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

How I write software with LLMs

stavros.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 544 posts

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#391

Post by Ancapistani »

zackify wrote: post #239
miguelgrinberg wrote: post #151

> One thing I’ve noticed is that different people get wildly different results with LLMs, so I suspect there’s some element of how you’re talking to them that affects the results. It's always easier to blame the prompt and convince yourself that you have some sort of talent in how you talk to LLMs that other's don't. In my experience the differences are mostly in how the code produced by the LLM is reviewed. Develope…

This definitely is the case. I was talking to someone complaining about how llms don't work good. They said it couldn't fix an issue it made. I asked if they gave it any way to validate what it did. They did not, some people really are saying "fix this" instead of saying "x fn is doing y when someone makes a request to it. Please attempt to fix x and validate it by accessing the endpoint after and writing tests" Its…

> some people really are saying "fix this" instead of saying "x fn is doing y when someone makes a request to it. Please attempt to fix x and validate it by accessing the endpoint after and writing tests"

This works about 85% of the time IME, in Claude Code. My normal workflow on most bugs is to just say “fix this” and paste the logs. The key is that I do it in plan mode, then thoroughly inspect and refine the plan before allowing it to proceed.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#393

Post by LogicFailsMe »

sarchertech wrote: post #386
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the dark ages lasted a millennium. Sounds like quite an improvement on that. And if America didn't want a society hellbent on living the worst possible timeline, why did it re-elect President Voldemaga and give him the football? And then, even when he breaks nearly every political promise, his support remains better than his predecessor? Anyway, I think the richest ~1135 Americans won't let you starve, but they'l…

What are you even arguing about? I have absolutely no idea where you are going with this.

Yeah I figured that. You think society is going to collapse because of AI. I don't. But I do think that stupid narrative is prevalent in the media right now and the C-suite happily proclaiming they're going to lay people off and replace them with AI got the ball rolling in the first place. Now it has momentum of its own with lunatics like Eliezer Yudkowsky once again getting taken seriously.

Fortunately, the other 95% of humanity is far less doomer about their prospects. So if America wants to be the new neanderthals, they'll be happy to be the new cro magnons.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#394

Post by sshine »

zackify wrote: post #239
miguelgrinberg wrote: post #151

> One thing I’ve noticed is that different people get wildly different results with LLMs, so I suspect there’s some element of how you’re talking to them that affects the results. It's always easier to blame the prompt and convince yourself that you have some sort of talent in how you talk to LLMs that other's don't. In my experience the differences are mostly in how the code produced by the LLM is reviewed. Develope…

This definitely is the case. I was talking to someone complaining about how llms don't work good. They said it couldn't fix an issue it made. I asked if they gave it any way to validate what it did. They did not, some people really are saying "fix this" instead of saying "x fn is doing y when someone makes a request to it. Please attempt to fix x and validate it by accessing the endpoint after and writing tests" Its…

Feeding the LLM a "copy as cURL" for its feedback loop instead of letting it manage the dev server was an unlock for me.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#395

Post by Ancapistani »

dkersten wrote: post #384
petcat wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you tell a human junior developer just "fix this" then they will spend a week on a wild-goose chase with nothing to show for it. At least the LLM will only take 5 minutes to tell you they don't know what to do.

> At least the LLM will only take 5 minutes to tell you they don't know what to do. In my experience, the LLM will happily try the wrong thing over and over for hours. It rarely will say it doesn’t know.

Don’t ask it to make changes off the bat, then - ask it to make a plan. Then inspect the plan, change it if necessary, and go from there.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#397

Post by sarchertech »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #283
sarchertech wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn’t matter to AI whether the code is spaghetti code or not. What you said was only important when humans were maintaining the code. In my experience using AI to work on existing systems, the AI definitely performs much better on code that humans would consider readable. You can’t really sit here talking about architecting greenfield systems with AI using methodology that didn’t exist 6 months ago while confi…

I wasn’t born into consulting in 1996. AI for coding is by definition the worse today that it will ever be. What makes you think that the complexity of the code will increase faster than the capability of the agents?

