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I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

nemo.foo

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Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #77

> junior dev faking competence A bit on a tangent, but has there been any discussion of how junior devs in the future are ever going to get past that stage and become senior dev calibre if companies can replace the junior devs with AIs? Or is the thinking we'll be fine until all the current senior devs die off and by then AI will be able to replace them too so we won't need anyone? 1. CS/Eng degree 2. ??? 3. Senior d…

Training will adapt to the widespread use of AI coding assistance if they are that universally useful, and people will come into the market as junior AI wranglers, with skillsets stronger than curent junior devs is some areas but weaker in others; current seniors will grumble about holes in their knowledge, but that's been the case with the generational changes in software development as the common problems people face at different levels have shifted over time. The details are new, but the process isn't.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#82

Post by maybesomaybenot »

potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

Claude is like having my own college professor. I've learned more in the past month with Claude then I learned in the past year. I can ask questions repeatedly and get clarification as fine as a need it. Granted, Claude has limits, but its a game-changer.

> I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. The llm is there to rapidly synthesize the universe of information.

Bingo. OP is like someone who is complaining about the tools, when they should be working on their talent. I have a LOT of hobbies (circuits, woodworking, surfing, playing live music, cycling, photography) and there will always be people who buy the best gear and complain that the gear sucks. (NOTE: I"m not implying claude is "the best gear", but it's a big big help.)

I think the only problem with LLMs is synthesis of new knowledge is severely limited. They are great at explaining things others have explained, but suck hard at inventing new things. At least that's my experience with Claude: it's terrible as a "greenfield" dev.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#83

Post by ahi »

Spivak wrote: post #67
baxtr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it reasonable to assume that more senior devs benefit more from LLMs?

Yes, you essentially have an impossibly well read junior engineer you can task with quick research questions like, "I'm trying to do x using lib y, can you figure that out for me." This is incredibly productive because in the answer is typically all the pieces you need but not always assembled right. Getting the LLM to pull out well-known names of concepts is for me the skill you can't get anywhere else. You can desc…

Once it gives me the names for the concepts I'm struggling with, I often end up finding the stackoverflow or documentation it's copy pasting.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#84

Post by ravroid »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #63
ravroid wrote: post #40

One strategy I've been experimenting with is maintaining a 'spec' document, outlining all features and relevant technical notes about a project. I include the spec with all relevant source files in my prompt before asking the LLM to implement a new change or feature. This way it doesn't have to do as much guessing as to what my code is doing, and I can avoid relying on long-running conversations to maintain context.…

You're describing functionality that's built into Aider. You might want to try it out. Aider also has a copy/paste mode to use web ui interfaces/subscriptions instead apis. I definitely use and update my CONVENTIONS.md files and started adding a second specification file for new projects. This + architect + "can your suggestion be improved, or is there a better way?" has gotten me pretty far.

Didn't know about Aider - going to give that a try, thanks!

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#85

Post by [deleted] »

mordymoop wrote: post #41

I am frankly tired of seeing this kind of post on HN. I feel like the population of programmers is bifurcating into those who are committed to mastering these tools, learning to work around their limitations and working to leverage their strengths… and those who are committed to complaining about how they aren’t already perfect Culture Ship Minds. We get it. They’re not superintelligent at everything yet. They couldn…

[deleted]

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#86

Post by insane_dreamer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #81
insane_dreamer wrote: post #77

> junior dev faking competence A bit on a tangent, but has there been any discussion of how junior devs in the future are ever going to get past that stage and become senior dev calibre if companies can replace the junior devs with AIs? Or is the thinking we'll be fine until all the current senior devs die off and by then AI will be able to replace them too so we won't need anyone? 1. CS/Eng degree 2. ??? 3. Senior d…

Training will adapt to the widespread use of AI coding assistance if they are that universally useful, and people will come into the market as junior AI wranglers, with skillsets stronger than curent junior devs is some areas but weaker in others; current seniors will grumble about holes in their knowledge, but that's been the case with the generational changes in software development as the common problems people fa…

Not if the goal is to replace the junior devs with AIs -- people won't be "coming into the market" because they won't be needed.

Companies are not saving money by paying for AI tools if they continue to hire the same number of people. The only way it makes financial sense, and for the enormous amounts of money being invested into AI to reap profits, is if companies are able to reduce the cost of labor. First, they only need 75% of the junior devs they have now, then 50%, then 25%.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#87

Post by dutchbookmaker »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #38
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vs most things related to hardware or low level work. counter point: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/11453 > This PR provides a big jump in speed for WASM by leveraging SIMD instructions for qX_K_q8_K and qX_0_q8_0 dot product functions. > Surprisingly, 99% of the code in this PR is written by DeekSeek-R1. The only thing I do is to develop tests and write prompts (with some trials and errors)

A single PR doesn't really "prove" anything. Optimization passes on well-tested narrowly scoped code are something that LLMs are already pretty good at.

I think DeekThink is something different though.

It is able to figure out some things that I know do not have much training data at all.

It is looking at the manual and figuring things out. "That doesn't make sense. Wait, that can't be right. I must have the formula wrong."

I just seen that in the chain of thought.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#88

Post by DigitalSea »

This is like watching a carpenter blame their hammer because they didn’t measure twice. AI is a tool, it's like a power tool for a tradesperson: it'll amplify your skills, but if you let it steer the whole project? You’ll end up with a pile of bent nails.

LLMs are jittery apprentices. They'll hallucinate measurements, over-sand perfectly good code, or spin you in circles for hours. I’ve been there back in the GPT-4 days especially, nothing stings like realising you wasted a day debugging AI’s creative solution to a problem you could've solved in 20 minutes.

When you treat AI like a toolbelt, not a replacement for your own brain? Magic. It’s killer at grunt work like; explaining regex, scaffolding boilerplate, or untangling JWT auth spaghetti. You still gotta hold the blueprint. AI ain't some magic wand: it’s a nail gun. Point it wrong, and you’ll spend four days prying out mistakes.

Sucks it cost you time, but hey, now you know to never let the tool work you. It's hopefully a lesson OP learns once and doesn't let it sour their experience with AI, because when utilised properly, you can really get things done, even if it's just the tedious/boring stuff or things you'd spend time Google bashing, reading docs or finding on StackOverflow.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#89

Post by yousoundawesome »

maybesomaybenot wrote: post #82
potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch. I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. Th…

Claude is like having my own college professor. I've learned more in the past month with Claude then I learned in the past year. I can ask questions repeatedly and get clarification as fine as a need it. Granted, Claude has limits, but its a game-changer. > I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. The llm is there to rapidly synthesize the universe of infor…

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Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#90

Post by groby_b »

I mean....

No design. Hardware & software. 2 different platforms. A new language. Zig. Unrealistic time expectations.

A senior SWE would've still tanked this, just in different ways.

Personally, I'd still consider it a valuable experiment, because the lessons learned are really valuable ones. Enjoy round 2 :)

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