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Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

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Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#571

Post by IshKebab »

antupis wrote: post #512
IshKebab wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's my view too. It's definitely fine to wait a couple of years (at least), and see what emerged as most effective and then just learn that, instead of dumping a ton of time now into keeping up with the hamster wheel. Unless you're in web dev because it seems like that's one of the few domains where AI actually works pretty well today.

Or if you like learning new stuff. Personally that has been best part of being programmer.

I like learning new stuff, but not if it's going to be completely obsolete in 6 months.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#572

Post by flumpcakes »

cheevly wrote: post #557
flumpcakes wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posted this on another comment verbatim that was similar to yours, so apologies for the copy and paste: Can you share what exactly this was (that got you the 10-100x speedup)? Perhaps I don't do anything exciting or challenging, but personally this hasn't happened to me so I find it hard to imagine what this could be. Instead of AI companies talking about their products, I think the thing to really sell it for m…

I would love to make these videos for you if you want to pay for my time. Drop me an email at josh.d.griffith at gmail and tell me what you want to see and compensate. I can vibe code at any scale.

I assume this is a reply in jest :)

> I can vibe code at any scale.

That's the thing - I know what 'vibe coding' is because that's pretty much how I use AI, as an exploratory tool or interactive documentation or a search engine for topics I want surface level information about.

It does not make me a 10x-100x more efficient. It's a toy and a learning tool. It could be replaced or removed and I wouldn't miss it that much.

Clearly I am missing something. I care about quality software, so if it's making someone 100x more productive but their producing the same subpar nonsense they would anyway then I am not interested. Hence I want to see a really proficient programmer use it, be 10x+ more productive, and have a quality product at the end. That's what I want to see demonstrated.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#573

Post by pianopatrick »

nl wrote: post #514
godelski wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Models keep getting better but the argument I'm critiquing stays the same. So does the comment I critiqued in the sibling comment to yours. I don't know why it's so hard to believe we just haven't tried. I have a Claude subscription. I'm an ML researcher myself. Trust me, I do try. But that last part also makes me keenly aware of their limitations and failures. Frankly I don't trust experts who aren't critiquing thei…

I don't understand what your argument is. It seems to be "people keep saying the models are good"? That's true. They are. And the reason people keep saying it is because the frontier of what they do keeps getting pushed back. Actual, working, useful code completion in the GPT 4 days? Amazing ! It could automatically write entire functions for me ! The ability to write whole classes and utility programs in the Claude…

Is there an endpoint for AI improvement? If we can go from functions to classes to substantial programs then it seems like just a few more steps to rewriting whole software products and putting a lot of existing companies out of business.

"AI, I don't like paying for my SAP license, make me a clone with just the features I need".

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#574

Post by estimator7292 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #157
brandonmenc wrote: post #98

I admit to pangs of this, but it's really never made any sense because the implication is that the profession is now magically closed off to newcomers. Imagine someone in the 90s saying "if you don't master the web NOW you will be forever behind!" and yet 20 years later kids who weren't even born then are building web apps and frameworks. Waiting for it to all shake out and "mastering" it then is still a strategy. Th…

Finally a voice of reason. The tools will just get better and easier to use. I use LLMs now, but I'm not going to dump a bunch of time learning the new hotness. I'll let other people do that and pickup the useful pieces later. Unless your gunning for a top position as a vibe coder, this whole concept of "falling behind" is just pure FOMO.

Same. I only just started using agents a few months ago.

Earlier this year the ecosystem was still a mess I didn't have time to untangle. Now things are relatively streamlined and simple. Arguably stable, even.

I feel behind, sure, but I also don't think people on the bleeding edge are getting that much more utility that it's worth sinking dozens or hundreds of my very limited hours into understanding.

