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The highest quality codebase

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Re: The highest quality codebase

#291

Post by altmanaltman »

Nemi wrote: post #173
n4r9 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we have different opinions on what's fun and what's boring!

You've really hit the crux of the problem and why so many people have differing opinions about AI coding. I also find coding more fun with AI. The reason is that my main goal is to solve a problem, or someone else's problem, in a way that is satisfying. I don't much care about the code itself anymore. I care about the thing that it does when it's done. Having said that I used to be deep into coding and back then I am…

A few counterpoints:

1. If you don't care about code and only care about the "thing that it does when it's done", how do you solve problems in a way that is satisfying? Because you are not really solving any problem but just using the AI to do it. Is prompting more satisfying than actually solving?

2. You claim you're done "learning about coding and stretching my personal knowledge in the area" but don't you think that's super dangerous? Like how can you just be done with learning when tech is constantly changing and new things come up everyday. In that sense, don't you think AI use is actually making you learn less and you're just justifying it with the whole "I love solving problems, not code" thing?

3. If you don't care about the code, do the people who hire you for it do? And if they do, then how can you claim you don't care about the code when you'll have to go through a review process and at least check the code meaning you have to care about the code itself, right?

Re: The highest quality codebase

#292

Post by joaogui1 »

hackernewds wrote: post #199
elzbardico wrote: post #85

LLMs have this strong bias towards generating code, because writing code is the default behavior from pre-training. Removing code, renaming files, condensing, and other edits is mostly a post-training stuff, supervised learning behavior. You have armies of developers across the world making 17 to 35 dollars an hour solving tasks step by step which are then basically used to generate prompt/responses pairs of desired…

> Writing code is the default behavior from pre-training what does this even mean? could you expand on it

During pre-training the model is learning next-token prediction, which is naturally additive. Even if you added DEL as a token it would still be quite hard to change the data so that it can be used in a mext-token prediction task Hope that helps

Re: The highest quality codebase

#294

Post by credit_guy »

mgrat wrote: post #293

[flagged]

I see this sentiment quite often. The Economist chose the "word of the year"; it is "slop". Everybody hates AI slop.

And lots of people who use AI coding assistants go through a phase of pushing AI slop in prod. I know I did that. Some of it still bites me to this day.

But here's the thing: AI coding assistants did not exist two years ago. We are critical of them based on unfounded expectations. They are tools, and they have limitations. They are far, very, very far, from being perfect. They will not replace us for 20 years, at least.

But are they useful? Yes. Can you learn usage patterns so you eliminate as much as possible AI slop? I personally hope I did that; I think quite a lot of people who use AI coding assistants have found ways to tame the beast.

Re: The highest quality codebase

#295

Post by libraryofbabel »

skydhash wrote: post #289
libraryofbabel wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this framing; I think it captures some of the key differences between engineers who are instinctively enthusiastic about AI and those who are not. Many engineers walk a path where they start out very focussed on programming details, language choice, and elegant or clever solutions. But if you're in the game long enough, and especially if you're working in medium-to-large engineering orgs on big customer-facing…

I'm guessing, but I'm pretty sure you're dealing with big balls of mud which has dampened your love of coding. Where implementing something is more about solving accidental complexity and dealing with technical debts than actually doing the job.

I've seen some balls of mud, sure, but I don't think that's the essence of it. It's more like:

1) When I already have a rough picture of the solution to some programming task in my head up front, I do not particularly look forward to actually going and doing it. I've done enough programming that many things feel like a variation on something I've done before. Sometimes the task is its own reward because there is a sufficiently hard and novel puzzle to solve. Mostly it is not and it's just a matter of putting in the time. Having Claude do most of the work is perfect in those cases. I don't think this is particularly anything to do with working on a ball of mud: it applies to most kinds of work on clean well-architected projects as well.

2) I have a restless mind and I just don't find doing something that interesting anymore once I have more or less mastered it. I'd prefer to be learning some new field (currently, LLMs) rather than spending a lot of time doing something I already know how to do. This is a matter of temperament: there is nothing wrong with being content in doing a job you've mastered. It's just not me.

Re: The highest quality codebase

#296

Post by keeda »

Hilarious! Kinda reinforces the idea that LLMs are like junior engineers with infinite energy.

But just telling an AI it's a principal engineer does not make it a principal engineer. Firstly, that is such a broad, vaguely defined term, and secondly, typically that level of engineering involves dealing with organizational and industry issues rather than just technical ones.

And so absent a clear definition, it will settle on the lowest common denominator of code quality, which would be test coverage -- likely because that is the most common topic in its training data -- and extrapolate from that.

