Fuck it, make it anyway

Ever since Fable and Sol level LLMs/agents came online, I have ceased to look at the code. I recently launched a project for a client that integrated many many systems, has considerable traffic with low latency requirements and everything just.. works. I've never had to do this little firefighting when launching a project of that complexity and scale. It's been liberating and I was able to focus mostly on polish and QoL improvements of the stack and systems. What a time to be alive for a technical builder.

If you don't care about programming but just problem solving...or you think all of this is irrelevant to "the customer" then AI might make you happy.

Can you imagine, for example, if Tolkien (insert favorite writer here) had to get AI to write Lord of the Rings for him: what would happen? How would he get it to express his idea? In order to make money he could just describe a few ways of expressing things and outline his plot and ..... wham. He could then make it write an Icosology (series of 20 books - I had to look it up) and we'd all be so happy right?

The fantasy genre that followed LoTR is almost like that! :-)

I don't love control so much that I want to write in assembler and I don't like it so little that I want to make everything by effectively trying to tell someone else how to do it for me and finding that they just don't understand. I think the expression of the idea matters sometimes much more than even the idea and since words are not 100% effective at communicating ideas any language based description is going to be a lot of effort.

So like everyone else I use it but for things I don't care about - things which are a stepping stone to something else. I also use it for things I don't understand and I feel delightfully empowered at how something super hard turned out easy....until it doesn't work properly.

I am taking the Apple path: to sit back and let first movers burn themselves out.

Sure, first movers get the first-mover advantage.

But as the old saying goes, while the early bird might get the worm, it is the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Imma gonna keep my finger on the pulse of things and slowly bone up on best practices for AI, but I’m taking a low-energy, low-effort approach to AI until success routes are clear and unambiguous.

I'm afraid your hundreds of hours of prompting will reduce to "clone this product, here are 200 screenshots of every screen."

I don't understand why people aren't getting this: there is no skill in prompting! The CC leak literally showed Anthropic engineers developing Claude with broken half-english prompts like "gud, now make better".