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Is it a bubble?

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Re: Is it a bubble?

#501

Post by immibis »

macrolime wrote: post #113
shakna wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outputs of AI are most likely in the public domain. As automated process output are public domain, and the companies claim fair use when scraping, making the input unencumbered, too. It wouldn't be OpenAI holding copyright - it would be no one holding copyright.

So you're saying machine code is public domain if it's compiled from C? If not, why would AI generated code be any different?

No, and your comment is ridiculously bad faith. Courts ruled that outputs of LLMs are not copyrightable. They did not rule that outputs of compilers are not copyrightable.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#502

Post by Capricorn2481 »

roenxi wrote: post #431
gregoryl wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly, you need to spend time with literally anyone other than the people you currently engage with.

If you object to HN you didn't have to create an account. And I still reckon even a sycophantic AI would still have managed more empathy in its response. They tend to be a bit wordy and attempt to actually engage with the substance of what people say too.

> If you object to HN

They didn't even mention HN. Are you saying the people you associate with are just on HN?

Don't spend all your time on HN or weigh your opinions of humanity on it. People on here are probably the least representative of social society. That's not rejecting it, that's just common sense.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#503

Post by dboon »

encyclopedism wrote: post #440
hagbarth wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, proving a negative. What makes you sure a stone is not capable of cognition?

An LLM is an algorithm. You can obtain the same result as a SOTA LLM via pen and paper it will take a lot of long laborious effort. That's ONE reason why LLM's do not have cognition. Also they don't reason, or think or any of the other myriad nonsense attributed to LLM's. I hate the platitudes given to LLM's it's at PHD level. It's now able to answer math olympiad questions. It answers them by statistical pattern rec…

A brain is an algorithm. Given an unreasonably precise graph of neurons, neurotransmitter levels at each junction, and so on and so forth, one could obtain the same result via pen and paper. It will just take a lot of long laborious effort. That’s ONE reason why brains do not have cognition.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#504

Post by LtWorf »

whimsicalism wrote: post #498
LtWorf wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because carefully spec-ing to the level an llm needs, and ultra carefully checking the output is easily slower and more tiring than just doing it yourself. Kinda like having a child "help" you cook basically. But for the child you do it because they actually learn. llms do not learn in that sense.

not at all true for the latest generation of models in my experience. they are overly verbose but except for the simplest simplest changes it is faster to ask first

For the simplest changes you have to first review the code fully, ask for the change, do a new full review and so on.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#505

Post by 9rx »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #493
9rx wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are trying to assert an equivalence between compilers and AI systems that simply does not exist. The equivalence is between typing out what you want and having a machine produce code from that and compilers. Call that "AI systems" instead of "compilers" if you want, but "AI systems" lacks precision, so I think we can eventually come to agree that compiler is more precise. Even if we don't, it is what I chose to…

You can't just leave it, huh? >The equivalence is between typing out what you want and having a machine produce code from that and compilers. Call that "AI systems" instead of "compilers" if you want, but "AI systems" lacks precision, so I think we can eventually come to agree that compiler is more precise. You are trying to assert this equivalence to ultimately assert a similar equivalence between vibecoding and sof…

> You are trying to assert this equivalence to ultimately assert a similar equivalence between vibecoding and software engineering.

I don't know what vibecoding is, but from past context and your arbitrary thoughts about about using natural language for writing software that came from out the blue, I am going to guess that you are referring to the aforementioned talk about criminal code. That is the only time we said anything about natural language previously. That should have been obviously seen as a tangent, but since it appears you didn't pick up on that, what do you think criminal code and software have to do with each other?

Re: Is it a bubble?

#506

Post by whimsicalism »

LtWorf wrote: post #504
whimsicalism wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not at all true for the latest generation of models in my experience. they are overly verbose but except for the simplest simplest changes it is faster to ask first

For the simplest changes you have to first review the code fully, ask for the change, do a new full review and so on.

no, you just have to ask for the change - wait ~minute, review. and if it’s a small change, review goes fast. typically i’ll have a zellij/tmux with lazygit one pane, a cli agent (cursor-agent or codex) in the other, and a pop up vim pane. i can see the changes in lazygit as they’re made and review immediately and commit

Re: Is it a bubble?