The other thing is, of course, the RL'd sycophancy which compels it to do something, anything, to obey the prompt. I wonder what would happen if tweaked the prompt just a little bit to say something like "Use your best judgement and feel free to change nothing."

Re: The highest quality codebase

#297

Post by pdntspa »

altmanaltman wrote: post #291
Nemi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've really hit the crux of the problem and why so many people have differing opinions about AI coding. I also find coding more fun with AI. The reason is that my main goal is to solve a problem, or someone else's problem, in a way that is satisfying. I don't much care about the code itself anymore. I care about the thing that it does when it's done. Having said that I used to be deep into coding and back then I am…

A few counterpoints: 1. If you don't care about code and only care about the "thing that it does when it's done", how do you solve problems in a way that is satisfying? Because you are not really solving any problem but just using the AI to do it. Is prompting more satisfying than actually solving? 2. You claim you're done "learning about coding and stretching my personal knowledge in the area" but don't you think th…

Why can't both things be true? You can care about the code even if you don't write it. You can continue learning things by reading said code. And you can very rigidly enforce code quality guidelines and require the AI adhere to them.

Re: The highest quality codebase

#298

Post by [deleted] »

credit_guy wrote: post #294
mgrat wrote: post #293

[flagged]

I see this sentiment quite often. The Economist chose the "word of the year"; it is "slop". Everybody hates AI slop. And lots of people who use AI coding assistants go through a phase of pushing AI slop in prod. I know I did that. Some of it still bites me to this day. But here's the thing: AI coding assistants did not exist two years ago. We are critical of them based on unfounded expectations. They are tools, and t…

[deleted]

Re: The highest quality codebase

#299

Post by pdntspa »

sfn42 wrote: post #273
breuleux wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does that a lot... I agree. Self-indulgent is the word. It just feels great when the implementation is a perfect fit for your brain, but sometimes that's just not a good use of your time. Sometimes, you strike gold, so there's that.

I kind of struggle with this. I basically hate everyone elses code, and by that I mean I hate most people's code. A lot of people write awesome code but most people write what I'd call trash code. And I do think there's more to it than preference. Like there's actual bugs in the code, it's confusing and because it's confusing there's more bugs. It's solving a simple problem but doing so in an unnecessarily convoluted…

I feel this too. And it seems like the very worst code always seems to come from the people that seem the smartest, otherwise. I've worked for a couple of people that are either ACM alum and/or have their own wikipedia page, multiple patents to their name and leaders in business, and beyond anyone else that I have ever worked with, their code has been the worst.

Which is part of what I find so motivating with AI. It is much better at making sense of that muck, and with some guidance it can churn out code very quickly with a high degree of readability.

Re: The highest quality codebase

#300

Post by keeda »

altmanaltman wrote: post #291
Nemi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've really hit the crux of the problem and why so many people have differing opinions about AI coding. I also find coding more fun with AI. The reason is that my main goal is to solve a problem, or someone else's problem, in a way that is satisfying. I don't much care about the code itself anymore. I care about the thing that it does when it's done. Having said that I used to be deep into coding and back then I am…

A few counterpoints: 1. If you don't care about code and only care about the "thing that it does when it's done", how do you solve problems in a way that is satisfying? Because you are not really solving any problem but just using the AI to do it. Is prompting more satisfying than actually solving? 2. You claim you're done "learning about coding and stretching my personal knowledge in the area" but don't you think th…

Note I'm not saying one is better than the other, but my takes:

1. The problem solving is in figuring out what to prompt, which includes correctly defining the problem, identifying a potential solution, designing an architecture, decomposing it into smaller tasks, and so on.

Giving it a generic prompt like "build a fitness tracker" will result in a fully working product but it will be bland as it would be the average of everything in its training data, and won't provide any new value. Instead, you probably want to build something that nobody else has, because that's where the value is. This will require you to get pretty deep into the problem domain, even if the code itself is abstracted away from you.

Personally, once the shape of the solution and the code is crystallized in my head typing it out is a chore. I'd rather get it out ASAP, get the dopamine hit from seeing it work, and move on to the next task. These days I spend most of my time exploring the problem domain rather than writing code.

2. Learning still exists but at a different level; in fact it will be the only thing we will eventually be doing. E.g. I'm doing stuff today that I had negligible prior background in when I began. Without AI, I would probably require an advanced course to just get upto speed. But now I'm learning by doing while solving new problems, which is a brand new way of learning! Only I'm learning the problem domain rather than the intricacies of code.

3. Statistically speaking, the people who hire us don't really care about the code, they just want business results. (See: the difficulty of funding tech debt cleanup projects!)

Personally, I still care about the code and review everything, whether written by me or the AI. But I can see how even that is rapidly becoming optional.

I will say this: AI is rapidly revolutionizing our field and we need to adapt just as quickly.

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