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A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

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Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#771

Post by runarberg »

oblio wrote: post #769
runarberg wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first started using the internet, I was able to instant text message (IRC) random strangers, using a fake name, and lie about my age. My teacher had us send an email to our ex-classmate who had move to Australia, and she replied the next day, I was able to download the song I just heard on the radio and play it as many times as I wanted on my winamp. These capabilities simply didn’t exist before the Internet.…

Before LLMs it was incredibly tedious or expensive or both to get legal guidance for stuff like taxes, where I live. Now I can orient myself much better before I ask an actual tax expert pointed questions, saving a lot of time and money. The list of things they can provide is endless. They're not a creator, they're an accelerator. And time matters. My interests are myriad but my capacity to pass the entry bar manuall…

If this resembles the feeling you had when you first used the internet, it is drastically different from when I used the internet.

When I first used the internet, it was not about doing things faster, it was about doing things which were previously simply unavailable to me. A 12 year old me was never gonna fax my previous classmate who moved to Australia, but I certainly emailed her.

We are not talking about a creator nor an accelerator, we are talking about an avenue (or a road if you will). When I use the internet, I am the creator, and the internet is the road that gets me there.

When I use an LLM it is doing something I can already do, but now I can do it without using my brain. So the feeling is much closer to doomscrolling on social media where previously I could just read a book or meet my pals at the pub. Doomscrolling facebook is certainly faster then reading a book, or socializing at the pub. But it is a poor replacement for either.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#772

Post by badsectoracula »

direwolf20 wrote: post #707
ryandrake wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most companies (in the global, not SV sense) would be well served by an app that runs in a Docker container in a VPS somewhere and has PostgreSQL and maybe Garage, RabbitMQ and Redis if you wanna get fancy, behind Apache2/Nginx/Caddy. That’s still too much complication. Most companies would be well served by a native .EXE file they could just run on their PC. How did we get to the point where applications by defaul…

When I was in primary school, the librarian used a computer this way, and it worked fine. However, she had to back it up daily or weekly onto a stack of floppy disks, and if she wanted to serve the students from the other computer on the other side of the room, she had to restore the backup on there, and remember which computer had the latest data, and only use that one. When doing a stock–take (scanning every book o…

I think the 'more than one user' alternative to a 'single EXE on a single computer' isn't the multilayered pie of things that KronisLV mentioned, but a PHP script[0] on an apache server[0] you access via a web browser. You don't even need a dedicated DB server as SQLite will do perfectly fine.

[0] or similarly easy to get running equivalent

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#773

Post by jermberj »

> The most common category is that the models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They also don't manage their confusion, they don't seek clarifications, they don't surface inconsistencies, they don't present tradeoffs, they don't push back when they should, and they are still a little too sycophantic.

Does this not undercut everything going on here. Like, what?

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#774

Post by CamperBob2 »

gyomu wrote: post #645
markb139 wrote: post #474

I retired from paid sw dev work in 2020 when COVID arrived. I’ve worked on my small projects since with all development by hand. I’d followed the rise of AI, but not used it. Late last year I started a project that included reverse engineering some firmware that runs on an Intel 8096 based embedded processor. I’d never worked on that processor before. There are tools available, but they cost many $. So, I started to…

> Vendors of small utilities could be in trouble This is a mix of the “in the future, everyone will have a 3D printer at home and just 3D print random parts they need” and “anyone can trivially build Dropbox with rsync themselves” arguments. Tech savvy users who know how to use LLMs aren’t how vendors of small utilities stay in business. They stay in business because they sell things to users who are truly clueless w…

I don't know. It's one thing to tell Joe or Jane User to "Get an FTP account, mount it locally with curlftpfs, and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." But if Joe or Jane can just cut-and-paste that advice into a prompt and get their own personal Dropbox...

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#775

Post by awsanswers »

jermberj wrote: post #773

> The most common category is that the models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They also don't manage their confusion, they don't seek clarifications, they don't surface inconsistencies, they don't present tradeoffs, they don't push back when they should, and they are still a little too sycophantic. Does this not undercut everything going on here. Like, what?

It's predictable so you run defense around it with prompting, validation and model tuning. It generates volumes of working code in seconds from natural language prompts so it's extremely business efficient. We're talking about tools that generate correct code to 95% of a solution, the follow up human and automated test review, and second coding pass to fix the 5% are a non issue.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#776

Post by chickensong »

chrisjj wrote: post #746
chickensong wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That split has always existed. LLMs can be used on either side of the divide.

We see a ton of "AI let me code a program X faster than ever before." We see almost no "AI let me code a program X better than ever before."

