5 ms·

A lot of convoluted explanations about something we don't even know if it really works all the time. I feel like in the third year of LLM-Hype and after reminde

A lot of convoluted explanations about something we don't even know if it really works all the time. I feel like in the third year of LLM-Hype and after reminde-me-how-many billions of dollars burned, we should by now not have to imagine what 'might happen' down to road, it should have been happening already. The use-case you are describing, sure sounds very interesting, until I remember asking asked Copilot for a simple scaffolding structure in React, and it spat out something which lacked half of imports and proper visual alignments. A few years ago I was excited about the possibility of removing all the scaffolding and templating work so we can write the cool parts, but they cannot even do that right. It's actually a step back compared to automatic code generators of the past, because those at least produced reproducible results every single time you used them. But hey sure, the next generation of "AI" (it's not really AI) will probably solve it.

mckngbrd 2y ago
Consider using a better AI IDE platform than Copilot ... cursor, windsurf, cline, all great options that do much better than what you're describing. The underlying LLM capabilities also have advanced quite a bit in the past year.
- hansmayer 2y ago
  Well I do not really use it that much to actually care, and don't really depend on AI, thankfully. If they did not mess up the google search, we wouldnt even need that crap at all. But that's not the main point. Even if I switched to cursor or windsurf - aren't they all using one of the same LLMs? (ChatGPT,Claude, whatever..). The issue is that the underlying general approach will never be accurate enough. There is a reason most of successful technologies lift off quickly and those not successful also die very quickly. This is a tech propped up by a lot of VC money for now, but at some point, even the richest of the rich VCs will have trouble explaining spending 500B dollars in total, to get something like 15B revenue (not even profit). And don't even get me started on Altman's trillion-fantasies...
  - mckngbrd 2y ago
    It sounds like you've made up your mind! Best of luck.
    - hansmayer 2y ago
      :) And you sound like one of the many people I've seen come and go in my career. Best of luck to you actually - if the GenAI bubble does not pop in the next few years (which it will) we'll only have so many open positions for "prompters" to use for building web app skeletons :)
pdntspa 2y ago
That scene is changing so quickly that you will want to try again right now if you can. While LLM code generation is very much still a mixed bag, it has been a significant accelerator in my own productivity, and for the most part all I am using is o1 (via the openAI website), deepseek, and jetbrains' AI service (Copilot clone). I'm eager to play with some of the other tooling available to VS Code users (such as cline) I don't know why everyone is so eager to "get to the fun stuff". Dev is supposed to be boring. If you don't like it maybe you should be doing something else.
- hansmayer 2y ago
  I mean I literally "tried it again" this morning, as a paying Copilot customer of 12 months, to the result I already described. And I do not want to "try it" - based on fluffy promises we've been hearing, it should "just work". Are you old enough to remember that phrase? It was a motto introduced by an engineering legend whose devices you're likely using every day. The reason why "everyone", including myself with 20+ years of experience is looking to do not "fun stuff" (please don't shove words into my mouth), but cool stuff (=hard problems) is that it produces an intrinsic sense of satisfaction, which in turn creates motivation to do more and eventually even produces wider gain for the society. Some of us went into engineering because of passion you know. We're not all former copy-writers retrained to be "frontend developers" for a higher salary, who are eager to push around CSS boxes. That's important work too, but I've definitely solved harder problems in my career. If it's boring for you and you think it's how it should be, then you are definitely doing it for the wrong reasons (I am assuming escaping a less profitable career).
  - bobxmax 2y ago
    None of this stuff even existed 3 years ago and you're asking like we're talking about self-driving cars. What hubris. My god.
    - hansmayer 2y ago
      There is no hubris. The LLM technology has actually been existing for at least two decades, it's not some sudden breakthrough we suddenly discovered. And given the many billions of dollars it has sucked in, it's definitely a pile of crap. I have been a paying customer of Github Copilot for at least a year. Since the google search has been completely messed up, sometimes it can be useful to look up some cryptic error message. It can also sometimes help recall syntax of something. But it's not the magic machine they've been touting, it's definitely not the AGI, and my god, it's very prone to errors and to anyone who admires this tech, please for the love of god double- and tripple-check the crap that they generate, before you commit it to production. And by now it definitely feels like the 'self-driving' cars 'revolution'. They have been 'just around the corner', for like what, 15 years now?

