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I don't care how well your "AI" works

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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#671

Post by sershe »

One day long time ago, I decided that hex grid coordinates lovingly described by redblobgames and used by every developer delivering actual games are inelegant. I wanted to store them in a rectangular array, and also store all edges and vertices in rectangular arrays with simple numerical addressing for the usual algos (distance, neighbors etc) between all 3. I messed around with it and a map generator for a few weeks. Needless to say it was as elegant as a glass hammer, 3 simple arrays beautiful to look at. I didn't finish anything close to a game. But it was a great fun.

If I ever want to deliver a game I might outsource my hex grid to AI. But back in those days I could have probably used a library.

Is hacking about messing around with things? You can still do it, ignore AI, ignore prior art. You can reimplement STL because std vector is "not fast enough". Is hacking about making things? Then again, AI boilerplate is little different than stitching together libraries in practice.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#672

Post by AndrewKemendo »

small_scombrus wrote: post #559
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s almost an oxymoron You can’t be data driven and also blind to the data You might be optimizing for the wrong thing, but it’s not blind, it’s just a bad “model”

> You can’t be data driven and also blind to the data "Tickets closed" is an amazing data driven & blind to the data metric. You can have someone closing an insane number of tickets, looking amazing on the KPIs, but no one's measuring "Tickets reopened" or "Tickets created for the same issue a day later". It's really easy to set up awful KPIs and lose all sight of what is actually happening while having data to show…

That’s a good example for sure - I’d still argue it’s a problem of using the wrong economic model

Success = tickets closed, is wrong, but data driven

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#673

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #464
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because there's nothing "craftsman" about using AI to do stuff for you. Someone who uses AI to write their programs isn't the equivalent of a carpenter using a table saw, they are the equivalent of a carpenter who subcontracts the piece out to someone else. And we wouldn't show respect to the latter person either.

What about an architect who outsources the bricklaying? A designer who outsources manufacturing?

I'm not implying a hierarchy of value or status here, btw. And the point about difficulty is interesting too. I did manual labor and it was much harder than programming, as you might expect!

You can certainly outsource "up", in terms of skill. That's just how business works, and life... I called a plumber not so long ago! And almost everyone outsources their health...

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#674

Post by embedding-shape »

cpburns2009 wrote: post #668
embedding-shape wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not semantics, if the definition is "it does what it’s supposed to do" then probably all of the currently deployed LLMs are reliable according to that definition.

> "it does what it’s supposed to do" That's the crux of the problem. Many proponents of LLMs over promise the capabilities, and then deny the underperformance through semantics. LLMs are "reliable" only if you're talking about the algorithms behind the scene and you ignore the marketing. Going off the marketing they are unreliable, incorrect, and do not do what they're "supposed to do".

But maybe we don't have to stoop down to the lowest level of conversation about LLMs, the "marketing", and instead do what most of us here do best, focus on the technical aspects, how things work, and how we can make them do our bidding in various ways, you know like the OG hacker.

FWIW, I agree LLMs are massively over-sold for the average person, but for someone who can dig into the tech, use it effectively and for what it works for, I feel like there is more interesting stuff we could focus on instead of just a blanket "No and I won't even think about it".

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#675

Post by carlosjobim »

fragmede wrote: post #669
carlosjobim wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole bunch of apps for invoicing, but if you try them, you'll see that they are excessively complicated. Probably because they want to cover all bases of all use cases. Meaning they aren't great for any use case. Like you say. The invoicing app in particular I was referring to is Cakedesk. Made by a solo developer who sells it for a fair price. Easy to use and has all the necessary functions. Probably the…

One person's "excessively complicated" is another person's "lackluster and useless" because it doesn't have enough features.

Yes, enterprise needs more complicated setups. But why are programmers only interested in enterprise scale stuff?

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#676

Post by efdee »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #384
quantummagic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. Mostly I agree with you. But there's a large group of people who are way too contemptuous of craftsmen using AI. We need to push back against this arrogant attitude. Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw.

>Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw. Some tools are table saws, and some tools are subcontracting work out to lowest cost bidders to do a crap job. Which of the two is AI?

For me, AI is definitely a table saw. YMMV.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#677

Post by bluefirebrand »

sosodev wrote: post #467
bluefirebrand wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm watching people I used to respect start to rely on AI more and more and their skills and knowledge are declining rapidly while their reliance is growing, so I'm really not interested in following that path They seem just as enthusiastic as many of the pro AI voices here on HN, while the quality of their work declines. It makes me extremely skeptical of anyone who is enthusiastic about AI. It seems to m…

How do you know their skills and knowledge are declining rapidly? Does using an LLM cause one to suddenly forget everything?

> How do you know their skills and knowledge are declining rapidly

I was describing anecdotally what I have witnessed. Devs that I used to have a reasonably high opinion of struggling to explain or understand the PRs they are making

> Does using an LLM cause one to suddenly forget everything?

I think we can probably agree that when you stop using skills, those skills will atrophy to some extent

Can we also agree that using LLMs to generate code is different from the skill of writing code?

If so, it stands to reason that the more people rely on LLMs to generate things for them, the more their skills of creating those things by hand will atrophy

I don't think it should be very controversial to think that LLMs are making people worse at things

It is also entirely possible that people are becoming better (or faster, anyways. Extremely debatable if faster = better imo) at building software using LLMs while also becoming worse at actually writing code

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#678

Post by efdee »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #401
quantummagic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. Mostly I agree with you. But there's a large group of people who are way too contemptuous of craftsmen using AI. We need to push back against this arrogant attitude. Just as we shouldn't be contemptuous of a woodworking craftsman using a table saw.

That's because there's nothing "craftsman" about using AI to do stuff for you. Someone who uses AI to write their programs isn't the equivalent of a carpenter using a table saw, they are the equivalent of a carpenter who subcontracts the piece out to someone else. And we wouldn't show respect to the latter person either.

I respectfully disagree, but disagree hard.

a) Nothing about letting AI do grunt work for you is "not being a craftsman". b) Things are subcontracted all the time. We don't usually disrespect people for that.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#679

Post by carlosjobim »

taco_emoji wrote: post #579
carlosjobim wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't programmers think of stepping down from their ivory towers and start making small apps which solve small problems? That people and businesses are very happy to pay for? But no! Programmers seem to only like working on giant scale projects, which only are of interest to huge enterprises, governments, or the open source quagmire of virtualization within virtualization within virtualization. There's exactly o…

I'm curious: why don't YOU create this app? 95% of a software business isn't the programming, it's the requirements gathering and marketing and all that other stuff. Is it beneath YOUR dignity to create this? What an untapped market! You could be king! Also it's absurd to an incredible degree to believe that any significant portion of programmers, left to their own devices, are eager to make "big, complicated, enterp…

What makes you think that I know how to program? It's not beyond my dignity, it's beyond my skills. The only thing I can do is support boutique programmers with my money as a consumer, and I'm very happy to do that.

But yes, sometimes I have to AI code small things, because there's no other solution.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#680

Post by tbrownaw »

thewebguyd wrote: post #577
JohnBooty wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was very insightful. It made me think about how "hacker culture" has changed. I'm middle-aged. 30 years ago, hacker culture as I experienced it was about making cool stuff. It was also about the identity -- hackers were geeks. Intelligent, and a little (or a lot) different from the rest of society. Generally speaking, hackers could not avoid writing code. Whether it was shell scripts or HTML or Javascript or ful…

> opposition to AI springs from having their identities threatened. I think there's definitely some truth to this. I saw similar pushback from the "learn to code" and coding bootcamp era, and you still frequently see it in Linux communities where anytime the prospect of more "normies" using Linux comes up, a not insignificant part of the community is actively hostile to that happening. The attitude goes all the way b…

And it's "the bootcamp era" rather than the new normal because it didn't work out as well as advertised. Because of the issues highlighted in that pushback.
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