issues, if you have ways to make sure they dont give up early, and you force them to output proof of what they did

And that is harder than just doing it manually, hence saying that hard parts are harder. If you have a clear picture of what you want it to do then its harder to vibe code than to code it yourself.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#277

Post by Hendrikto »

sharperguy wrote: post #271
AuthAuth wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its license washing. The code is great because its already a problem solved by someone else. The AI can spit out the solution with no license and no attribution and somehow its legal. I hope American tech legislation holds that same energy once others start taking American IP and spitting it back out with no license or attribution.

To me, it's just further evidence that trying to assert ownership over a specific sequence of 1s and 0s is an entirely futile and meaningless endeavor.

Regardless of your opinion on that (I largely agree with you), that is not the current law, and people went to prison for FAR less. Remember Aaron Swartz, for example.

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#278

Post by jama211 »

This article has some serious usage of either bad prompting, or terrible models, or they’re referencing the past with their stories. I have experience AI’s deleting things they shouldn’t but not since like, the gpt4 days.

But that put aside, I don’t agree with the premise. It doesn’t make the hard parts harder, if you ACTUALLY spend half the time you’d have ORIGINALLY spent on the hard problem carefully building context and using smart prompting strategies. If you try and vibe code a hard problem in a one shot, you’re either gonna have a bad time straight away or you’re gonna have a bad time after you try and do subsequent prompting on the first codebase it spits out.

People are terrible observers of time. If you would’ve taken a week to build something, they try with AI for 2 hours and end up with a mess and claim either it’s not saving them any time or it’s making them code so bad it loses them time in the long run.

If instead they spent 8 hours slowly prompting bit by bit with loads of very specific requirements, technical specifications on exactly the code architecture it should follow with examples, build very slowly feature by feature, make it write tests and carefully add your own tests, observe it from the ground up and build a SOLID foundation, and spend day 2 slowly refining details and building features ONE BY ONE, you’d have the whole thing done in 2 days, and it’d be excellent quality.

But barely anyone does it this way. They vibe code it and complain that after 3 non specific prompts the ai wasn’t magically perfect.

After all these years of engineers complaining that their product manager or their boss is an idiot because they gave vague instructions and demanded it wasn’t perfect when they didn’t provide enough info, you’d think they’d be better at it given the chance. But no, in my experience coaching prompting, engineers are TERRIBLE at this. Even simple questions like “if I sent this prompt to you as an engineer, would you be able to do it based on the info here?” are things they don’t ask themselves.

Next time you use ai, imagine being the ai. Imagine trying to deliver the work based on the info you’ve been given. Imagine a boss that stamped their foot if it wasn’t perfect first try. Then, stop writing bad prompts.

Hard problems are easier with ai, if you treat hard problems with the respect they deserve. Almost no one does.

/rant

Re: AI makes the easy part easier and the hard part harder

#279

Post by Hendrikto »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #116
AuthAuth wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its license washing. The code is great because its already a problem solved by someone else. The AI can spit out the solution with no license and no attribution and somehow its legal. I hope American tech legislation holds that same energy once others start taking American IP and spitting it back out with no license or attribution.

I've seen many discussions stating patent hoarding has gone too far, and also that copyright for companies have gone way too far (even so much that Amazon can remove items from your purchase library if they lose their license to it). Then AI begins to offer a method around this over litigious system, and this becomes a core anti-AI argument. I do think it's silly to think public code (as in, code published to the pub…

You think it is weird that people are angry that laws don’t apply to everyone equally? If the laws are bad, we should change them. Not apply them selectively whenever and to whomever we like.
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