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I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

nemo.foo

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Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#41

Post by mordymoop »

I am frankly tired of seeing this kind of post on HN. I feel like the population of programmers is bifurcating into those who are committed to mastering these tools, learning to work around their limitations and working to leverage their strengths… and those who are committed to complaining about how they aren’t already perfect Culture Ship Minds.

We get it. They’re not superintelligent at everything yet. They couldn’t infer what you must’ve really meant in your heart from your initial unskillful prompt. They couldn’t foresee every possible bug and edge case from the first moment of conceptualizing the design, a flaw which I’m sure you don’t have.

The thing that pushes me over the line into ranting territory is that computer programmers, of all people, should know that computers do what you tell them to.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#42

Post by ryandrake »

KronisLV wrote: post #16

In my experience LLMs will help you with things that have been solved thousands of times before and are just a matter of finding some easily researched solution. The very moment when you try to go off the beaten path and do something unconventional or stuff that most people won't have written a lot about, it gets more tricky. Just consider how many people will know how to configure some middleware in a Node.js projec…

I use CoPilot pretty much as a smarter autocomplete that can sometimes guess what I'm planning to type next. I find it's not so good at answering prompts, but if I type:

    r = (rgba >> 24) & 0xff;
...and then pause, it's pretty good at guessing:

    g = (rgba >> 16) & 0xff;
    b = (rgba >> 8) & 0xff;
    a = rgba & 0xff;
... for the next few lines. I don't really ask it to do more heavy lifting than that sort of thing. Certainly nothing like "Write this full app for me with these requirements [...]"

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#43

Post by antigeox »

mordymoop wrote: post #41

I am frankly tired of seeing this kind of post on HN. I feel like the population of programmers is bifurcating into those who are committed to mastering these tools, learning to work around their limitations and working to leverage their strengths… and those who are committed to complaining about how they aren’t already perfect Culture Ship Minds. We get it. They’re not superintelligent at everything yet. They couldn…

> I am frankly tired of seeing this kind of post on HN.

You've been here since 2016 and this is the kind of posting that finally gets to you? How in the world have you avoided all the shitposts in the last decade? What is your secret?

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#44

Post by schmookeeg »

KronisLV wrote: post #16

In my experience LLMs will help you with things that have been solved thousands of times before and are just a matter of finding some easily researched solution. The very moment when you try to go off the beaten path and do something unconventional or stuff that most people won't have written a lot about, it gets more tricky. Just consider how many people will know how to configure some middleware in a Node.js projec…

Brilliant.

I have fought the "lowest cognitive load" code-style fight forever at my current gig, and I just keep losing to the "watch this!" fancytowne code that mids love to merge in. They DO outnumber me, so... fair deuce I suppose.

There is value in code being readable by Juniors and LLMs -- hell, this Senior doesn't want to spend time figuring out your decorators, needless abstractions and syntax masturbation. I just want to fix a bug and get on with my day.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#45

Post by [deleted] »

potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

[deleted]

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#46

Post by mordymoop »

antigeox wrote: post #43
mordymoop wrote: post #41

I am frankly tired of seeing this kind of post on HN. I feel like the population of programmers is bifurcating into those who are committed to mastering these tools, learning to work around their limitations and working to leverage their strengths… and those who are committed to complaining about how they aren’t already perfect Culture Ship Minds. We get it. They’re not superintelligent at everything yet. They couldn…

> I am frankly tired of seeing this kind of post on HN. You've been here since 2016 and this is the kind of posting that finally gets to you? How in the world have you avoided all the shitposts in the last decade? What is your secret?

It’s the fact that it’s the same thing over and over. The 100th case of “Well I had a bad experience using LLM for coding!” is not interesting.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#47

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

baxtr wrote: post #33
potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

Is it reasonable to assume that more senior devs benefit more from LLMs?

I believe so. In my experience, you need to have that gut intuition (or experience) to say, “No way. That’s totally wrong.”

Since AI will capitulate and give you whatever you want.

You also have to learn how to ask without suggesting because it will take whatever you give it and agree.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#48

Post by HPsquared »

talldayo wrote: post #31
potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

> which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. That's complicated, but I wouldn't say the resulting software is complex. You gave an LLM a repetitive, translation-based job, and you got good results back. I can also believe that an LLM could write up a dopey SAAS in half the time it would take a human to do the same. But having the right paramet…

What it will do is to free up a lot of brainpower to think about those hard problems and empower people to try our their ideas.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#49

Post by jumpman500 »

baxtr wrote: post #33
potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

Is it reasonable to assume that more senior devs benefit more from LLMs?

Ya. I think people that have better technical vocabulary and an understanding of what should be possible with code do better. That’s usually a senior engineer, but not always

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#50

Post by RickS »

baxtr wrote: post #33
potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

Is it reasonable to assume that more senior devs benefit more from LLMs?

IMO experience provides better immunity for common hangups. Generated code tends to be directionally pretty good, but with lots of minor/esoteric failures. The experience to spot those fast and tidy them makes all the difference. Copilot helps me move 10x faster with tedious arduino stuff, but I can easily see where if I didn't have decent intuition around debugging and troubleshooting, there'd be almost zero traction since it'd be hard to clear that last 10% hurdle needed to even run the thing.
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