mckngbrd 2y ago

Consider using a better AI IDE platform than Copilot ... cursor, windsurf, cline, all great options that do much better than what you're describing. The underlying LLM capabilities also have advanced quite a bit in the past year.

hansmayer 2y ago
Well I do not really use it that much to actually care, and don't really depend on AI, thankfully. If they did not mess up the google search, we wouldnt even need that crap at all. But that's not the main point. Even if I switched to cursor or windsurf - aren't they all using one of the same LLMs? (ChatGPT,Claude, whatever..). The issue is that the underlying general approach will never be accurate enough. There is a reason most of successful technologies lift off quickly and those not successful also die very quickly. This is a tech propped up by a lot of VC money for now, but at some point, even the richest of the rich VCs will have trouble explaining spending 500B dollars in total, to get something like 15B revenue (not even profit). And don't even get me started on Altman's trillion-fantasies...
- mckngbrd 2y ago
  It sounds like you've made up your mind! Best of luck.
  - hansmayer 2y ago
    :) And you sound like one of the many people I've seen come and go in my career. Best of luck to you actually - if the GenAI bubble does not pop in the next few years (which it will) we'll only have so many open positions for "prompters" to use for building web app skeletons :)

pdntspa 2y ago

That scene is changing so quickly that you will want to try again right now if you can. While LLM code generation is very much still a mixed bag, it has been a significant accelerator in my own productivity, and for the most part all I am using is o1 (via the openAI website), deepseek, and jetbrains' AI service (Copilot clone). I'm eager to play with some of the other tooling available to VS Code users (such as cline) I don't know why everyone is so eager to "get to the fun stuff". Dev is supposed to be boring. If you don't like it maybe you should be doing something else.

hansmayer 2y ago
I mean I literally "tried it again" this morning, as a paying Copilot customer of 12 months, to the result I already described. And I do not want to "try it" - based on fluffy promises we've been hearing, it should "just work". Are you old enough to remember that phrase? It was a motto introduced by an engineering legend whose devices you're likely using every day. The reason why "everyone", including myself with 20+ years of experience is looking to do not "fun stuff" (please don't shove words into my mouth), but cool stuff (=hard problems) is that it produces an intrinsic sense of satisfaction, which in turn creates motivation to do more and eventually even produces wider gain for the society. Some of us went into engineering because of passion you know. We're not all former copy-writers retrained to be "frontend developers" for a higher salary, who are eager to push around CSS boxes. That's important work too, but I've definitely solved harder problems in my career. If it's boring for you and you think it's how it should be, then you are definitely doing it for the wrong reasons (I am assuming escaping a less profitable career).
- bobxmax 2y ago
  None of this stuff even existed 3 years ago and you're asking like we're talking about self-driving cars. What hubris. My god.
  - hansmayer 2y ago
    There is no hubris. The LLM technology has actually been existing for at least two decades, it's not some sudden breakthrough we suddenly discovered. And given the many billions of dollars it has sucked in, it's definitely a pile of crap. I have been a paying customer of Github Copilot for at least a year. Since the google search has been completely messed up, sometimes it can be useful to look up some cryptic error message. It can also sometimes help recall syntax of something. But it's not the magic machine they've been touting, it's definitely not the AGI, and my god, it's very prone to errors and to anyone who admires this tech, please for the love of god double- and tripple-check the crap that they generate, before you commit it to production. And by now it definitely feels like the 'self-driving' cars 'revolution'. They have been 'just around the corner', for like what, 15 years now?