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The Coming Loop

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Re: The Coming Loop

#291

Post by chickensong »

stillpointlab wrote: post #215

My experience is that I am bottle-necked on specs. The agent loop is less of a thing for me now. If I can get a clear understanding of what I want to build, communicate that to Claude Code in planning mode with the goal to write an actionable spec (not code, plan to write the spec) then I tend to get very good results once the agent goes to implement. But this strategy, while effective, puts a big load on me to write…

Same experience. Totally bottle-necked by specs. I don't really see a way past it that isn't sketchy and consumes excessive resources. I guess I'm not ready.

Re: The Coming Loop

#292

Post by Zanfa »

gavinh wrote: post #248

> We may create codebases that are not merely hard to maintain by humans, but that assume machine participation as part of their maintenance model... People more and more merge code they cannot fully explain. People lose their ability to create issue reports or discuss things in chat, without augmenting or rephrasing their messages with the context provided by a clanker. Too many people increasingly rely on a machine…

Not to mention that effectively reviewing code is a much more difficult skill than writing it. Without a good mental map of how it affects other parts of the system, it’s basically a rubber stamping ceremony.

Github’s poor PR UI doesn’t help either, there’s limited tooling to navigate around the codebase not directly changed (but affected) to identify and highlight problems.

Re: The Coming Loop

#293

Post by Eisenstein »

JBits wrote: post #194
coldtea wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a 5 year old write a substantial program on spec, that passes the requirements and given tests, in a few minutes? If not, then perhaps this comparison is not the be all end all. "A ship is useless, it can't drive over land..."

But it demonstrates that LLMs struggle with basic reasoning. A criticism of LLMs is that they're imitating without a understanding of what they're doing and without a clear plan, so this inability to solve a simple logic puzzle is very relevant. If LLMs didn't struggle with reasoning problems then something like ARC-AGI wouldn't exist.

Its a question designed to fool the AI. It's like saying that a person doesn't understand the limitations of reality when they fall for a magic trick.

Re: The Coming Loop

#294

Post by Npovview »

stillpointlab wrote: post #215

My experience is that I am bottle-necked on specs. The agent loop is less of a thing for me now. If I can get a clear understanding of what I want to build, communicate that to Claude Code in planning mode with the goal to write an actionable spec (not code, plan to write the spec) then I tend to get very good results once the agent goes to implement. But this strategy, while effective, puts a big load on me to write…

> "Before I go to bed I'll often say "do task X and once done and pushed start on task Y".

Following could solve your problem.

https://www.aihero.dev/skills-handoff

/handoff is my new favourite skill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtAJ2dOd3ko

Re: The Coming Loop

#295

Post by weiliddat »

mccoyb wrote: post #14

Loops work when you spend the proper amount of time to understand what you want ahead of time. The prerequisite is clarity — enough clarity that you could write a careful specification that you could hand off to a junior colleague. Often, it takes 5-6 broken crappy versions of a thing until you understand that. There is no accelerating the 5-6 broken crappy versions - there’s no agent tech that’s going to help your m…

> Often, it takes 5-6 broken crappy versions of a thing until you understand that. There is no accelerating the 5-6 broken crappy versions - there’s no agent tech that’s going to help your meat brain avoid thinking time.

Fully agreed. Though I found that, once I found a harness (prompt + skills + model) that I trust to do most things the way I like it, it has sped up the coding/exploration part of that process.

Although the iterations are faster, it's still taking me almost the same amount of effort to go through those crappy versions, because I still need to understand and adjust my mental model of what ideas, principles, design apply for the solution, and what to try next.

So, in the end, I do feel like I'm expending more mental effort in a shorter amount of time (with some effort saved on writing the code, which wasn't that much to begin with once you're proficient). It's a weird feeling, like I'm "only" prompting and reading code, but I feel equally mentally spent, or sometimes more because of the compressed iteration cycle.