Besides, I'm a C programmer. I'll always be several decades behind the trend. I'm fine with that.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#575

Post by estimator7292 »

zerr wrote: post #489
brandonmenc wrote: post #98

I admit to pangs of this, but it's really never made any sense because the implication is that the profession is now magically closed off to newcomers. Imagine someone in the 90s saying "if you don't master the web NOW you will be forever behind!" and yet 20 years later kids who weren't even born then are building web apps and frameworks. Waiting for it to all shake out and "mastering" it then is still a strategy. Th…

And here I am partying (coding) like it's 90s (C++ desktop apps) and web never happened... :)

It's pretty nice that C has garnered such hate because there's apparently very little focus on getting LLMs to write good C. It's all Rust and Python and whatever this month's fad language is. LLM fans mostly leave us alone apart from the "C bad rewrite the world in rust" crew.

I'm very happy being decades behind the curve here. C's slowness is perfect for me.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#576

Post by Night_Thastus »

viraptor wrote: post #429
Night_Thastus wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? If I use a library, I know it will do the same thing from the same inputs, every time. If I don't understand something about its behavior, then I can look to the documentation. Some are better about this, some are crap. But a good library will continuing doing what I want years or decades later. An LLM can't decide between one sentence and the next what to do.

The library is deterministic, but looking for the library isn't. In the same way that generating code is not deterministic, but the generated code normally is.

I...guess? But once you know of a good library for problem X, you don't need to look for it anymore. I guess if you have a bunch of developers and 0 control over what they do, and they're free to drag in additional dependencies willy-nilly, then yes, that part isn't deterministic? But that's a much bigger problem than anything library-related...

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#577

Post by PaulHoule »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #465
weregiraffe wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you grok, or having a stroke?

I understood perfectly what he's saying, but then again schizo is a language I speak fluently. Are you having a stroke?

To be fair I did have just a touch of thought disorder which led me to write "vive" instead of "vibe" and I did correct it when it was pointed out without explaining it which made that comment seem even weirder than it originally was.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#578

Post by eichin »

pca006132 wrote: post #277
reconnecting wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds to me like a lack of resource management, as tasks that junior developers might perform don't match your skills, and are thus boring. As a creator of an open-source platform myself, I find trusting a semi-random word generator in front of users unreliable. Moreover, I believe it creates a bad habit. I've seen developers forget how to read documentation and instead trust AI, and of course, as a result AI m…

> as tasks that junior developers might perform don't match your skills, and are thus boring. Yeah this sounds interesting, and matches my experience a bit. I was trying out AI for the Christmas cuz people I know are talking about it. I asked it to implement something (refactoring for better performance) that I think should be simple, it did that and looks amazing, all tests passed too! When I look into the implement…

This sounds a lot like the classic "the way to get a good answer on the internet is to post a wrong answer first", but in reverse - the AI gives you a bad version which trolls you into digging in and giving the right answer :-)

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#579

Post by mlinhares »

bonesss wrote: post #493
mlinhares wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't, same as for the "generate momentjs and use it". People now firmly believe they can use an LLM to build custom versions of these libraries and rewrite whole ecosystems out of nowhere because Claude said "here's the code". I've come to realize fighting this is useless, people will do this, its going to create large fuck ups and there will be heaps of money to be made on the cleanup jobs.

I think the gap between people dealing with JavaScript cruft all day and backend large systems development is creating a massive conversational disconnect… like, this thread is plain-faced and seriously discussing reinventing date handling locally for funsies. I also think that any company creating a reverse-centaur workforce of blind and dumb half baked devs ritualistically shaking chicken bones at their pay-as-you-…

They’ve done this before in their locked environments and programming languages, anyone that doesn’t think this is going to end the same way is delusional.

I’m starting to think actually knowing how to write code might end up being a superpower with so many people completely lost to the stochastic parrots. I’m already getting inbounds from friends and acquaintances that need “help” with their generated shit, gonna start asking for money for it.

Re: Karpathy on Programming: “I've never felt this much behind”

#580

Post by smrtinsert »

brandonmenc wrote: post #98

I admit to pangs of this, but it's really never made any sense because the implication is that the profession is now magically closed off to newcomers. Imagine someone in the 90s saying "if you don't master the web NOW you will be forever behind!" and yet 20 years later kids who weren't even born then are building web apps and frameworks. Waiting for it to all shake out and "mastering" it then is still a strategy. Th…

Tell that to recruiters! If you're senior you're always expected to know everything.
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