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Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

worksonmymachine.substack.com

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Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#401

Post by throw234234234 »

rafaelmn wrote: post #43
lordnacho wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you also can't not swim with the tide. If you drove a horse-buggy 100 years ago, it was probably worth your while to keep your eye on whether motor-cars went anywhere. I was super skeptical about a year ago. Copilot was making nice predictions, that was it. This agent stuff is truly impressive.

More like people telling us there will be no more professional drivers on the road in 5-10 years 10 years ago. Agents are like lane assist, not even up to the current self driving levels.

Not sure the analogy is the same. A driverless car if it does something wrong can cause death - the cost of failure is very high. If my code doesn't come out right, as other posts here have said, I can just "re-roll the slot machine" until it does come out as acceptable - the cost is extremely low. Most of the "reasoning" models just increase the probability that the "re-run" will more likely be to preference of most people with RL to make it viable - tools like new agents know how to run tools, etc to give more data for the probability to be viable within a good timeframe and not run into an endless loop most of the time. Software until it is running after all is just text on a page.

Sure I have to be sure what I'm committing and running is good, especially in critical domains. The cheap cost of iteration before actual commit IMO is the one reason why LLM's are disruptive in software and other "generative" domains in the digital world. Conversely real-time requirements, software that needs to be relied on (e.g. a life support system?), things that post opinions in my name online etc will probably, even if written by a LLM, will need someone accountable and verifying the output.

Again as per many other posts "I want to be wrong" given I'm a senior in my career and would find it hard to change now given age. I don't like how our career is concentrating to the big AI labs/companies rather than our own intelligence/creativity. But rationally its hard to see how software continues to be the same career going forward and if I don't adapt I might die. I will most likely going forward, similar to what I do with my current team, just define and verify.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#402

Post by gronglo »

doom2 wrote: post #342
gronglo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a lot of people (who love crafting) will be leaving the industry in the next 5 years, for better or worse. I think you're spot on. It was once necessary to acquire knowledge in order to acquire productivity. This made knowledge valuable and worth attaining. Now, with LLMs, we we can skip the middle man and go straight to the acquisition of productivity. I'd call it the democratisation of knowledge, but it's…

Which makes me wonder: why shouldn't AI use be a core part of technical interviews now? If we're trading "knowledge of how to code" for "knowledge of how to use LLMs" and treating Claude like a much more productive junior engineer, do we still need to filter candidates on their ability to write a doubly linked list? And if we are still asking those sorts of interview questions, why shouldn't candidates be able to use…

There's a fundamental problem with your question, which is the suggestion that technical interviews are still needed at all. Technical roles can be replaced with roles that are more akin to production managers, and we should absolutely be testing those candidates for LLM competency.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#403

Post by bopbopbop7 »

Zacharias030 wrote: post #274
asadotzler wrote: post #112

I seem to have missed the part where he successfully prompted for security, internationalizability, localizability, accessibility, usability, etc., etc. This is a core problem with amateurs pretending to be software producers. There are others, but this one is fundamental to acceptable commercial software and will absolutely derail vibe coded products from widespread adoption. And if you think these aspects of qualit…

Isn’t that like „the dog speaks English, but makes occasional grammar mistakes“? Give it two years.

It’s been two more years for the past three years. What’s going to happen in those two years? Are we going to find 10 more internets to train on?

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#404

Post by bopbopbop7 »

saadatq wrote: post #177

this isn’t vibe coding. This is something completely new. I call it “flex coding.” heck I built a full app in an afternoon AND I was a good dad? > I'd wander into my office, check what Claude had built, test it real quick. If it worked, great! Commit and push. "Now build the server connection UI," I'd say, and wander back out. Made breakfast. Claude coded. Played with my son. Claude coded. Watched some TV. Claude cod…

Let’s see this app.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#406

Post by s_ting765 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #399
s_ting765 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are not compilers. They can't be deterministic. A better comparison is an autocorrect on steroids. And I don't think there's anything to get over about them. They are useful but people elevate their significance too much over what they actually are.

