Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tower Keeps Rising

lucumr.pocoo.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 280 posts

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#51

Post by sixtyj »

lelanthran wrote: post #47
sixtyj wrote: post #5

> There is the appealing idea that AI-assisted programming means better tools which lets us build more ambitious software. That is certainly true at the level of the individual and without doubt a developer with an agent will be dramatically more capable of changing a codebase. But large software projects have never been limited only by how quickly an individual can produce code. They are limited by how well people c…

> They are limited by how well people can coordinate their understanding of the system they are changing. It's not really news, though. Programming as Theory Building (Peter Naur) was published in the 80s, I think? Maybe the younger entrants to this field never came across it, but even if you never came across it, it was common knowledge amongst experienced devs that understanding of the system you are about to chang…

The complexity of coordinating a project involving more than one entity is, of course, an issue across all industrial sectors—just look at the construction industry.

Thanks for mentioning Peter Naur’s Programming as Theory Building (1985).

I would add Fred Brooks and his The Mythical Man-Month.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#53

Post by thadk »

Three or so years ago, Omar, the creator of DSpy pointed out on Twitter that ~LLMs get better most by better internal collaboration. Wish I could find it.

It seems to me that LLMs and particularly chatbots have already allowed for bigger scale collaboration within the LLM companies versus what was possible within the prior cohort of big platform companies.

Has the result just been taller towers, or actually a change of what is possible?

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#55

Post by irishcoffee »

pixl97 wrote: post #49
qsera wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LLMs be able to coordinate their understanding I think the next time I see "LLMs" and "Understanding" in the same sentence, I am going to lose it....

[flagged]

I'll meet you in the middle: an LLM "understands" words in the same way a toddler understands the phrases they say. "My want cookie!" The toddler has zero comprehension of what any of those words mean, but they know that saying them in that order might result in something desirable.

An LLM has zero understanding of "my", "want", or "cookie" because an LLM has no id/ego, has never felt desire, and has never eaten a cookie.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#56

Post by jgalt212 »

lelanthran wrote: post #47
sixtyj wrote: post #5

> There is the appealing idea that AI-assisted programming means better tools which lets us build more ambitious software. That is certainly true at the level of the individual and without doubt a developer with an agent will be dramatically more capable of changing a codebase. But large software projects have never been limited only by how quickly an individual can produce code. They are limited by how well people c…

> They are limited by how well people can coordinate their understanding of the system they are changing. It's not really news, though. Programming as Theory Building (Peter Naur) was published in the 80s, I think? Maybe the younger entrants to this field never came across it, but even if you never came across it, it was common knowledge amongst experienced devs that understanding of the system you are about to chang…

> It's not really news, though. Programming as Theory Building (Peter Naur) was published in the 80s, I think?

The news is that Agentic Programming has made this always challenging task even more challenging.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#57

Post by jzer0cool »

> the people is one, ... one language, ..., nothing will be restrained from them

Why being one (I see as collaborative) was it not desired? Interpretations? Why is it seemed *more* harmful rather than good?

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#59

Post by a2dam »

qsera wrote: post #34
pixl97 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Since Nov 30, 2022 BC everything has become… more complex. FTFY Increasing complexity is the story of mankind. It's the story of civilization. Someone from 20,000 BC would wander around the earth trying to find food, trying not to freeze, and trying not to get eaten. Someone from 5,000 BC would be trying to grow food, hoping it rains, and hoping disease didn't wipe out the village. The second one increases the compl…

>LLMs be able to coordinate their understanding I think the next time I see "LLMs" and "Understanding" in the same sentence, I am going to lose it....

You should be less upset over semantics that everyone else has usefully settled on. LLMs understand things fine.

Re: The Tower Keeps Rising

#60

Post by SoftTalker »

overgard wrote: post #36
sixtyj wrote: post #5

> There is the appealing idea that AI-assisted programming means better tools which lets us build more ambitious software. That is certainly true at the level of the individual and without doubt a developer with an agent will be dramatically more capable of changing a codebase. But large software projects have never been limited only by how quickly an individual can produce code. They are limited by how well people c…

I feel like with software, things have gotten way too complicated (just layer's upon layers upon layers). But to deal with that complexity, now we're using something that just creates WAY more complexity. I've been coding for a while, and I remember the 90s and early 00s where people could make pretty powerful applications with like visual basic or php with essentially no formal training. Those technologies weren't g…

And what's ironic is that a lot of those layers and complexity were added with the stated goal of making it easier for average developers to build applications.
Post reply on HN