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We put a coding agent in a while loop

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Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#71

Post by precompute »

rozab wrote: post #61

These people are weird. The blog post that inspired this has this weird iMessage screenshot, like a shitty investment grift facebook ad: https://ghuntley.com/ralph/ Apparently one of the lucky few who learned this special technique from Geoff just completed a $50k contract for $297. But that's not all! Geoff is generous to share the special secret prompt that unlocked this unbelievable success, if only we subscribe t…

It's grifting, plain and simple. And that blog is atrocious, high noise-to-signal and repulsive, AI-generated everything.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#73

Post by AdieuToLogic »

bwestergard wrote: post #26

There are always two major results from any software development process: a change in the code and a change in cognition for the people who wrote the code (whether they did so directly or with an LLM). Python and Typescript are elaborate formal languages that emerged from a lengthy process of development involving thousands of people around the world over many years. They are non-trivially different, and it's neat th…

> But my hunch is that most of the economic value of code is contingent on there being a set of human beings familiar with the code in a manner that requires writing having written it directly.

This reminds me of a software engineering axiom:

  When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of 
  your understanding of the problem.  It states to all, 
  including your future-self, your approach, clarity, and 
  appropriateness of the solution for the problem at hand.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#74

Post by doug_durham »

bwestergard wrote: post #26

There are always two major results from any software development process: a change in the code and a change in cognition for the people who wrote the code (whether they did so directly or with an LLM). Python and Typescript are elaborate formal languages that emerged from a lengthy process of development involving thousands of people around the world over many years. They are non-trivially different, and it's neat th…

I wonder though. One of the superpowers of LLMs is code reading. I say the tools are better and reading than writing. It is very easy to get comprehensive documentation for any code base and get understanding by asking questions. At that point does it matter that there is a living developer who understands the code? If an arbitrary person with knowledge of the technology stack can get up to speed quickly is it important to have the original developers around any more?

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#75

Post by metadat »

tikhonj wrote: post #70
bwestergard wrote: post #26

There are always two major results from any software development process: a change in the code and a change in cognition for the people who wrote the code (whether they did so directly or with an LLM). Python and Typescript are elaborate formal languages that emerged from a lengthy process of development involving thousands of people around the world over many years. They are non-trivially different, and it's neat th…

There's a classic Peter Naur paper about this from 1985: "Programming as Theory Building" https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

Discussed 7 months ago (45 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42592543

Great read overall, an interesting challenge to the conception that at its core, programming is about producing code.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#76

Post by bitexploder »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #45

Does anyone else get dull feelings of dread reading this kind of thing? How do you combat it?

Stoicism. Dichotomy of control. Is this something you can control? If no, don’t dread. If yes, do something. Often, all you have firmly in your grasp are things inside of your brain. Catch the negative thought. Acknowledge it. Move on. Do not dwell. Take proactive steps to be ready in your career. You do tech ling enough and you live through multiple cycles like this.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#77

Post by hyperadvanced »

dhorthy wrote: post #18
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #14

> After finishing the port, most of the agents settled for writing extra tests or continuously updating agent/TODO.md to clarify how "done" they were. In one instance, the agent actually used pkill to terminate itself after realizing it was stuck in an infinite loop. Ok, now that is funny! On so many levels. Now, for the project itself, a few thoughts: - this was tried before, about 1.5 years ago there was a project…

Yeah the NIH thing is super on point. small saas tools for everything is done. Bring on the hand coded custom in-house admin monolith? Is Unix “small sharp tools” going away? Is that a relic of having to write everything in x86 and we’re now just finally hitting the end of the arc?

No the actual thing will be zillions of little apps made by dev-adjacent folks to automate their tasks. I think we have about 30 of these lying around the office, people gpt up a streamline app, we yeet it into prod.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#78

Post by Rastonbury »

beefnugs wrote: post #28

"At one point we tried “improving” the prompt with Claude’s help. It ballooned to 1,500 words. The agent immediately got slower and dumber. We went back to 103 words and it was back on track." Isn't this the exact opposite of every other piece of advice we have gotten in a year? Another general feedback just recently, someone said we need to generate 10 times, because one out of those will be "worth reviewing" How ca…

For the work they are doing porting and building off a spec there is already good context in the existing code and spec, compared with net new features in a greenfield project.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#79

Post by efitz »

In one instance, the agent actually used pkill to terminate itself after realizing it was stuck in an infinite loop.

That is pretty awesome and not something I would have expected from an agent; it hints (but does not prove) that it has some awareness of its own workings.

Re: We put a coding agent in a while loop

#80

Post by taberiand »

efitz wrote: post #79

In one instance, the agent actually used pkill to terminate itself after realizing it was stuck in an infinite loop. That is pretty awesome and not something I would have expected from an agent; it hints (but does not prove) that it has some awareness of its own workings.

It hints that a suitable auto completion of the input prompt is to output a pkill command
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