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I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

frederickvanbrabant.com

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Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#81

Post by gib444 »

faangguyindia wrote: post #68
phyzix5761 wrote: post #12

I think when LLMs first came out people thought they could just say something like, "Make a Facebook clone". But now we're realizing we need to be more exact with our requirements and define things better. That has always been the bottle neck in software. When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored,…

product people love LLM because it doesn't ask "what does X means? how will it work?" while a programmer will ask, about all cases.

Do they have a point?

Can't good marketing teams, backed up by World Class Product people, sell anything we build, more or less?

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#82

Post by skydhash »

et1337 wrote: post #44
steveBK123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored, or in what format to return it. We would then spend a significant amount of time with the product person trying to figure out what they really wanted. This is a big HN LLM discussion divide. I am in the same no-specs work background camp, and so the ide…

I’ve never understood engineers who complain about vague specs… if the spec was complete, it would be code and the job would be done already! Getting a 20 page spec delivered from upon high and mechanically translating it to code without any chance to send feedback up the chain sounds like… a compiler.

In my experience, the complaints are not about the specs and their vagueness. It's more about the political game to get them detailed. If you've not encountered the kind of organizational issues where getting an answer is like pulling teeth, you're kind of lucky.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#84

Post by airstrike »

LLMs are great at two things: search and speed of generating code.

I get most value from them when I'm asking it to either fill in the blanks of something already half implemented or when I need some feature in a given context/language that only exists in other languages

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#85

Post by jcgrillo »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #14
kj4211cash wrote: post #7

On the one hand, this is a clean post that explains exactly what a lot of us have been thinking and seeing on the job at large organizations doing tech work. Dear Author, I agree with you 110% and want everybody else to come to understand what you have written. On the other hand, it feels like we've been over this tens of times recently, on HN specifically and IRL at work. Another blog post isn't going to convince le…

Yep. I have the luxury of having my mortgage paid off and being able to be a bit picky about my work for a little bit. So I am spending my days gardening and obsessively working on personal coding projects with these agentic tools. Y'know, building a high performance OLTP database from scratch, and a whole new logic relational persistent programming environment, a synthesizer based on some funky math, an FPGA soft pr…

Yeah I think moving forward one of the questions I'll be asking companies I interview with is "what does your seniority distribution look like and how do you intend to maintain it?"

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#86

Post by neversupervised »

It’s completely wild to me that lifelong programmers come into contact with agentic coding and come to the conclusion that their jobs are safe for one reason or another. AI will definitely be able to write entire software, inclusive of figuring out requirements and asking the right questions. It’s not that far already. Why is it that everyone looks at weaknesses of a technology that didn’t exist a couple years ago instead of appreciating the incredible rate of improvement? I know why, because it’s inconvenient to the narrative of what makes us valuable. But still, our job is to turn ideas into a sequence of logical steps. Why can’t we do the same when forecasting the impact of AI on our jobs?

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#87

Post by pydry »

niek_pas wrote: post #63
phyzix5761 wrote: post #12

I think when LLMs first came out people thought they could just say something like, "Make a Facebook clone". But now we're realizing we need to be more exact with our requirements and define things better. That has always been the bottle neck in software. When I was working we used to get requirements that literally said things like, "Get data and give it to the user". No definition of what data is, where its stored,…

What's even worse is that when dealing with human software teams, a vague requirement will (at least in a well-run org) receive demands for further specification. "What do you mean by 'get data'?", etc. An LLM will just say, "Sure! Here's the fully implemented code that gets the data and give it to the user. " and be done with it.

IME you give it very precise specifications and it still fucks it up.

When we talk about "the" bottleneck being specs it just isnt the case that it's the only thing LLMs do poorly. Theyre really bad at a lot of stuff in the SDLC.

They're also good at providing results which are bad but look ok if you either dont look too closely or dont know what you're looking for.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#88

Post by argee »

somenameforme wrote: post #50

I think there's an interesting dichotomy. I find that for things I'm already capable at, LLMs are relatively inconsequential. But for things I'm no good at, it's a huge game changer. For a large company, that's going to be able to hire out most needed roles for any given project, this means the overall effect is going to be relatively inconsequential. At best, they may be able to cut down on labor costs by having one…

> I find that for things I'm already capable at, LLMs are relatively inconsequential. But for things I'm no good at, it's a huge game changer.

What are the chances that this is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect? Sounds like the textbook definition of it.

Personally, I find the exact opposite to be true. LLMs only help me when I already know exactly what I'm doing.

Re: I don't think AI will make your processes go faster

#90

Post by sevenzero »

neversupervised wrote: post #86

It’s completely wild to me that lifelong programmers come into contact with agentic coding and come to the conclusion that their jobs are safe for one reason or another. AI will definitely be able to write entire software, inclusive of figuring out requirements and asking the right questions. It’s not that far already. Why is it that everyone looks at weaknesses of a technology that didn’t exist a couple years ago in…

>...the incredible rate of improvement?

Because the "rate of improvement" is only astonishing in well understood areas and really only astonishing if you yourself are not that great at what you do. Speaking for myself here, my job is extremely safe given that my boss doesn't wanna sit there and prompt AI all day and i work in a fun little 4 person company. We already have plans for the 3 next years which involve me :-)

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