You might have maintained large systems long ago, but if you haven't done it in a while your skill atrophies.

And the most important part is you haven't maintained any large systems written by AI, so stating that they will work is nonsense.

I won't state that AI can't get better. AI agents might replace all of us in the future. But what I will tell you is based on my experience and reasoning I have very strong doubts about the maintainability of AI generated code that no one has approved or understands. The burden of proof isn't on the person saying "maybe we should slow down and understand the consequences before we introduce a massive change." It's on the person saying "trust me it will work even though I have absolutely no evidence to support my claim".

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#398

Post by k3nx »

jplusequalt wrote: post #320
LogicFailsMe wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a world where a motivated soul can build a business from a laptop and a token service as a problem. I see it as opportunity. I feel similarly about Hollywood and the creation of media. We're not there in either case yet, but we will be. That's pretty clear. and when I look at the feudal society that is the entertainment industry here, I don't understand why so many of the serfs are trying to perpetuate it…

>If you can build things, AI coding agents will let you build faster and more for the same amount of effort. But you aren't building, your LLM is. Also, you are only thinking about ways as you, a supposed builder, will benefit from this technology. Have you considered how all previous waves of new technologies have introduced downstream effects that have muddied our societies? LLMs are not unique in this regard, and…

I've struggled a bit with this myself. I'm having a paradigm shift. I used to say "but I like writing code". But like the article says, that's not really true. I like building things, the code was just a way to do that. If you want to get pedantic, I wasn't building things before AI either, the compiler/linker was doing that for me. I see this is just another level of abstraction. I still get to decide how things work, what "layers" I want to introduce. I still get to say, no, I don't like that. So instead of being the "grunt", I'm the designer/architect. I'm still building what I want. Boilerplate code was never something I enjoyed before anyway. I'm loving (like actually giggling) having the AI tie all the bits for me and getting up and running with things working. It reminds me of my Delphi days: File->New Project, and you're ready to go. I think I was burnt out. AI is helping me find joy again. I also disable AI in all my apps as well, so I'm still on the fence about several things too.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#399

Post by sarchertech »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #393
sarchertech wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you even arguing about? I have absolutely no idea where you are going with this.

Yeah I figured that. You think society is going to collapse because of AI. I don't. But I do think that stupid narrative is prevalent in the media right now and the C-suite happily proclaiming they're going to lay people off and replace them with AI got the ball rolling in the first place. Now it has momentum of its own with lunatics like Eliezer Yudkowsky once again getting taken seriously. Fortunately, the other 95…

I don't think society is going to collapse because of AI because I don't think the current architectures have any chance of becoming AGI. I think that if AGI is even something we're capable of it's very far off.

I think that if CEOs can replace us soon, it's because AGI got here much sooner than I predicted. And if that happens we have 2 options Mad Max and Star Trek and Mad Max is the more likely of the 2.

Re: How I write software with LLMs

#400

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #359
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have no idea whether it’s producing quality without you checking yourself No, I can have some idea. For example, “brand perception”, which can be negatively impacted pretty heavily if things go south too often. See: GitHub, most recently. I mean, there are already companies that have a negative reputation regarding software quality due to significant outsourcing (consultancies), or bloated management (IBM), or…

So as long as it is meeting the requirements of “it stays up consistently and doesn’t lose my code” you really don’t care how it was coded… The same as I’ve been arguing about using an agent to do the grunt work of coding. If GitHub’s login is slow, it isn’t because someone or something didn’t write SOLID code.

> So as long as it is meeting the requirements of “it stays up consistently and doesn’t lose my code” you really don’t care how it was coded…

I don’t think we’ll come to common ground on this topic due to mismatching definitions of fundamental concepts of software engineering. Maybe let’s meet again in a year or two and reflect upon our disagreement.

Post reply on HN