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$85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

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Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#51

Post by simianwords »

discreteevent wrote: post #46
simianwords wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh this is also not true. Non determinism doesn’t disqualify something from being useful and necessary. If you are a manager, you employ people (who are non deterministic) to get stuff done. In fact entirety of humanity has been delegating work to non deterministic specialists. Like how I delegate making food to non deterministic supply chains and capitalism. No one complains about skill atrophy here I’m sure. “But h…

My argument was not that LLMs aren't useful but that a compiler is a completely misleading anamlogy. You compared them to humans. Humans live in the world, have a world model, meet people for lunch and exchange ideas. Agents read markdown files and code. Simanwords, you spend a lot of time on HN promoting LLMs and being dismissive of humans in comparison. I have to ask: Whose side are you on?

> You compared them to humans. Humans live in the world, have a world model, meet people for lunch and exchange ideas. Agents read markdown files and code.

You don't like that LLM's can be compared to compilers because compilers are deterministic. You don't like LLM's being compared to humans because.. LLMs can't meet people for lunch? I don't think determinism was something you were worried about in the first place.

Unfortunately, I think a useful + non deterministic tool is not something people can grasp for some reason

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#52

Post by simianwords »

customguy wrote: post #47
simianwords wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non determinism doesn’t discount something from still being useful. Companies outsource projects to consultancies all the time. Imagine you wanted to rebrand your logo - you hire a freelance guy to make it. He’s non deterministic. Does this stop you from hiring him? Why or why not?

Would you call him or her "the next step in the evolution of the brush" or something like that? Would you call an assistant who reads from books to or for you the "next level of literacy"? Does objecting to such statements -- because they're false and insulting the intelligence of the reader on the surface, and outright sinister in their long term implications -- mean I am "anti" either of these or other things? No x…

I don't know what this has to do with non determinism.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#53

Post by [deleted] »

discreteevent wrote: post #46
simianwords wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh this is also not true. Non determinism doesn’t disqualify something from being useful and necessary. If you are a manager, you employ people (who are non deterministic) to get stuff done. In fact entirety of humanity has been delegating work to non deterministic specialists. Like how I delegate making food to non deterministic supply chains and capitalism. No one complains about skill atrophy here I’m sure. “But h…

My argument was not that LLMs aren't useful but that a compiler is a completely misleading anamlogy. You compared them to humans. Humans live in the world, have a world model, meet people for lunch and exchange ideas. Agents read markdown files and code. Simanwords, you spend a lot of time on HN promoting LLMs and being dismissive of humans in comparison. I have to ask: Whose side are you on?

[deleted]

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#54

Post by wonnage »

simianwords wrote: post #41
wonnage wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created a throwaway to “not troll” and post the same three tired tropes every tokenmaxxing vibe coder trots out

They are right though. The entire history of human civilisation involves a thing called “specialisation”. The primary reason we were able to prosper as humans is because we all dont have to know how to procure our food. Did humanity lose the skills for making food as people specialised? No. same thing with memory management - as Java became popular, should the concern have been towards losing skills on memory managem…

It's telling that the proponents of vibe coding are the same people who think memory management is no longer a concern with Java

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#55

Post by amazingman »

simianwords wrote: post #43
vivzkestrel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- to answer your question, i did not start with assembly - i started in 2010s with c++ directly but I did go back and learn how to do 8086 opcodes and while i am not good at it, i am still learning it slowly - mundane stuff? algorithms, business logic, critical thinking, architectural understanding is being outsourced to LLMs at an unprecedented rate and there is nothing mundane about any of this - you can sit and ta…

Very respectfully this all sounds incoherent. You have also untastefully mixed in some concern over frontier labs having too much power - this is orthogonal to the discussion. Your reckoning for when we will look back to this time and regret using LLMs won’t happen, as much as you crave for it. - Here’s what will happen: agents allow you to understand less and less of the code (directionally) and allow you to focus o…

What readers should learn from this thread is the current state of AI is that no one has any idea what they are doing with AI. Treat anyone who claims otherwise with extreme skepticism.