Re: The Coming Loop

#296

Post by [deleted] »

charly187 wrote: post #261
wolttam wrote: post #126

I am 100% for fully agentic loops... for tasks other than engineering. I'm not willing to outsource the understanding how things work part of myself. That part of myself is what got me into computing in the first place. If this work becomes simply a matter of describing intent to a machine (probably through an Issue, like a user), and going to check on the result when you get the 'done' notification: I'm done. It's p…

> If this work becomes simply a matter of describing intent to a machine What is it that you think you are doing when you are writing code if it isn't describing intent to a machine? Whether you are doing it imperatively vs declaratively isn't a new thing.

[deleted]

Re: The Coming Loop

#297

Post by Npovview »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #72
yanis_t wrote: post #23

I keep thinking about at which point I should not force myself into the loop. As a developer I really like working on the code structure, making it clearer, thinking about good abstraction, breaking into modules, etc. I really take pleasure in it. At the same time I understand that at some point I am becoming the limiting factor. If the point of the software is benefit people, should I still care about how the code l…

You will always be able to ask the agent to do refactors for you - and it can do mega ones that exhaust you to think about!

How about ship stuff now even if imperfect. Then as capable models come online, ask them to refactor. This allows you to deliver NOW and refactor later when the situation demands.

Re: The Coming Loop

#298

Post by Npovview »

SimianSci wrote: post #166
weego wrote: post #160

What does any of that mean in practice? it's just rambling about abstract concepts that seem to be designed to hint at a bigger picture, when it's just getting AI to write code for you. Is this where it's going? Having to mystify our roles so it seems like we're still the thought leaders when actually we're just becoming pseudo-teachers that try and herd our group of AI idiots to the right conclusion for us so we don…

When someone is expected to be wizened and does not have the knowledge to keep up with the needs of those around them, they in turn become Shamanistic in their practice. The speed of improvement on these models has been incredible and has outpaced the learning speed of humans and put many experts into these Shamanistic roles. I think the operative means of addressing this is to recognize that we can only learn so qui…

[flagged]

Re: The Coming Loop

#299

Post by apitman »

gavinh wrote: post #248

> We may create codebases that are not merely hard to maintain by humans, but that assume machine participation as part of their maintenance model... People more and more merge code they cannot fully explain. People lose their ability to create issue reports or discuss things in chat, without augmenting or rephrasing their messages with the context provided by a clanker. Too many people increasingly rely on a machine…

https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

Re: The Coming Loop

#300

Post by ianm218 »

camillomiller wrote: post #289
ianm218 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you say with certainty that this workflow has increased productivity so much that you are seeing profit increases that you wouldn't have otherwise noticed just by hiring more people? Has the bar raised so much that coding agents need to be even better than any human could do? If the coding agent lets you get done with 1 person what would've required a team of three and you are not going crazy "token maxxing" sp…

First of all, I don't accept a discussion where humans are placed on the same level as bots or agents. Even if the cost is the same, humans MUST be the choice. They have emotions, families, sons and daughters, they are a what makes society a society. And yet we've been already instructed and hypnotized by the Altmans and Musks and Bezos to only see it through the lens of profit and revenue. That said, is what you're…

> First of all, I don't accept a discussion where humans are placed on the same level as bots or agents. Even if the cost is the same, humans MUST be the choice

Sure but getting more done with less is just how productivity gains work. If your talking about crushing an iOS backlog like the OP is it surely will not cost as much as a human to move along tons of bug fixes and accessibility changes etc.

Here are some case studies on recent anecdotal producitivity gains from AI agents https://cursor.com/blog/amplitude, https://devin.ai/customers/ramp, https://www.warmly.ai/p/blog/claude-code-best-practices.

The third one specifically says that a team of 8 "ships like a team of 24".

> Also, trillion dollars valuations are really justified by random solo-devs creating automatic companies of one that could be companies of four?

I feel like your greatly expanding the scope of this thread, I don't really know how to value these things.

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