An unhealthy attachment to determinism will turn out to be a career-limiting hangup, I suspect. You already lack insight into how 100% of the code in your project works, unless you only work on trivial projects. Did you think that state of affairs was going to get better with time? As usual, TDD covers a multitude of sins. As for "autocorrect," let us know when your "autocorrect" takes gold at the International Math…

Talk is cheap. Give your LLM/agent your badge and let it turn in 100% of your job.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#407

Post by creshal »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #284
lelanthran wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: have you considered that dealing with all that minutiae and working through all that pain has made you capable to have the LLM write code? Those young engineers, in 10 years, won't be able to fix what the LLM gave them,because they have not learned anything about programming. They have all learned how to.micromanage an LLM instead.

> Those young engineers, in 10 years, won't be able to fix what the LLM gave them,because they have not learned anything about programming. I have heard a version of this plenty of times, and it was never correct. In the early 90s it was the "electronics" people that were saying "I come from an electronics background, these young'uns will look at a computer and don't know what to do if it breaks". Well, bob, we did,…

> In the early 90s it was the "electronics" people that were saying "I come from an electronics background, these young'uns will look at a computer and don't know what to do if it breaks".

...and today, Nvidia ships self-immolating graphics cards because nobody wanted to figure out how to design a safe electric connector.

> Oh, you young people are so spoiled with your IDEs and whatnot, real men code in a text editor.

...and today, a lot of so-called programmers are trapped in AbstractHellFactorySingletonFactories that they cannot and never will understand, because generations of code monkeys have abused IDE assistance to dig themselves deeper into their hole.

And as a user, you'll know, because the software they write is garbage and never works reliably.

> Then it was about frameworks. BBbbut what if your framework breaks, what do you do then, if you don't know the underlying whatever?

Going by software like Teams, or Slack: They just ignore it, because consumers can't fight back against the the enshittification of increasingly useless software nobody understands.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#408

Post by ruthvik947 »

m_fayer wrote: post #317
nirvanatikku wrote: post #9

This article is spot on. I had stumbled upon Kidlin’s Law—“If you can write down the problem clearly, you’re halfway to solving it”. This is a powerful guiding principle in today’s AI-driven world. As natural language becomes our primary interface with technology, clearly articulating challenges not only enhances our communication but also maximizes the potential of AI. The async approach to coding has been most fasc…

Because I can never focus on just one thing, I have a philosophy degree. I’ve worked with product teams and spent lots of time with stakeholders. I’ve written tons of docs because I was the only one on the team who enjoyed it. I’ve always bemoaned my distractibility as an impediment to deep expertise, but at least it taught me to write well, for all kinds of audiences. Boy do I feel lucky now.

I have a philosophy degree, have worked in product teams, and have had very similar observations. I could've written this comment!

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#409

Post by bigfatkitten »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #284
lelanthran wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: have you considered that dealing with all that minutiae and working through all that pain has made you capable to have the LLM write code? Those young engineers, in 10 years, won't be able to fix what the LLM gave them,because they have not learned anything about programming. They have all learned how to.micromanage an LLM instead.

> Those young engineers, in 10 years, won't be able to fix what the LLM gave them,because they have not learned anything about programming. I have heard a version of this plenty of times, and it was never correct. In the early 90s it was the "electronics" people that were saying "I come from an electronics background, these young'uns will look at a computer and don't know what to do if it breaks". Well, bob, we did,…

I see a version of this every day.

Developers throwing huge amounts of money (in cloud resources) at performance problems that would’ve been prevented if they had some understanding of how their tech stack actually worked.

Re: Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

#410

Post by aprilthird2021 »

nojito wrote: post #64
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #5

Eh, idk. First of all, the article is really wordy to say very few things. That just frustrated me a bit. Second of all, it's easy to fart out some program in a few days vibe coding. How will that fare as more and more features need to be added on? We all used to say "Dropbox that's just FTP wrapped in a nice UI anyone can make that". This protocollie project seems to be a documentation viewer / postman for MCP. Whic…

>Which is cool, but is it something that would have taken a competent dev months to build? Probably not. Right...but it exists today. The days of wondering "should I spend time building this" are gone.

The very next sentence of mine

> And eventually the actual value of such things is the extensibility and integrations with various things like corporate SAML etc.

I could make a Dropbox clone by hand in a weekend. I could make one with AI in a few hours. Neither will be valuable like Dropbox because the value is the hard stuff that I have yet to see proof AI can do

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