(Just like you do with your agents ... right?)

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#56

Post by customguy »

simianwords wrote: post #52
customguy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call him or her "the next step in the evolution of the brush" or something like that? Would you call an assistant who reads from books to or for you the "next level of literacy"? Does objecting to such statements -- because they're false and insulting the intelligence of the reader on the surface, and outright sinister in their long term implications -- mean I am "anti" either of these or other things? No x…

I don't know what this has to do with non determinism.

I simply mean same input, same output. A tool you can learn. A screwdriver or a jet airplane vs. having to ask someone else to fasten a screw or fly you somewhere. Sure, you also can't just fly a modern fighter jet "by yourself", as in, build one, fully understand it, and operate it. For starters, you need a whole support setup and other people on the ground. Same for a modern computers. But there is not necessarily any black box part anywhere in any of those systems, that does this thing today and the opposite tomorrow, for the same input.

That is the difference, it's very fundamental and very simple, and the question why people don't see or pretend to not see or refuse to see it is of utmost importance.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#57

Post by customguy »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #48
customguy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples and oranges, since there is not determinism. That this argument gets trotted out so often is part of the dumbing down IMO.

FreeBSD took some 30 years to get deterministic builds

Great, so let's just make everything a wobbly mess chained to middlemen, so we can get that "gigantic, complex systems hitting edge cases because of small inconsistencies between builds" feeling for even "hello world". Instead of building slot machines with tools, let's build slot machines with slot machines, for great progress.

Also, ever noticed that no matter what you do, you're never perfectly healthy? Don't live forever either way? So yeah I just eat industrial waste now, since it's free and everywhere.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#58

Post by vivzkestrel »

simianwords wrote: post #43
vivzkestrel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- to answer your question, i did not start with assembly - i started in 2010s with c++ directly but I did go back and learn how to do 8086 opcodes and while i am not good at it, i am still learning it slowly - mundane stuff? algorithms, business logic, critical thinking, architectural understanding is being outsourced to LLMs at an unprecedented rate and there is nothing mundane about any of this - you can sit and ta…

Very respectfully this all sounds incoherent. You have also untastefully mixed in some concern over frontier labs having too much power - this is orthogonal to the discussion. Your reckoning for when we will look back to this time and regret using LLMs won’t happen, as much as you crave for it. - Here’s what will happen: agents allow you to understand less and less of the code (directionally) and allow you to focus o…

- i am a skeptic

- what about you? https://bambamramfan.github.io/ai-compass/ this survey came up on HN today, i would love to see your results

- here are mine

- You are... The Skeptic patron saint: Ed Zitron It's oversold, it's losing staggering amounts of money, and the harms are arriving faster than the value. You've done the math on the unit economics and it doesn't close. You are loud about this, prolific about this, and you suspect history will vindicate you.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#59

Post by vivzkestrel »

simianwords wrote: post #41
wonnage wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You created a throwaway to “not troll” and post the same three tired tropes every tokenmaxxing vibe coder trots out

They are right though. The entire history of human civilisation involves a thing called “specialisation”. The primary reason we were able to prosper as humans is because we all dont have to know how to procure our food. Did humanity lose the skills for making food as people specialised? No. same thing with memory management - as Java became popular, should the concern have been towards losing skills on memory managem…

someone has taken the words straight out of my mind right today on HN https://rruxandra.github.io/regression-to-the-mean.html

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#60

Post by ProjectMRI »

customguy wrote: post #56
simianwords wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what this has to do with non determinism.

I simply mean same input, same output. A tool you can learn. A screwdriver or a jet airplane vs. having to ask someone else to fasten a screw or fly you somewhere. Sure, you also can't just fly a modern fighter jet "by yourself", as in, build one, fully understand it, and operate it. For starters, you need a whole support setup and other people on the ground. Same for a modern computers. But there is not necessarily…

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