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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”

#611

Post by latexr »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #608
latexr wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's ask your friendly local Ukrainian refugee about that. You understand “basically useless” does not mean “entirely useless”, right? That’s why the word “basically” is there. I know Ukrainian people. I know Ukrainian people who are in attacked cities right now . They are friendly, and all of them would understand my point. > So the only permissible technologies are those suitable for use by children and the ment…

Wait'll you hear about Dungeons & Dragons! As if backwards masking in rock and roll music weren't enough. You're right, I don't have much empathy for bullshit pop-psych as an instrument of motivated reasoning. If ChatGPT can convince you to kill yourself, you weren't mentally healthy to begin with, and something else would have eventually had the same effect on you. Either that, or you were an unsupervised child, vic…

> Wait'll you hear about Dungeons & Dragons! As if backwards masking in rock and roll music weren't enough.

All ask you again to not engage in bad faith.

> If ChatGPT can convince you to kill yourself, you weren't mentally healthy to begin with, and something else would have eventually had the same effect on you.

That is false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier#Efficacy

> Research has shown suicidal thinking is often short-lived. Those who attempted suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge and were stopped in the process by a person did not go on to die by suicide by some other means. There are also a variety of examples that show restricting means of suicide have been associated with the overall reduction of it.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ195697

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/

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

#612

Post by Eridrus »

nowittyusername wrote: post #548
krior wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the applications you mention could be scoped as beginner projects. I don't think they represent good proofs of capability.

Well why don't you look at it for yourself and tell me if this looks like a beginner project https://youtu.be/EyE5BrUut2o

This is extremely simple software.

Claude is extremely verbose when it generates code, but this is something that should take a practicing software engineer an hour or so to write with a lot less code than Claude.

I like all the LLM coding tools, they're constantly getting better, but I remain convinced that all the people claiming massive productivity improvements are just not good software engineers.

I think the tools are finally at the point where they are generally a help, rather than a net waste of time for good engineers, but it's still marginal atm.

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

#613

Post by CamperBob2 »

latexr wrote: post #611
CamperBob2 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait'll you hear about Dungeons & Dragons! As if backwards masking in rock and roll music weren't enough. You're right, I don't have much empathy for bullshit pop-psych as an instrument of motivated reasoning. If ChatGPT can convince you to kill yourself, you weren't mentally healthy to begin with, and something else would have eventually had the same effect on you. Either that, or you were an unsupervised child, vic…

> Wait'll you hear about Dungeons & Dragons! As if backwards masking in rock and roll music weren't enough. All ask you again to not engage in bad faith. > If ChatGPT can convince you to kill yourself, you weren't mentally healthy to begin with, and something else would have eventually had the same effect on you. That is false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier#Efficacy > Research has shown suicidal think…

So now we've moved on to the topic of nets on bridges. Okey-dokey, then.

You started by comparing ChatGPT to thermonuclear weapons, inferring that it's a useless thing yet also an existential threat to humanity. State your position and desired outcome. You're all over the place here.

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

#614

Post by leshow »

viraptor wrote: post #431
leshow wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same, LLM's are qualitatively different due to the stochastic and non-reproducible nature of their output. From the LLM's point of view, non-functional or incorrect code is exactly the same as correct code because it doesn't understand anything that it's generating. When a human does it, you can say they did a bad or good job, but there is a thought process and actual "intelligence" and reasoning that we…

I'm not sure who generates random code without a goal or checking if it works afterwards. Smells like a straw man. Normally you set the rules, you know how to validate if the result works, and you may even generate tests that keep that state. If I got completely random results rather than what I expect, I wouldn't be using that system - but it's correct and helpful almost every time. What you describe is just not how…

I don't think you understood my comment, I didn't say anything about how to use the tool.

The parent comment was making the case that humans are as non-deterministic as the LLM is, and I was explaining why that is not true.

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

#615

Post by leshow »

johnfn wrote: post #555
leshow wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want my opinion, I think LLMs can be pretty good at generating simple code for things you can find on stackoverflow and require minor adjustments. Even then, if you don't really understand the code you can have major issues. Your site is case in point of why LLMs demo well but kind of fall apart in the real world. It's pretty good at fitting lego blocks together based on a ton of work other people have put int…

I don't really see how my site is "falling apart in the real world". It is a real site used by real people in the real world. It is not falling apart.

I am agreeing with you, LLMs can be useful for simple code generation where you're primarily plugging existing components together.

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

#616

Post by unethical_ban »

reconnecting wrote: post #189
9dev wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. I was a sceptic for a long time, but a friend recently convinced me to try Claude Code and showed me around. I revived an open source project I regularly get back to, code for a bit, have to wrestle with toil and dependency updates, and loose the joy before I really get a lot done, so I stop again. With Claude, all it took to fix all of that drudge was a single sentence. In the last two weeks, I implemented sev…

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…

I think AI coding should not be permitted in the first two years of training in CS. One should have to learn the basics of reading quality documentation, creating quality code and documentation, learning how the different pieces of software work together, and learning how to work with others.

LLMs are great for people with some idea of what they're doing, and need "someone else" to pair program with. I agree it will cripple the architectural thinking of new learners if they never learn how to think about code on their own.

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

#617

Post by ogkarlin »

symbogra wrote: post #554
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the LLM costs grow quadratically in the size of the code base? The prompts are already highly subsidized, can't wait to see what happens when they charge the actual price to the consumer.

For now I'm gonna enjoy my VC subsidized burrito deliveries while I can.

The real question to ask is are you receiving the delivery or are you the courier training your replacement :)

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

#618

Post by baobun »

computersuck wrote: post #231
Aldipower wrote: post #76

I am a software developer and mainly a programmer for decades now. I love programming. I love to be "once" with the computer. I will never give this joy up. If I need to sell shoes at daytime, I will program real computer programs in the evenings. If it won't be possible with modern machinery anymore, I will take my Commodore 64. I am a free man. Edit: Corrected since/for. :-)

you mean "one" not "once" right?

If you have never experienced becoming once, try DMT or a large amount of acid on a quiet day.

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

#619

Post by johnfn »

leshow wrote: post #615
johnfn wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how my site is "falling apart in the real world". It is a real site used by real people in the real world. It is not falling apart.

I am agreeing with you, LLMs can be useful for simple code generation where you're primarily plugging existing components together.

Again, that’s not what my website is. It’s not simple code generation and I’m not just plugging things together.

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

#620

Post by hamstergene »

nl wrote: post #509
hamstergene wrote: post #376

I feel like many people in the comments aren't aware that Karpathy is an ML scientist for whom programming is a complementary skill, not a profession. The only reason he came up with "vibe coding" is because maximum complexity of his hobby projects made it seem believable. Maybe take his opinions about fate of programming with a grain of salt. He is brilliant no doubt, but not in that field.

He's a pretty decent programmer. It's interesting that some months ago when his nanochat project came out the HN Anti-AI crowd celebrated him saying "I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful, possibly the repo is too far off the data distribution" But now it is working for him he's suddenly not an expert... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…

Having created 100 of nano-sized projects does not add up to having developed and maintained one large code base.

Coding agents are eating up programming from the lowest end, starting from pressing button on the keyboard to type the code in: completion was literally their first application. I don't think it will go all the way to the top, though, the essential part of the profession will remain until true AGI.

Metaphorically, think how integrated chips didn't replace electrical engineering, just changed which production tools and components engineers deal with and how.

Obviously we all are adapting to changes, but if he or someone are panicking about being behind, that can only be because they've never been in too deep.

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