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Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

terrytao.wordpress.com

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Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#71

Post by AlotOfReading »

tux3 wrote: post #67
luciana1u wrote: post #52

Terry Tao using coding agents feels like watching a Michelin-starred chef discover microwave dinners and get genuinely excited about them.

I liked this article about an old recipe book and what cooking could have looked like if we took microwave cooking seriously: https://malmesbury.substack.com/p/my-journey-to-the-microwav...

This is one of my favorite pieces of internet writing, up there with the SR-71 speed check and the Story of Mel. Every time I see it, I have to read it again and end up giggling through the whole thing.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#72

Post by chorsestudios »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #40

Building visualizations with LLMs has been a major boost for my CS classes: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/#demos-visualiza... Many visualizations that I have always wanted but just didn't have the time to build, I now have. To give an example, I wanted a simplified 8-bit computer to complement the 16-bit teaching computer I use and designed this in a few days with the help of claude: https://bdp.cs.mont…

I've been using LLMs to create visualizations for math papers I come across. Prompting "Create a visualization for each segment of this article in the style of a 3 brown 1 blue video using manim." has yielded impressive results.

It helps me digest the content faster and allows me to read more articles than I otherwise would.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#73

Post by dhosek »

falcor84 wrote: post #65
wffurr wrote: post #4

Nice balanced perspective there at the end: "as such [LLM-coded interactive] supplements are not mission-critical to the core of the paper, I again feel that the downside risk of using guided interaction with LLM agents to generate such visualizations is acceptable." It's a tool. Good for some things but not others and generally not to be trusted.

I don't understand what trust means in this context. Even if I were able to hire Donald Knuth to write all my code, I wouldn't "trust" it to be bug-free, let alone to be the right fit for my needs.

You could trust it to be probably correct but he wouldn’t have tried compiling it.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#74

Post by harrylove »

luciana1u wrote: post #52

Terry Tao using coding agents feels like watching a Michelin-starred chef discover microwave dinners and get genuinely excited about them.

A more accurate analogy is Charles and Henry Greene using tech to construct an intricate rig to fasten the joints in a delicate jewelry box to fit inside the Gamble House. Yes, they could make the rig by hand, but time is a precious resource to people with so much to build.

What Tao and other artists of his caliber are demonstrating is that the tech is capable of building the rig. And the machine makers are incrementally demonstrating that the machine can make not only the jewelry box rig, but rigs to build rig-making machines.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#75

Post by andrepd »

wffurr wrote: post #4

Nice balanced perspective there at the end: "as such [LLM-coded interactive] supplements are not mission-critical to the core of the paper, I again feel that the downside risk of using guided interaction with LLM agents to generate such visualizations is acceptable." It's a tool. Good for some things but not others and generally not to be trusted.

Indeed. LLMs produce truly atrocious code, unmaintainable and unreliable. If you're vibecoding a toy to amuse yourself or something similar low-stakes, that's perfectly fine! For higher-stakes code, it's definitely not.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#76

Post by dhosek »

alansaber wrote: post #22

I always enjoy these "domain expert has fun using AI to do something in their domain" articles. But it's always a hobby project, never something serious.

Having started using Claude Code at work, I think coding as we now know it will probably no longer be a career path in 5 years at the outside.

I’m old. If I had to, I could retire tomorrow, albeit on a restricted budget. But I worry about the younger folks (like my 25-year-old nephew) who haven’t built up the resources to survive without working who are in the field right now. There’s going to be a mega disruption and writing code is going to go the way of calculating square roots by hand or hot metal typesetting. There will still people doing it, but it will very much be a niche endeavor.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#77

Post by lukan »

dahart wrote: post #53
wffurr wrote: post #4

Nice balanced perspective there at the end: "as such [LLM-coded interactive] supplements are not mission-critical to the core of the paper, I again feel that the downside risk of using guided interaction with LLM agents to generate such visualizations is acceptable." It's a tool. Good for some things but not others and generally not to be trusted.

> It’s a tool. Good for some things but not for others and generally not to be trusted. I agree completely you always need to check the work of LLM agents, but it does strike me as a tiny bit funny to anthropomorphize AI by using ‘trust’ while warning against anthropomorphizing the AI by using unchecked output. ;) Generally speaking, “trust” in AI has been going up very quickly as the models & harnesses improve, and…

"I trust my hammer with nails but not screws… does that mean the hammer should generally not be trusted?"

I trust a hammer to be able to hit a nail, without breaking. But if the hammer is old and the wood brittle, I don't trust it anymore.

Using it for anything else (screws) has nothing to do with trust, but using the wrong tool.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#78

Post by fantasizr »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #40

Building visualizations with LLMs has been a major boost for my CS classes: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/#demos-visualiza... Many visualizations that I have always wanted but just didn't have the time to build, I now have. To give an example, I wanted a simplified 8-bit computer to complement the 16-bit teaching computer I use and designed this in a few days with the help of claude: https://bdp.cs.mont…

LLMs to create and revise PIL (python image library) commands/params have saved me HOURs.

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#79

Post by acbart »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #40

Building visualizations with LLMs has been a major boost for my CS classes: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/#demos-visualiza... Many visualizations that I have always wanted but just didn't have the time to build, I now have. To give an example, I wanted a simplified 8-bit computer to complement the 16-bit teaching computer I use and designed this in a few days with the help of claude: https://bdp.cs.mont…

Regarding the changes to your grading weights: https://acbart.github.io/2026/04/19/proctored-grades/

Sounds like 50/50 for the distribution? That means you are okay with a student getting a 40% across all your quizzes and then passing the class with a C-?

Re: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

#80

Post by echelon »

skinfaxi wrote: post #15
luciana1u wrote: post #2

Terry Tao using coding agents to build apps means we're one step away from a Fields Medalist asking an LLM why his Docker container won't start, just like the rest of us.

This is a very humbling thought, thank you.

The humbling thought should be all the blue collar workers on r/vibecoding demoing their apps and games.

And then realizing they put together something that would have taken you a few days to do.

The supply of software is about to go way up, and that's going to massively impact demand unless every firm on earth is clamoring for more.

We're going to see if Jevons paradox holds true, or if wages get impacted drastically.

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