#507

Post by biophysboy »

Daishiman wrote: post #289
biophysboy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the task though, right? I promise I'm not in denial; I use these things all the time. Sometimes it works immediately; sometimes it doesn't. I have no way of predicting when it will or won't.

* Infra code description languages like Terraform and K8s/helm spec files are like magic ; they get 90% of the code right 90% of the time. In my experience that's about half of the work; the other half is spent debugging and correcting details that matter, but still applies to the code that I write myself. * SQL works almost as good. It's especially useful when you need to generate queries with long lists of fields a…

It sounds like it works better for declarative schema than imperative scripting/debugging (speaking loosely here). Do you agree? Seems like a good heuristic for me to keep in mind

Re: Is it a bubble?

#508

Post by xyzwave »

zparky wrote: post #70
stack_framer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of the first time in my life that I've been actively hoping for a technology to out right not deliver on its promise. Same here, and I think it's because I feel like a craftsman. I thoroughly enjoy the process of thinking deeply about what I will build, breaking down the work into related chunks, and of course writing the code itself. It's like magic when it all comes together. Sometimes I can't even beli…

It's been blowing my mind reading HN the past year or so and seeing so many comments from programmers that are excited to not have to write code. It's depressing.

I hate writing code, but love debugging. LLMs have been a godsend for banging out boilerplate and getting things 95% of the way there. Now I spend most of my time on the hard stuff (debugging, refactoring), while building things that would have taken weeks in days. It’s honestly made the act of building software more enjoyable and rewarding.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#509

Post by whimsicalism »

RobinL wrote: post #331
formerly_proven wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot is easily the worst (and probably slowest) coding agent. SOTA and Copilot don't even inhabit similar planes of existence.

I've found Opus 4.5 in copilot to be very impressive. Better than codex CLI in my experience. I agree Copilot definitely used to be absolutely awful.

cursor is better than both, i wish this weren’t the case tbph

Re: Is it a bubble?

#510

Post by wakawaka28 »

9rx wrote: post #505
wakawaka28 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just leave it, huh? >The equivalence is between typing out what you want and having a machine produce code from that and compilers. Call that "AI systems" instead of "compilers" if you want, but "AI systems" lacks precision, so I think we can eventually come to agree that compiler is more precise. You are trying to assert this equivalence to ultimately assert a similar equivalence between vibecoding and sof…

> You are trying to assert this equivalence to ultimately assert a similar equivalence between vibecoding and software engineering. I don't know what vibecoding is, but from past context and your arbitrary thoughts about about using natural language for writing software that came from out the blue, I am going to guess that you are referring to the aforementioned talk about criminal code. That is the only time we said…

There is no way you don't know what vibecoding is. I don't believe you.

As we both know, the AI we are talking about uses natural language as input. To address the ridiculous connections you are trying to make, I am forced to distinguish natural languages from programming languages. You might like to overlook the vast differences between programming languages and natural languages to try to support your point. But those differences are major supporting details in my arguments. You can call this additional information "getting off on a tangent" to try to throw shade on me, but you're wrong.

>what do you think criminal code and software have to do with each other?

I'm not the one that brought this up, you did. I think that although criminal law is written in a largely procedural way, there are many differences between criminal law and writing software. I would not call a law maker a "software engineer" even though both are concerned with writing procedures of some kind. The critical distinctions are that law is written in natural language and is malleable according to social factors, regardless of what it literally says. Even if we build actual machines to enforce the law and programmed them in plain English or even a programming language built for it, interpretation of the law would still necessarily be subject to social factors.

Those same differences between, say, law written in natural language and computer programs written in code, apply to practically all natural language input given to an AI or a software engineer versus actual code that a compiler or interpreter can process. Therefore, uninformed people who use AI to generate code are not "software developers" and the AI is not a "compiler". No natural language is a programming language.

And now we have come full circle. No historical or logical rationale can justify redefining "software developer" or "software engineer" to include someone who has no knowledge of computer programming in the pre-AI sense.

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