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Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

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Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#411

Post by rurp »

thegrim33 wrote: post #408
com2kid wrote: post #9

Multiple things can be true at the same time: 1. LLMs do not increase general developer productivity by 10x across the board for general purpose tasks selected at random. 2. LLMs dramatically increases productivity for a limited subset of tasks 3. LLMs can be automated to do busy work and although they may take longer in terms of clock time than a human, the work is effectively done in the background. LLMs can get me…

"LLMs can get me up to speed on new APIs and libraries far faster than I can myself, a gigantic speedup" Just a random personal anecdote I wanted to throw out. I recently had to build some custom UI with Qt. I hadn't worked with Qt in a decade and barely remembered it. Seems like a perfect use case for AI to get me "up to speed" on the library, right? It's an incredibly well documented library with lots written on it…

Just recently I was having trouble getting something to work with a large well documented framework library. Turned out the solution I needed was to switch to a similar but different API. But that's not what Claude told me. Instead it wanted me to override and rewrite a bunch of core library code. Fortunately I was able to recognize that the suggested solution was almost certainly bad and did some more digging to find the right answer, but I could easily see nightmarish code that solves immediate problems in terrible ways piling up fast in a vibe coded project.

I do find LLMs useful at times when working in unfamiliar areas, but there are a lot of pitfalls and newly created risks that come with it. I mostly work on large existing code bases and LLMs have very much been a mildly useful tool, still nice to have, but hardly the 100x productivity booster a lot of people are claiming.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#412

Post by saulpw »

larve wrote: post #365
sarchertech wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I generate between 10-100k lines of code per day these days. That’s absolute nonsense.

You can look at my GitHub, and I stream full unedited sessions on https://youtube.com/@program-with-ai

I tuned in to a random spot at a random episode, didn't see any coding but did get to hear you say:

"I'm a person who hates art now...I never want to see art again. All I want to see is like, AI stuff. That's how bad it's gotten. Handmade? nuh-uh. Handmade code? ... anything by humans, just over. I'm just gonna watch pixels."

https://www.youtube.com/live/APkR4qRg1vM?si=XLGmH9uEjG08q-6x...

I watched a little more but was, uh, not impressed.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#413

Post by tavavex »

card_zero wrote: post #397
tempodox wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re anthropomorphizing too much.

These postulated entities are by definition people. Not humans, because they lack the biology, but that's a detail. If you think they're going to be trained on all the world's data, that's still supposing them to be an extension of AI. No, they'll have to pick up their knowledge culturally, the same way everybody else does, by watching cartoons - I mean by interactions with mentors. They might have their own culture,…

> These postulated entities are by definition people.

Why? Does your definition postulate that people are the only thing in the universe that can measure up to us? Or the inverse, that every entity as sentient and intelligent as us must be called a person?

My opinion is that a lot of what makes us like this is physiological. Unless the developers go out of their way to simulate these things, a hypothetical AGI won't be similar to us no matter how much human-made content it ingests. And why would they do that? Why would you want to implement physical pain, or fear, or human needs, or biases and fallacies driven from our primal instincts? Would implementing all these things even be possible at the point where we find an inroad towards AGI? All of that might require creating a comprehensive human brain simulation, not just a self-learning machine.

I think it's almost certain that, while there would be some mutual understanding, an AGI would almost certainly feel like a completely different species to us.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#414

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

dangus wrote: post #372
torginus wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole 'startup/scaleup' culture (which have become the industry titans of today) - is insane and have been insane for as long as it has been a thing - the culture of either 'just grow and figure out how to monetize'(Social media, food delivery etc.) or 'we're selling you this technology that doesn't exist yet but going to be insanely valuable in the future (AGI, self driving)' or 'we're selling shovels to the fir…

> If you sat down in front of a 15 yo computer, or tried to solve a technical challenge with the tooling of 15-10 years ago, I don't think you'd get a significantly worse result. While you have decent points in your comment (essentially, the idea of tech industry growth slowing due to low hanging fruit being picked), if this statement going to be your barometer you’re going to end up looking stupendously wrong. You c…

