Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boilerplate details mean we've failed as an industry. Why haven't we already got the computer to automate all the boring bits without AI?
why can't AI be that solution?
why use a nuclear bomb to drive a nail?
It's not empowering to hand off the details
61–70 of 154 posts
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#62It reminds me of “magic”. I say “expelliamus” and the wand flies out the other guys hand, not his hat, or wallet or the person behind’s sandwiches. The details always matter. There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up…
> There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up every second is just vibrating a lot)
This is very interesting. Which book series is this?
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#63I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…
> as an assistant that helps me make decisions, and ensures that I'm in the driver's seat This... quite describes what the current AI feels like to me. So I really don't see a problem. If AI does too much for you, you should, uh, just prompt it to do less. Everyone talks about how their AI escapes sandbox and virtualization or delete their entire repos or something. Perhaps they're using a skynet I'm not aware of. Fr…
> From my experience when I added "discuss; don't edit any file yet" at the end of the prompt I've never seen the LLM go against my will and edit the files anyway.
depends how long conversation gets and he will still ignore your instructions randomically. I think shorter sessions are better, I do have a similar prompt saved on the memory of the agent and way more times that I can tolerate, he candidally ignores it
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#64Why people continue to treat AI as though it’s not just an intern or recent grad? That alone will solve 90% of problems people have.
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I expect there's a probabilistic factor to it, among other things. I use the almost the same addendum as you ("do not make, commit, or push any changes without my approval") and it broadly seems to work in my day-to-day dev. However, I also set up some agents that trigger on incoming requests from my dev teams to automate things that used to be rote/manual tasks. _That_ is where I see the issues, I suspect simply bec…
I do wonder if "without my approval" is looser than "discuss only, do not make edits"? I'm not sure how much that finegrain thing matters in prompts nowadays tho
One problem is that agents are notoriously bad at handling ‘me’ vs ‘you’ over an extended conversation. ‘Without my approval’ far back in the context of an extended session gets fuzzy about who ‘me’ is.
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#66I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…
Similarly for me. I have a recent example too. I run a bunch of eps32 devices at home, using esphome. Pre-AI I wrote all the yaml myself and understood what’s happening and didn’t have any very bespoke hacks.
Recently I asked an agent for a feature where the screen will get dimmer after some time, and eventually after a day the screen will turn off and then turn back on if I tap, which should be pretty easy in esphome.
But: some past agent decided what it wanted wasn’t in esphome, so it made its own custom module in c++ for the display, spelunking in pdf datasheets; then the weeds were so deep the new agent decided to add on to that, and to read the power controller and display controller spec sheets and somehow implement my dimming feature by writing raw values to some nondescript registers.
The contraption worked until it didn’t and once every so often my esp32 would just completely hang with black screen and no connnectivity and needed a power cycle, presumably because whatever low level register writing the agent implemented eventually breaks something. I told the agent to get rid of all custom stuff and wherever possible just use default esphome yaml, now it’s been working fine. I don’t really have a point with the anecdote, just that I’m also getting tired of such scenarios like the OP.
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#67It reminds me of “magic”. I say “expelliamus” and the wand flies out the other guys hand, not his hat, or wallet or the person behind’s sandwiches. The details always matter. There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up…
> There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up every second is just vibrating a lot) This is very interesting. Which book series is this?
Sounds like "Off to be the Wizard". The series is called "Magic 2.0"
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm doing better, with less effort. I mostly work on UI (for an internal, science-focused app) and it used be that features would take a sprint or two to grind out, and would always be an MVP to meet just the most essential user requirements, because that's all we could afford, time-wise, to do. And if I figured out while implementing there could be a nicer UI approach to something, it was often too late to change th…
> I'm not delivering features at 10x the speed. There's a limit to the amount of code I can (and should) be submitting for review. My point exactly > But the features I'm building are _better_, and the effort is less. Can we cash that check or is it gonna trade heavily discounted like all grand claims on AI since all software all around us together with the economy and the Earth's life supporting systems keep degradi…
> My point exactly
No it wasn't. You said the claims were only based on quantity. I'm saying the opposite. I deliver the same quantity, with higher quality.
> Can we cash that check or is it gonna trade heavily discounted like all grand claims on AI since all software all around us together with the economy and the Earth's life supporting systems keep degrading every year?
I'm not sure what evidence I could offer you that would ever convince you. We've had strong coding models for less than a year, and you've already appear to have closed your mind about them and wrapped them up into your depression.
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#69It reminds me of “magic”. I say “expelliamus” and the wand flies out the other guys hand, not his hat, or wallet or the person behind’s sandwiches. The details always matter. There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up…
> There is a (fairly) good book series where it turns out we are living in the matrix and someone finds a config file and effectively becomes a Wizard, and of course problems ensue with details (like flying by adjusting one’s position one feet up every second is just vibrating a lot) This is very interesting. Which book series is this?
Found it (with the help of AI, naturally). Looks like "Wizard 2.0" by Scott Meyer.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18616975-off-to-be-the-w...
Re: It's not empowering to hand off the details
#70I've been vibecoding a ton for the past 9 months, built a bunch of cool little apps for myself with AI, ran experiments, built an entire SDLC on skills, did the agent orchestration harness thing, etc. In the past few weeks I've hit a wall where I'm just tired of it. Each model becomes more independent but also harder to direct in detail. They produce massive, tedious, sloppy text outputs with very little input. They'…
Absolutely mirrors my experience and wants