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Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

simonwillison.net

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Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#291

Post by entropicdrifter »

cyanydeez wrote: post #256
entropicdrifter wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So it's more a conceptual belief: Will AI actually make driving cares safer or will the fatalities of AI just be so randomly stochastic that it's more acceptable. I would argue that we already accept relatively random car fatalities at a huge scale and simply engage in post-hoc rationalization of the why and how of individual accidents that affect us personally. If we can drastically reduce the rate of accidents, th…

Well, we don't accept it in the sense of "we can't blame someone", which is what I'm saying. Soon it'll be like a forest fire or a conspiracy theory. Currently, car crashes are blamed on the individuals involved.

Sometimes, but sometimes people just say stuff like "god is testing us" when things appear to be truly random.

I reckon we'll see a lot of new religious thinking about this stuff

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#292

Post by jvanderbot »

simonw wrote: post #250
jvanderbot wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried this. I've scraped example pages directly from github, and given them a 200 line file with the instructions "just insert this type of thing", and it will invariably use bad APIs. I'd be happy to share the example with you.

Go for it - can you share it in a Gist? I use this technique all the time. Here's one written-up example: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/30/ocr-pdfs-images/ - transcript here: https://gist.github.com/simonw/6a9f077bf8db616e44893a24ae1d3...

Here, give it a shot - https://gist.github.com/jodavaho/8fb042fab33c1aaa95cd67144da...

I'm at work so I can't try again right now, but last I did was use claude+context, chatGPT 4o with just chatting, Copilot in Neovim, and Aider w/ claude + uploading all the files as context.

I even went so far as to grab relevant examples from https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/tree/latest/examples#exam... , adding relevant ones as I saw fit.

It took a long time to get anything that would compile, way longer than just reading + doing, and it was eventually wrong anyway. This is a recurring issue with Rust, and I'd love a workaround since I spend 60+h/week writing it (though not bevy). Probably a skill issue.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#293

Post by casenmgreen »

casenmgreen wrote: post #233
secondcoming wrote: post #81

That PR is a maintainer's nightmare. "Here's a massive bunch of AI generated code. LGTM. Let me know if there are any problems"

You can't fix it. You ask the AI to fix it and hope, or you start again from scratch - which if an AI is making the code, might be just fine. But I think you still need a type of task AI can do well - something which lends itself to auto-complete.

Actually, if the AI is making the code, starting from scratch might not be great. You'd get a new and different set of bugs.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#294

Post by [deleted] »

jeswin wrote: post #86
simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

> That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I worry about junior developers. It will be a while before vocational programming courses retool to teach this new way of writing code, and these are going to be te…

[deleted]

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#295

Post by n144q »

simonw wrote: post #52
jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

That's the naiveity of software engineers. They can't see their limitations and think everything is just a technical problem.

No, work is never the core problem. Backlog of bug fixes/enhancements is rarely what determines the headcount. What matters is the business need. If the product sells and there is no/little competition, the company has very little incentive to improve their products, especially hiring people to do the work. You'd be thankful if a company does not layoff people in teams working on mature products. In fact, the opposite has been happening, for quite a while. There are so many examples out there that I don't need to name them.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#296

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

CharlesW wrote: post #2

For those who aren't tempted to click through, the buried lede for this (and why I'm glad it's being linked to again today) is that "99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1" as conducted by Xuan-Son Nguyen. That seems like a notable milestone.

Reading through the PR makes me glad I got off GitHub - not for anything AI-related, but because it has become a social media platform, where what should be a focused and technical discussion gets derailed by strangers waging the same flame wars you can find anywhere else.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#297

Post by WXLCKNO »

tantalor wrote: post #84
gejose wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you see the humans in the loop being necessary?

Where companies depend on code for business critical applications? Forever. When your AI-managed codebase breaks, who are you going to ask to fix it? The AI?

Absolutely the AI. At that point in the future I'm presuming that if something breaks it's because an external API or whatever dependency broke, not because the AI code has an inherent bug.

But if it does it could still fix it.

And you won't have to tell it anything, alerts will be sent if a test fails and it will fix it directly.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#298

Post by smokel »

nh2 wrote: post #135
jeswin wrote: post #31

> 99% of the code in this PR [for llama.cpp] is written by DeekSeek-R1 I hope we can put to rest the argument that LLMs are only marginally useful in coding - which are often among the top comments on many threads. I suppose these arguments arise from (a) having used only GH copilot which is the worst tool, or (b) not having spent enough time with the tool/llm, or (c) apprehension. I've given up responding to these.…

Challenge: I would really like somebody that has experience in LLM based coding tools to try and fix gnome-terminal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42814509

I really like this idea.

However, it also highlights a key problem that LLMs don’t solve: while they’re great at generating code, that’s only a small part of real-world software development. Setting up a GitHub account, establishing credibility within a community, and handling PR feedback all require significant effort.

In my view, lowering the barriers to open-source participation could have a bigger impact than these AI models alone. Some software already gathers telemetry and allows sharing bug reports, but why not allow the system to drop down to a debugger in an IDE? And why can’t code be shared as easily as in Google Docs, rather than relying on text-based files and Git?

Even if someone has the skills to fix bugs, the learning curve for compilers, build tools, and Git often dilutes their motivation to contribute anything.

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#299

Post by fragmede »

ksec wrote: post #211
simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jobs are going to be lost unless there's somehow a demand for more applications." That's why I'm not worried. There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. I think LLM assistance makes programmers significantly more productive, which makes…

>There is already SO MUCH more demand for code than we're able to keep up with. Show me a company that doesn't have a backlog a mile long where most of the internal conversations are about how to prioritize what to build next. We really are in AI moment of iPhone. I never thought I would witness something bigger than the impact of Smartphone. There are insane amount of value that we could extract out. Likely in tens…

less. how long would it take to build Twitter if you throw out all the difficult backend scaling problems and assume a supabase db was enough?

Re: Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code

#300

Post by bubbleRefuge »

bbzealot wrote: post #42
pavitheran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deepseek is a big deal but we should be happy not worried that our tools are improving.

Why though? I'm worried these technologies may take my job away and make the balance between capital and labor even more uneven. Why should I be happy?

Think the marginal cost of developing complex software goes down thereby making it affordable to a greater market. There will still be a need for skilled software engineers to understand domains, limitations of AI, and how to harness and curate AI to develop custom apps. Maybe software engineering for the masses. Local small businesses can now maybe afford to take on custom software projects that were before unthinkable.
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