Kind of missing the existence of Wordpress? A random theme + a "form builder" plugin and it would be done with hosting taken care off wherever you created the site.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#415

Post by talldrinkofwhat »

heavyset_go wrote: post #82
jryio wrote: post #18

I completely agree with the thesis here. I also have not seen a massive productivity boost with the use of AI. I think that there will be neurological fatigue occurring whereby if software engineers are not actively practicing problem-solving, discernment, and translation into computer code - those skills will atrophy... Yee, AI is not the 2x or 10x technology of the future ™ is was promised to be. It may the case th…

> I think that there will be neurological fatigue occurring whereby if software engineers are not actively practicing problem-solving, discernment, and translation into computer code - those skills will atrophy... I've found this to be the case with most (if not all) skills, even riding a bike. Sure, you don't forget how to ride it, but your ability to expertly articulate with the bike in a synergistic and tool-like…

The author of the article had an interesting solution to this. Flip a coin to see who implements the feature.

Heads you code. Tails you review.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#416

Post by iainctduncan »

Kiro wrote: post #253
mvdtnz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs can be automated to do busy work and although they may take longer in terms of clock time than a human, the work is effectively done in the background. What is this supposed busy work that can be done in the background unsupervised? I think it's about time for the AI pushers to be absolutely clear about the actual specific tasks they are having success with. We're all getting a bit tired of the vagueness and h…

No, you've got it backwards. If anything, people are getting tired of comments like yours.

HN votes say otherwise, lol

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#417

Post by iainctduncan »

This reminds me of something... I'm a jazz musician when not being a coder, and have studied and taught from/to a lot of players. One thing advanced improvisors notice is that the student is very frequently not a good judge – in the moment – of what is making them better. Doing long term analytics tests (as the author did) works, but knowing how well something is working while you're doing it? not so much. Very, very frequently that which feels productive isn't, and that which feels painful and slow is.

Just spit balling here, but it sure feels similar.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#418

Post by larve »

saulpw wrote: post #412
larve wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at my GitHub, and I stream full unedited sessions on https://youtube.com/@program-with-ai

I tuned in to a random spot at a random episode, didn't see any coding but did get to hear you say: "I'm a person who hates art now...I never want to see art again. All I want to see is like, AI stuff. That's how bad it's gotten. Handmade? nuh-uh. Handmade code? ... anything by humans, just over. I'm just gonna watch pixels." https://www.youtube.com/live/APkR4qRg1vM?si=XLGmH9uEjG08q-6x... I watched a little more but…

I'm always a very serious person while I wait for people to join the stream. I'm sorry you weren't impressed, but tbf that's not really my goal, I just like building things and yapping about it.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#419

Post by camdenreslink »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #235
com2kid wrote: post #9

Multiple things can be true at the same time: 1. LLMs do not increase general developer productivity by 10x across the board for general purpose tasks selected at random. 2. LLMs dramatically increases productivity for a limited subset of tasks 3. LLMs can be automated to do busy work and although they may take longer in terms of clock time than a human, the work is effectively done in the background. LLMs can get me…

> Setting up a scaffolding for a new website? LLMs are amazing at it. Weren't the code generators before this even better though? They generated consistent results and were dead quick at doing it.

And they were frequently in public repos that were updated with people filing issues if necessary.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#420

Post by entropicdrifter »

pabs3 wrote: post #172
nemomarx wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find a way to make sure workers get the value of ai labor instead of bosses and the workers will like it better. If the result is "you do the same work but managers want everything in 20% of the time" why would anyone be happy?

Start a worker-owned tech co-op? Not much point though, since people are going to pay AI to write their code instead, and so the market for consultants will dry up. Probably lots of market space for fixing up broken AI code though :)

Don't you think consultants get hired to fix up code? If so, why would their market dry up? If anything, I would expect it to explode
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