Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We put a coding agent in a while loop

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 317 posts

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#291

Post by boppo1 »

zurtri wrote: post #287
mr_toad wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the reason that people develop solutions in Excel is that they don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. No business case, no scope, no plan, and most importantly no budget. Unless a business allows any old employee to spin up cloud services on a whim we’re not going to see sales people spinning up containers and pipelines, AI or not.

So very true. And then over time these Excel spreadsheets become a core system that runs stuff. I used to live in fear of one of these business analyst folks overwriting a cell or sorting by just the column and not doing the rows at the same time. Also VLOOKUP's are the devil.

Why also sorting by row? And why are vlookups the devil? my undergrad was finance, but I've self-learned a lot of CS.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#292

Post by AdieuToLogic »

wiz21c wrote: post #133
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But my hunch is that most of the economic value of code is contingent on there being a set of human beings familiar with the code in a manner that requires writing having written it directly. This reminds me of a software engineering axiom: When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of your understanding of the problem. It states to all, including your future-self, your approach, clarity, and appropriaten…

Yes! But there's code and code. Not to disrespect anyone, but there is writing a new algorithm, say for optimizing the gradient descent and code to display a simple web form. The first one is usually short and requires a very deep understanding of one or two profound, new ideas. The second is usually very big and requires a shallow understanding of many not-so-new ideas (which are usually a reflection of the oroganis…

> My feeling is that, provided a sufficiently long context window, an LLM will be able to go through the second kind project very easily. It will also be very good at showing that the first kind of project is not so new after all, destroying all people who can't find really new ideas.

My perspective is that value is had in understanding what and why a system needs to do what it does in order to satisfy a defined need, be it algorithmic and/or business. If the need is a use-case where a web form is used, an LLM can no more replace the knowledge of why it is there than someone fulfilling a "fiver contract" could.

Both might be able to complete a specific deliverable, but neither have the ability to provide value to an organization beyond the assets they produce.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#293

Post by linsomniac »

VincentEvans wrote: post #283
linsomniac wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time. IMHO, there's a strong case for the opposite. My vibe coding prompts are along the lines of "Please implement the plan described in `phase1-epic.md` using `specification.prd` as a guide." The specification and epics are version controlled and a part of the project. My vibe coded software has better design documentation t…

I assume you have some software engineering fundamentals training.

Training? Not a lick. I took AP Pascal back in High School...

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#294

Post by pjc50 »

viralpraxis wrote: post #276
pjc50 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from various C UB fiascos, the compiler is neither a black box nor magic, and most of the worthwhile ones are even determinstic.

I’m sorry for an off-topic, are there any non-determenistic compilers you can name? I’d been wondering for a while if they actually exist

Accidental non-deterministic compilers are fairly easy if you use sort algorithms and containers that aren't "stable". You then can get situations where OS page allocation and things like different filenames give different output. This is why "deterministic build" wasn't just the default.

Actual randomness is used in FPGA and ASIC compilers which use simulated annealing for layout. Sometimes the tools let you set the seed.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#295

Post by simultsop »

BostonFern wrote: post #278
mnky9800n wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he used to be a software dev. Then he started consulting on the side making websites, doing SEO, and he just started doing that fulltime. But then SEO died because of AI (according to him anyways). then he started vibe coding like a year or two ago and saw all these people posting in forums about how everything they made broke and they don't know what to do. So he started helping people for money and it turne…

I need to start hanging out in more lucrative forums, apparently.

You just might be in the right place. Asking same question, wait until someone will make a directory website to sell access to you to find those forums.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#296

Post by simultsop »

mr_toad wrote: post #233
VincentEvans wrote: post #12

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup. Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years. But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no lo…

A big part of the reason that people develop solutions in Excel is that they don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. No business case, no scope, no plan, and most importantly no budget. Unless a business allows any old employee to spin up cloud services on a whim we’re not going to see sales people spinning up containers and pipelines, AI or not.

Unless they have a linux with some libre office, I fail to see where there is no budget for Excel. Initially you have to keep up with windows licenses then office.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#297

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

dhorthy wrote: post #232
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about being in a docker container lets you `kubectl get pod` but prevents you from `kubectl delete deployment`?

this is more about the service account than the runtime environment i think. you put your admin service account in docker the agent can still wreak havoc. Docker lets you hide the admin service account on your host FS from the agent.

Keeping the powerful credentials where the agent can't reach them does buy you a bit of safety. But I still think its a bit loose when compared with exposing an API to the model which can only do what you intend for that model to do.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#298

Post by orand »

boppo1 wrote: post #291
zurtri wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So very true. And then over time these Excel spreadsheets become a core system that runs stuff. I used to live in fear of one of these business analyst folks overwriting a cell or sorting by just the column and not doing the rows at the same time. Also VLOOKUP's are the devil.

Why also sorting by row? And why are vlookups the devil? my undergrad was finance, but I've self-learned a lot of CS.

It's possible to sort just a single column, leaving all the columns beside it in their original sort order. That's very bad if you want to keep your rows in one piece.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#299

Post by jplusequalt »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #195
rogerrogerr wrote: post #45

Does anyone else get dull feelings of dread reading this kind of thing? How do you combat it?

Embrace it. It's not crypto. It will 100% be around for the foreseeable future. Maybe not in the form it currently exists and maybe not even at the scale it currently exists, but it's here to stay. As developers, we're just as biased as the CEO at the top trying to hawk this stuff but in the opposite manner.

>Embrace it.

Embracing it means the software we all rely on becomes progressively worse, and our ability to understand and fix that software will decrease as well.

Embracing this also likely means we accept that our salaries will decrease, while others will lose their jobs outright.

Finally, it means we accept a world where people are now all reliant on AI trained and deployed by a select few companies to do our thinking. This is especially irksome when these companies are ran by the same people who previously ruined public discourse through social media apps, and gave a generation of children mental health issues and insecurities.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#300

Post by denismenace »

simultsop wrote: post #296
mr_toad wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the reason that people develop solutions in Excel is that they don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. No business case, no scope, no plan, and most importantly no budget. Unless a business allows any old employee to spin up cloud services on a whim we’re not going to see sales people spinning up containers and pipelines, AI or not.

Unless they have a linux with some libre office, I fail to see where there is no budget for Excel. Initially you have to keep up with windows licenses then office.

An Office license is a must in most companies. So it will be there beforehand, you don't have to have a special budget for it.
Post reply on HN