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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

#341

Post by burnerToBetOut »

jama211 wrote: post #330
burnerToBetOut wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …I have experience AI’s deleting > things they shouldn’t but not since > like, the gpt4 days.… One blogger posted this [1] only yesterday about what Anthropic's latest and greatest did… ——— …I pointed Opus 4.6 at a 60K line Go microservice I had vibe coded over the past few months, gave it some refactoring principles, and let it run unsupervised… … What went wrong # At some point in the code, we re-fetch some datab…

Running it entirely unsupervised with “some refactoring principles” is the exact recipe for such a disaster, which supports my point. That said, this is a very different kind of mistake to make compared to overwriting a file and then insisting it didn’t do that. Any modern model with reasoning would check the git history immediately if you mentioned this had happened, if it had somehow even made the mistake in the fi…

    > …this is a very different kind
    > of mistake to make compared
    > to overwriting a file…
Both of my quotes are about some automaton deleting some thing that some human didn't want deleted.

    > …but I digress…
Digressing to what the thing is that got deleted when it shouldn't have, is splitting hairs.

    > …which supports my point…
My point is that believing the latest and greatest version of any piece of software from any brand to be immune to Murphy's Law, seems pretty naïve.

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

#342

Post by crazygringo »

oblio wrote: post #204
crazygringo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal isn't usually to determine whether the function is the perfect optimal version of the function that could ever exist, if the package it integrates with the the best possible package out of the 4 mainstream options, or to become totally and intimately familiar with them to ensure it's as idiomatic as possible or whatever. You're just making sure it works correctly and that you understand how. Not superficiall…

> What you're describing sounds closer to studying the Talmud than to reading and reviewing most code. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/26/reading-code-is-li... Most human written code has 0 (ZERO!) docs. And if it has them, they're inaccurate or out of date or both. Lots of code is simple and boring but a fair amount isn't and reading it is non trivial, you basically need to run it in your head or do step by s…

Hilarious you found that reference.

I think it's obvious that's in reference to poorly written code. Or at least horrifically underdocumented/undercommented code.

There's a reason coders are constantly given the advice to write code for a future reader, not just the compiler/interpreter.

If I got code like Joel describes for a code review, I'm sending it back asking for it to be clearly commented.

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

#343

Post by Aerroon »

AngryData wrote: post #327
Aerroon wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. But the system is never going to get changed if something doesn't give. I thought big companies using copyrighted content in such a way was finally something that might enact change, but apparently the people who were all against copyright previously became ardent supporters of it overnig…

I support opening up copyright massively, but it might help getting it changed if AI companies were made to follow the same restrictive rules as humans and had the same incentive to push for changes copyright legislation/law. Right now AI companies and investors have no reason to lend support behind opening up ip law because it doesn't help them while it bolsters non-AI competition.

Why would AI companies support change now? They've already been fined. Now it's too late, because now it's in their best interests to be against it. The time for change was before, but then everyone became a staunch copyright defender.

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

#344

Post by gizmondo »

Draiken wrote: post #268
lijok wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you severely overestimate your understanding of how these systems work. We’ve been beating the dead horse of “next character approximation” for the last 5 years in these comments. Global maxima would have been reached long ago if that’s all there was to it. Play around with some frontier models, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Did I miss a fundamental shift in how LLMs work? Until they change that fundamental piece, they are literally that: programs that use math to determine the most likely next token.

This point is irrelevant when discussing capabilities. It's like saying that your brain is literally just a bunch of atoms following a set of physics laws. Absolutely true but not particularly helpful. Complex systems have emergent properties.

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

#345

Post by lanstin »

peteforde wrote: post #19

Daily agentic user here, and to me the problem here is the very notion of "vibe coding". If you're even thinking in those terms - this idea that never looking at the code has become a goal unto itself - then IMO you're doing LLM-assisted development wrong. This is very much a hot take, but I believe that Claude Code and its yolo peers are an expensive party trick that gives people who aren't deep into this stuff an a…

Things that claude code/vibe coding is great at:

1. Allowing non-developers to provide very detailed specs for the tools they want or experiences they are imagining

2. Allowing developers to write code using frameworks/languages they only know a bit of and don't like; e.g. I use it to write D3 visualizations or PNG extracts from datastores all the time, without having to learn PNG API or modern javascript frameworks. I just have to know enough to look at the console.log / backtrace and figure out where the fix can be.

