6 ms·

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41904595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41913378 https://news.ycombinat

• mvdtnz 2y ago
  Maybe because we're all exhausted by these kinds of demos. I'll be interested in AI when I can integrate it with a large codebase and it provides any benefit. I'm happy for you that you can stand up little toy apps that pull down an NPM library and call it, but it's not useful in my professional life.
  • mattnewton 2y ago
    If you have one of those larger codebases you aren't afraid of Cursor Co. getting a copy of, I would really try out Cursor. The indexing of medium sized mono-repo I've been working in is pretty flawless (contains code for a static web page, a singe page web app, and some python services along with deployment configs)
    • sigh_again 2y ago
      That's not a medium sized repo, that is a baby you can entirely memorize in your own head. Cursor is also dreadful at anything that isn't Javascript and Python.
    • stonethrowaway 2y ago
      That doesn’t sound like a medium sized repo?
    • mvdtnz 2y ago
      There's absolutely no way I'd share my codebase with some fly-by-nighter ~crypto~ AI company, but the codebase I work on is upwards of 60 million lines of code so I doubt any "AI" solution would come close to being useful.
      • ben_w 2y ago
        At 60 Mloc? Sure, for now I'd agree. An AI needs to use other tools to handle that kind of size, it doesn't (practically) work so well if you try to hold the whole thing in context. And while tool use is being worked on, the results I've seen are are the "that's an interesting tech demo" level rather than the mind-blowing change when InstructGPT demonstrated the ability for a language model to generate any meaningful code at all from natural language instruction.
      • riku_iki 2y ago
        > I work on is upwards of 60 million lines of code so I doubt any "AI" solution would come close to being useful. that's what rag is supposed to solve: they chunk your 60M loc, and then retrieve and process only relevant depending on your inquery.
  • bloopernova 2y ago
    Exactly. When the LLM can create valid tests that cover all branches, then it will be useful to me. I use copilot every day, but it's only so good. The LLM hype feels like it's been driven by FOMO.
    • jkaptur 2y ago
      I had a pretty cool experience with that the other day. I wrote some production code (LLM had no idea what was going on), then I measured the coverage and determined a test case that would increase it (again, just using my brain), BUT when I typed "testEmptyString" or whatever, the LLM filled in the rest of the test. Not a massive change to the way I work, but it certainly saved me a bunch of time.
      • NitpickLawyer 2y ago
        I swear half the people in this thread have spent 5 minutes with the first chatgpt, pre 3.5, wrote it off and are so convinced of their superiority that they won't spend the time required to even see where it's at. Ever saw someone really bad at googling? It's the exact same thing with LLMs (for now). They're not magic crystal balls, and they certainly can't read everyone's minds at the same time. But give them a bunch of context, and they'll surprise you.
        • IggleSniggle 2y ago
          Sshhh, we've still got like a year of advantage over the folks that haven't learned about searching the Internet and still have to drive to their local university library...don't squander it!
        • NeutralCrane 2y ago
          Engineers are also notorious for having hit and miss soft skills. The interface for LLMs is natural language. I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the variance in usefulness boils down to how effectively you can communicate what you want it to do.
    • unshavedyak 2y ago
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • williamcotton 2y ago
    My duties as a data scientist and forensic investigator involve writing lots of "little toy apps" for ETL and analysis. BTW, why the disparaging reference to "little toy apps"?
    • mvdtnz 2y ago
      How would you refer to the example apps in the OP's link? They are almost definitionally toy apps, and definitely little (a handful of pages of code including all of the HTML).
    • skydhash 2y ago
      It's related to this: https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ As a programmer (which is the requisite to build such tools even with LLMs), I have a plethora of tools to do the tasks, what I choose and how much time I invested in in that depends on something similar to this chart, but with an added dimension: interest. Take for example the URL extraction. For one single occasion, I'd probably use VIM and macros to quickly do it. If it were many pages, I'd write a script. If it were infrequent, but recurrent, I'd take the time to write a better script and would only write a web page if the use case was shared with other people or if I wanted a cross platform solution. I believe the first question one should ask before building is why. That leads you to find a better UX than shoehorning everything inside a web app.
      • IggleSniggle 2y ago
        I 100% agree with the point you are making. The only aspect that obscures it is that paying employers will happily pay to support interests that are, on inspection, a waste of time. In that aspect, I am hopeful. Maybe if "waste of time" activities are commoditized, "professionals" can instead focus on "what is important," whatever that might be.
        • skydhash 2y ago
          I don’t mind if my employer bought a subscription. But my personal motto if that if I have to do something multiple time, it should take less and less time. I reuse code heavily (which is why I learned vim as it makes that fluid). And that’s where LLMs becomes useless because they need the entire context to generate something. Which means I have to type it out for them in addition to what I want. And the whole thing becomes a drag. Maybe Cursor and the likes could help, but the code is only half the story, there are things like protocols, messages format, specs,… What LLMs promise is endless drag. I try to structure my work to ensure that the final velocity is high.
• infoseek12 2y ago
  It’s extraordinary! Perhaps how quickly we become jaded should be taken as evidence of how quickly the world is changing right now. When I looked at the examples they seemed like the kind of one off scripts, of limited complexity, that we’ve seen many times in the last year or so.
• yen223 2y ago
  To have discussions people need to be able to see your post, and on HN it can be a matter of luck.
• rtzand 2y ago
  Perhaps people want to read other blogs once in a while. We are at a stage of AI glut. If people pump out so much content in such a short time, no one can read it all (or is interested to read it).
• ttepasse 2y ago
  Apart from chance HN seems rather time dependent – those posts seem to be posted still early in the day (I assume UTC from the timestamps) when the mostly US-American visitors doesn’t seem yet in the slacking-of mode.
• tessierashpool9 2y ago
  i love the design ... especially because it is underwhelming as opposed to overwhelming! cause i care for the _content_ and not the _design_!