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Web development is fun again

ma.ttias.be

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Re: Web development is fun again

#591

Post by vanviegen »

timeon wrote: post #483
vanviegen wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can tell you that I did it The 'I' here reveals that this is indeed not a large scale project, though perhaps impressive. When working on a piece of software with tens of people, using more tooling really does makes sense.

'I' here reveals that it is on topic in context of posted article. Which is purpose of this thread. Sorry I do not want to sound like a dick re-stating the obvious but threads often are going off the rails and I find it bit absurd.

I've tried to parse your comment from various perspectives, but can't seem to make sense of it.

A 9-person-month project is just not a large scale project by any definition.

Re: Web development is fun again

#592

Post by pixl97 »

lifetimerubyist wrote: post #351
pixl97 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers don't buy software based on quality first, they buy on features. Until customers in mass, or regulations demand quality, money will be made on deliveries. If your lucky and can program how you want and take the time you need, then you can focus on the attributes you feel best about.

If you have customers that will put up with things being slow as molasses and crashing al the time, well….can you send some my way because mine won’t STFU about it.

You've made a categorical mistake here...

I stated customers don't buy software based on performance.

They just bitch about the performance of the flashy software they buy...

Then get tired of it, and move on to some other flashy software with suck performance never learning their lesson.

Re: Web development is fun again

#594

Post by oblio »

Akronymus wrote: post #588
oblio wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They work better with project context and access to tools, so yeah, the web interface is not their best foot forward. That doesn't mean the agents are amazing, but they can be useful.

A simple "how do I access x in y framework in the intended way" shouldnt require any more context. instead of telling me about z option it keeps hallucinating something that doesnt exist and even says its in the docs when it isnt. Literally just wasting my time

I was in the same camp until a few months ago. I now think they're valid tools, like compilers. Not in the sense that everyone compares them (compilers made asm development a minuscule niche of development).

But in the sense that even today many people don't use compilers or static analysis tools. But that world is slowly shrinking.

Same for LLMs, the non LLM world will probably shrink.

You might be able to have a long and successful career without touching them for code development. Personally I'd rather check them out since tools are just tools.

Re: Web development is fun again

#595

Post by mrkramer »

codr7 wrote: post #573
popalchemist wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally shipping a vide-coded feature as my baby sleeps, while reading this comment thread. It's the wild west again. I love it.

Maybe you can tell us the name of the software so we can avoid it?

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft....they literally all have the vibe coded code; it's not about vibe coded or not, it is about how well the code is designed, efficient and bug free. Ofc pro coders can debug it and fix it better than some amateur coder but still LLMs are so valuable. I let Gemini vibe code little web projects for me and it serves me well. Although you have to explain everything step by step to it and sometimes when it fixes one bug, it accidently introduces another. But we fix bugs together and learn together. And btw when Gemini fixes bugs, it puts comments in the code on how the particular bug was fixed.

Re: Web development is fun again

#596

Post by johnfn »

llmslave2 wrote: post #498
johnfn wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re skipping any sort of a build pipeline? You’re not going to bundle, so no code minification? You’re going to skip tests ? And everyone who uses these things just does them to “feel grown up” and not for any particular benefit or purpose beyond that?

You can use esbuild to build your entire project with a single command. Node has a built in test runner. You only need the complexity because you're convinced you need it.

You are responding with a point different than the one I was replying to.

Re: Web development is fun again

#597

Post by lmorchard »

hxtk wrote: post #527
MrDarcy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this. The act of having the agent create a research report first, a detailed plan second, then maybe implement it is itself fun and enjoyable. The implementation is the tedious part these days, the pie in the sky research and planning is the fun part and the agent is a font of knowledge especially when it comes to integrating 3 or 4 languages together.

This goes further into LLM usage than I prefer to go. I learn so much better when I do the research and make the plan myself that I wouldn’t let an LLM do that part even if I trusted the LLM to do a good job. I basically don’t outsource stuff to an LLM unless I know roughly what to expect the LLM output to look like and I’m just saving myself a bunch of typing. “Could you make me a Go module with an API similar to ar…

Yeah, this is a lot of what I'm doing with LLM code generation these days: I've been there, I've done that, I vaguely know what the right code would look like when I see it. Rather than spend 30-60 minutes refreshing myself to swap the context back into my head, I prompt Claude to generate a thing that I know can be done.

Much of the time, it generates basically what I would have written, but faster. Sometimes, better, because it has no concept of boredom or impatience while it produces exhaustive tests or fixes style problems. I review, test, demand refinements, and tweak a few things myself. By the end, I have a working thing and I've gotten a refresher on things anyway.

Re: Web development is fun again

#598

Post by b112 »

naasking wrote: post #581
b112 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're holding it wrong" 99% of an LLM's usefulness vanishes, if it behaves like an addled old man. "What's that sonny? But you said you wanted that!" "Wait, we did that last week? Sorry let me look at this again" "What? What do you mean, we already did this part?!"

Wrong mental model. Addled old men can't write code 1000x faster than any human.

I'd prefer 1x "wrong stuff" than wrong stuff blasted 1000x. How is that helpful?

Further, they can't write code that fast, because you have to spend 1000x explaining it to them.

Re: Web development is fun again

#599

Post by DrammBA »

user34283 wrote: post #501
DrammBA wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be confused about your terms, both SSR and SSG can rehydrate and become interactive, you only need SSR if you have personalized content that must be fetched on an actual user request, and with frameworks like astro introducing island concept it even let's you mix SSG and SSR content on a single page.

That depends on how you interpret "static render". I did not interpret that as React SSG. SSG is the default behavior of NextJS unless you dynamically fetch data, turning it into SSR automatically. What I thought of is React's "renderToString()" at build time which will produce static HTML with event handlers stripped, in preparation for a later "hydrateRoot()" on the client side.

> That depends on how you interpret "static render".

It only depends if you interpret it incorrectly.

Re: Web development is fun again

#600

Post by cthalupa »

spankibalt wrote: post #500
framapotari wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite funny when you created the pissing contest between "coders" and "non-coders" in this thread. Those labels seem very important to you.

I didn't "create" the pissing contest, I merely pointed it out in someone else's drivel. And of course, these labels are important to me for (precise) language defines the boundaries of my world; coder vs. non-coder, medico vs. quack, writer vs. analphabet, truth vs. lie, etc. Elementary.

I find it quite interesting that you categorize non-coders the same as quacks, analphabets, and lies.

I would never consider myself a coder - though I can and have written quite a lot of code over the years - because it has always been a means to the ends for me. I don't particularly enjoy writing code. Programming isn't a passion. I can and have built working programs without a line of copy and pasted code off stack overflow or using an LLM. Because I needed to to solve a problem.

But there are things I would call myself, things I do and enjoy and am good at. But I wouldn't position people who can't do those things as being the same as a quack.

You also claim to not be the one that started the pissing contest, but you called someone who claims to have written plenty of code themselves a coding-illiterate just because now they'd rather use an LLM than do it themselves. I suppose you could claim they are lying about it, or some no true scottsman type argument, but that seems silly.

You basically took some people talking about their own opinions on what they find enjoyable, and saying that AI-driven coding scratches that itch for them even more than writing code itself does, and then began to be quite hostile towards them with boatloads of denigrating language and derision.

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