431–440 of 1001 posts
i don't get it. It keeps making stuff up or gives me wrong stuff that merely compiles when i tell it signature doesn't exist.
Things have changed.
I tried the agent thing on: - Large C codebase (new feature and bugfix) - Small rust codebase (new feature) - Brand new greenfield frontend for an in-spec and documented openAPI API - Small fixes to an existing frontend It failed _dramatically_ in all cases. Maybe I'm using this thing wrong but it is devin-level fail. Gets diffs wrong. Passes phantom arguments to tools. Screws up basic features. Pulls in hundreds of…
Writing code is one thing that models can do when wired properly, and you can get a powerful productivity boost, but wielding the tools well is a skill of it's own, and results will vary by task, with each model having unique strengths. The most important skill is understanding the limitations.
Based on your task descriptions and the implied expectation, I'm unsurprised that you are frustrated with the results. For good results with anything requiring architecture decisions have a discussion with the model about architecture design, before diving in. Come up with a step by step plan and work through it together. Models are not like people, they know everything and nothing.
Seeing everything these days being about vibe coding, I feel a little old with my VIM setup and my LSP servers who I already thought were a nice productivity increase. The problems I have with the stuff relating to MCP is that the tech around it is developing so fast that it's hard for outsiders to catch up with what the best working setup is, for example. What would you do, for example, if you want to selfhost this?…
I'm not saying that AI can't make you productive, it's just that these claims are really hard to verify. Even the recently posted Cloudflare OAuth worker codebase took ~3 months to release (8 Mar - 20 May), producing a single file with >2k lines. Is that going to be harder to maintain than a codebase with a proper project structure that's easily parseable by a human?
So we replace the task of writing tedious boilerplate with the task of reading the AI's tedious boilerplate. Which takes just as long. And leaves you with less understanding. And is more boring.
The argument that programmers are into piracy and therefore should shut up about theft is nonsensical. Not defending piracy, but at least an artist or creator is still credited and their work is unadulterated. Piracy != plagiarism.
As someone who thinks modern copyright law is unfit for purpose, and more specifically that software shouldn't be copyrightable at all, my main complaint about LLMs is the same as Chinese spying and IP theft: I only care because they don't share.
I'm perfectly fine using open-weights LLMs[0] to do things LLMs are good at. But I would never trust using OpenAI or Perplexity's SaaSS models as a replacement for my own skills. Half the reason they put things behind a server is so they can spy on you[1], the other half is so they can promise a revenue stream to the people they plan to sell the company to so they can enshittify it. The only enshittification-resistant software is software people can't charge you for.
All the other things this blog post is complaining about are real reactions to real harms, even in the FOSS community. People use LLMs as skilled labor substitute and get burned, while creating a spam problem for everyone else. In fact, that's the real replacement threat for artists: diffusion models don't so much outperform human artists as much as they convince people not to pay for art.
[0] I don't give two flying fucks about the license terms.
[1] The judge in the NYT lawsuit is even ordering spying for evidentiary reasons
Conversely, if I say, "Put the button in the upper right corner exactly like the existing button in the upper left," I'll get a button in the upper right, but not exactly like the upper left button.