3. Analysing large code bases for specific questions (not as accurate on "give me an overall summary" type questions - that one weird thing next to 19 normal things doesn't stick in its craw as much as for a cranky human programmer.

It does seem to benefit cranking thru a list of smallish features/fixes rapidly, but even 4.5 or 4.6 seem to get stuck in weird dead ends rarely enough that I'm not expecting it, but often enough to be super annoying.

I've been playing around with Gas Town swarming a large scale Java migration project, and its been N declarations of victory and still mvn test isn't even compiling. (mvn build is ok, and the pom is updated to the new stack, so it's not nothing). (These are like 50/50 app code/test code repos).

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

#346

Post by tern »

strogonoff wrote: post #234
tern wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to play that game, you need to offer a fair comparison against the cost of "operating" the equivalent human being(s), measured in caloric input, waste output, etc.

Minimising the cost of “operating” humans means getting rid of humans. When human beings are not slaves and operate in a fair system, humans doing things is part humans living . Believe it or not, they may actually enjoy doing things; taking away the ability to do things we enjoy, and especially for compensation, is in fact harmful.

Historically, it leads to more humans—not fewer—and they get to do something else. Whether the new things they get to do are better is a matter of some debate.

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

#347

Post by h4kunamata »

I know Ansible, homelab, Proxmox is my hobby, Debian is my gem.

I asked ChatGPT to guide how to install qBittorrent, Radarr (movies), Sonarr(TV Series), Jackett(credentials/login) without exposing my home IP and have a solid home cinema using private tracker only.

Everything had to be automated via Ansible using Proxmox "pct" CLI command, no copy and paste.

Everything had to run from a single Proxmox Debian container aka LXC

Everything network related had to use WireGuard via Proton VPN, if the VPN goes down, the container has zero network access, everything must be kill.

Everything had to be automated, download is finished, format the files structure for Jellyfin accordingly, Jellyfin add the new movies, TV shows.

It took me 3 nights to get everything up and running.

Many Ansible examples were either wrong or didn't follow what I asked to the letter, I had to fix it. I am not a network expert and hate Iptables haha, you need to know the basic of firewall to understand what the ACLs are doing to understand when it does not work. Then Proxmox folder mapping and you name it.

It would have taken me ages reading docs after docs to get things working, the "Arr services" is a black hole.

For this example, it made the harder part easier, I was not just copy/paste, it was providing the information I didn't know instead of me having to "Google for it".

I know the core of where things are running on, and here is where we have Engineers A and Engineers Z

Engineers A: I know what I am doing, I am using AI to make the boring part easier so I can have fun elsewhere

Engineers Z: I have no idea of what I am doing, I will just ask ChatGPT and we are done: 90-95% of engineers worldwide.

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

#349

Post by direwolf20 »

Guvante wrote: post #338
direwolf20 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great many companies publish proprietary code to GitHub private repos. That is how GitHub makes money.

I don't believe any AI model has admitted to having access to private GitHub repos unless you count instances where a business explicitly gives access related to their own users things.

Admitted, sure...

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

#350

Post by h4kunamata »

crazygringo wrote: post #310
nly wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you were just reviewing bad code. The author should have provided context via comments and structured the code in a way that is easy to change and understand

Exactly. A long time ago, I learned to write comments explaining all necessary context for my future self and for others -- exactly for this reason. Remember, you're not writing code just to execute. You're writing it to be read .

I worked with people that defended the idea that code should not have comments, the code should self explain itself.

I am not a developer and I completely disagree with that, the python scripts I wrote, Ansible playbook, they all have comments because 1 month down the road I no longer remember why I did what I did, was that a system limitation or software limitation or the easiest solution at the time???

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