I can't argue that. The scale was already imbalanced as well, and vibe coding has lowered the bar even more, so the gap will continue to grow for now.

I'm just saying that LLMs aren't causing the divide. Accelerating yes, but I think simply equating AI usage to poor quality is wrong. Craftsmen now have a powerful tool as well, to analyze, nitpick, and refactor in ways that were previously difficult to justify.

It also seems premature for so many devs to jump to hardline "AI bad" stances. So far the tech is improving quite well. We may not be able to 1-shot much of quality yet, but it remains to be seen if that will hold.

Personally, I have hopes that AI will eventually push code quality much higher than it's ever been. I might be totally wrong of course, but to me it feels logical that computers would be very good at writing computer programs once the foundation is built.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#777

Post by runarberg »

mikemarsh wrote: post #664
aswegs8 wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they…

Presenting this quote without additional commentary is an interesting Rorschach test. Thankfully more and more people are seriously considering the effects of technology on true wisdom and getting of the "all technological progress clearly is great, look at all these silly unenlightened naysayers from the past" train.

Socrates was right about the effects. Writing did indeed cause us to loose the talent of memorizing. Where he was wrong though (or rather where this quote without context is wrong) is that it turned out that memorizing was by the most part not the important skill to have.

When Socrates uses the same warnings about LLMs he may however be correct both on the effect and the importance of the skill being lost. If we loose the ability to think and solve various problems, we may indeed be loosing a very important skill of our humanity.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#778

Post by kelnos »

aswegs8 wrote: post #619
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they…

It's unclear if you've presented this quote in order to support or criticize the idea that new technologies make us dumber. (Perhaps that's intentional; if so, bravo).

To me, this feels like support. I was never an adult who could not read or write, so I can't check my experience against Socrates' specific concern. But speaking to the idea of memory, I now "outsource" a lot of my memory to my smartphone.

In the past, I would just remember my shopping list, and go to the grocery store and get what I needed. Sure, sometimes I'd forget a thing or two, but it was almost always something unimportant, and rarely was a problem. Now I have my list on my phone, but on many occasions where I don't make a shopping list on my phone, when I get to the grocery store I have a lot of trouble remembering what to get, and sometimes finish shopping, check out, and leave the store, only to suddenly remember something important, and have to go back in.

I don't remember phone numbers anymore. In college (~2000) I had the campus numbers (we didn't have cell phones yet) of at least two dozen friends memorized. Today I know my phone number, my wife's, and my sister's, and that's it. (But I still remember the phone number for the first house I lived in, and we moved out of that house when I was five years old. Interestingly, I don't remember the area code, but I suppose that makes sense, as area codes weren't required for local dialing in the US back in the 80s.)

Now, some of this I will probably ascribe to age: I expect our memory gets more fallible as we get older (I'm in my mid 40s). I used to have all my credit/debit card numbers, and their expiration dates and security codes, memorized (five or six of them), but nowadays I can only manage to remember two of them. (And I usually forget or mix up the expiration dates; fortunately many payment forms don't seem to check, or are lax about it.) But maybe that is due to new technology to some extent: most/all sites where I spend money frequently remember my card for me (and at most only require me to enter the security code). And many also take Paypal or Google Pay, which saves me from having to recall the numbers.

So I think new technology making us "dumber" is a very real thing. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. You could say that, in all of my examples, technology serving the place of memory has freed up mental cycles to remember more important things, so it's a net positive. But I'm not so sure.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#779

Post by lynguist »

bsder wrote: post #246
oasisbob wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fun. Not sure if it's an American pronunciation thing, but I had to stare at that long and hard to see the problem and even after seeing it couldn't think of how you could possibly spell the correct word otherwise.

> Not sure if it's an American pronunciation thing It's a bad American pronunciation thing like "Febuwary" and "nuculer". If you pronounce the syllables correctly, "an-ec-dote", "Feb-ru-ar-y", "nu-cle-ar" the spellings follow. English has it's fair share of spelling stupidities, but if people don't even pronounce the words correctly there is no hope.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/February

The pronunciation of the first r with a y sound has always been one of two possible standards, in fact "February" is a re-Latinizing spelling but English doesn’t like the br-r sound so it naturally dissimilates to by-r.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#780

Post by pinnochio »

ericmcer wrote: post #747
aswegs8 wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they…

That is interesting because your mental abilities seem to be correlated with orchestrating a bunch of abstractions you have previously mastered. Are these tools making us stupid because we no longer need to master any of these things? Or are they making us smarter because the abstraction is just trusting AI to handle it for us?

Does a student become smarter by hiring a smarter student to write his essays and take his tests for him?
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