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

The Vibe Tax

insufferable.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 132 posts

Re: The Vibe Tax

#51

Post by [deleted] »

0x457 wrote: post #32
guybedo wrote: post #29

i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt. There's a reason why we talk about software development lifecycle, design, architecture, testing ... It's because it's been the most reliable way to build and ship software. We shouldn't expect discard this and expect agents to perform well outside of this. I'm treating LLM agents as junior devs who happen to have vast know…

> i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt. because that's how agents are marketed.

[deleted]

Re: The Vibe Tax

#52

Post by 0x457 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #49
0x457 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally any coding agent marking material: - https://cognition.com/ - https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-codex-app/ - https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-7-sonnet anthropic specifically brags about how good claude code is every annoucement of a new model. I will surrender that none of them claim its "to perfection", but IMO its implied because no one would claim that their model one-shots any issue to dog…

Seems like motte and bailey fallacy. They say their models are good (the motte), therefore their models must one-shot everything to perfection (the bailey). Besides, other people's claims about something doesn't give you license to abandon all critical thinking. Though it's evident they don't claim what you say they are.

That's irrelevant. Questions was why people assume somthing, and answer is because that's how it advertised.

To be clear that's not what I'm thinking, even Fable 5 produces some hilariously bad results under some conditions and sonnet 5 produced great results under others.

Re: The Vibe Tax

#53

Post by jumploops »

I've found that LLMs make throwaway software better than I ever did.

They handle edge cases, catch bugs, and write tests that I'd never write.

Even if, however, this leads to the average piece of software improving, this one-shot complexity has the same issues as any large project. The more code, the longer it takes to steer the ship.

This "rising tide lifts all boats" mentality will make exceptional software even rarer than it is today.

Excited for the Roller Coaster Tycoons of tomorrow[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_(video_ga...

Re: The Vibe Tax

#54

Post by infinite_spin »

0x457 wrote: post #43
uproarchat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen model providers marketing like that. What examples have you seen?

Literally any coding agent marking material: - https://cognition.com/ - https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-codex-app/ - https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-3-7-sonnet anthropic specifically brags about how good claude code is every annoucement of a new model. I will surrender that none of them claim its "to perfection", but IMO its implied because no one would claim that their model one-shots any issue to dog…

- https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-codex-app/

no where does this document suggest that codex can "one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt". It describes using a prompt plus agent skills (which are essentially many other prompts) to develop a playable game.. nothing about it being perfect or anything more than being in a playable state.

Re: The Vibe Tax

#55

Post by hombre_fatal »

0x457 wrote: post #52
hombre_fatal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like motte and bailey fallacy. They say their models are good (the motte), therefore their models must one-shot everything to perfection (the bailey). Besides, other people's claims about something doesn't give you license to abandon all critical thinking. Though it's evident they don't claim what you say they are.

That's irrelevant. Questions was why people assume somthing, and answer is because that's how it advertised. To be clear that's not what I'm thinking, even Fable 5 produces some hilariously bad results under some conditions and sonnet 5 produced great results under others.

> because that's how it advertised.

But you didn't provide the evidence for that. You shared some links and then admitted they didn't claim it.

It kinda seems like "because I think they're a little too positive about their product, I can set my expectations to anything I want and la-la-la it's their fault."

And I don't see the problem with agents building test scaffolding as they go. It might be too defensive at times, like testing a shell script you don't run often, but big deal. It's kinda cool imo, and it's trivial to make it stop.

Re: The Vibe Tax

#56

Post by vanuatu »

0x457 wrote: post #32
guybedo wrote: post #29

i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt. There's a reason why we talk about software development lifecycle, design, architecture, testing ... It's because it's been the most reliable way to build and ship software. We shouldn't expect discard this and expect agents to perform well outside of this. I'm treating LLM agents as junior devs who happen to have vast know…

> i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt. because that's how agents are marketed.

we should exercise critical thinking then

heaps of people on this site expect them to be omnipotent then claim it’s fake when it doesn’t read minds

Re: The Vibe Tax

#57

Post by jimmaswell »

guybedo wrote: post #29

i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt. There's a reason why we talk about software development lifecycle, design, architecture, testing ... It's because it's been the most reliable way to build and ship software. We shouldn't expect discard this and expect agents to perform well outside of this. I'm treating LLM agents as junior devs who happen to have vast know…

> i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt.

They do often enough that it's not a surprising event, depending on prompt quality, context available, ability for the result to be objectively judged and iterate on by the agent, etc. For frontiers on very high settings at least.

Re: The Vibe Tax

#58

Post by exogenousdata »

acedTrex wrote: post #8
beezlewax wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found writing small well defined tickets and getting Claude to work on them works well for this type of workflow.

This sounds miserable, why not just give it specific tasks to do in your normal workflow/editor? Why would we want to do MORE of the miserable task of ticket creation.

Because when you're a dev, tickets are a tool of the devil. But when you're a manager, tickets are a simple means to an end.

-- PHB

Re: The Vibe Tax

#59

Post by redox99 »

guybedo wrote: post #29

i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt. There's a reason why we talk about software development lifecycle, design, architecture, testing ... It's because it's been the most reliable way to build and ship software. We shouldn't expect discard this and expect agents to perform well outside of this. I'm treating LLM agents as junior devs who happen to have vast know…

> i'm not sure why people expect agents to one shot everything to perfection with just a prompt.

because that's the end goal? and for simple small stuff they're already there?

Re: The Vibe Tax

#60

Post by zuzululu »

whenever I read these type of articles or comments where people are getting such bad negative experiences, I do wonder, what are they doing wrong or is there something that they are not sharing?

I've been able to get such positive returns out of LLMs. I am working for 3 different remote jobs concurrently with it, I've shipped a few apps thats doing six digits a month, I found a life partner after I used LLM to really work on myself. I am also experimenting with hardware prototypes and will likely have funding to launch it all with LLMs.

Why am I able to get so much out of "vibe coding" but others seemingly do not? I am not a genius, I am not a artisan, I am just very persistent and clear on what I ask LLMs but more importantly I don't try to place any other sort of unrealistic expectations on what it can and can't do.

You read comments on HN and read these articles and you might come across feeling a sense of peril and doom which are all completely fictional for the most part. A lot can be achieved with LLMs, much more than what the constant doomers will try to drag you down to.

Post reply on HN