5 ms·

A proof of concept tool to verify estimates

85 points by jjgreen 2y ago

esafak 2y ago
Nice to LLMs being put to such use! I see the heavy lifting here is due to linear programming: https://github.com/teorth/estimates/blob/main/src/estimates.py#L398-L414 https://github.com/teorth/estimates/blob/main/src/estimates....
eh_why_not 2y ago
The ChatGPT session he links [0] shows how powerful the LLM is in aiding and teaching programming. A patient, resourceful, effective, and apparently deeply knowledgeable tutor! At least for beginners. [0] https://chatgpt.com/share/68143a97-9424-800e-b43a-ea9690485bd8 https://chatgpt.com/share/68143a97-9424-800e-b43a-ea9690485b...
- nh23423fefe 2y ago
  I'm constantly shocked by the number of my coworkers who won't even try to use an LLM to get stuff done faster. It's like they want it to be bad so they don't have to improve.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ygg2 2y ago
    And I'm constantly shocked by number of people still shilling for it, despite it hallucinating constantly. Plus having used it in JetBrains IDE it makes me sad to see them ditching their refactoring for LLM refuctoring.
    - regularjack 2y ago
      The normal refactorings are still there AFAICT.
      - Ygg2 2y ago
        That implies that they were there in the first place. For some IDEs the refactoring are essentially rename, and buy JetBrains AI plugin.
        lazyasciiart 2y ago
        Then don't complain about them going away?
        Ygg2 2y ago
        I didn't complain about them going away. I complained about using LLMs upsell rather than implementing refactoring like they used to for their previous IDEs (e.g. IntelliJ).
        lazyasciiart 1y ago
        You did, actually.
        Ygg2 1y ago
        I complained about them no longer being added, not being removed (at least not yet). Look at CLion refactorings, compare this to IDEA and Rider that preceded the LLM enshittification. For C++, there should be quite a few refactoring on the count of it being OOP like Java. Even IDEA and Rider didn't add any new refactorings, despite Java advancing quite a bit.
  - bcrosby95 2y ago
    Maybe they have tried and found it lacking? I have an on again off again relationship with LLMs. I always walk away disappointed. Most recently for a hobby project around 1k lines so far, and it outputs bugs galore, makes poor design decisions, etc. It's ok for one off scripts, but even those it rarely one shots. I can only assume people who find it useful are working on different things than I am.
    - kevmo314 2y ago
      Yeah I'm in the holding it wrong camp too. I really want LLMs to work, but every time I spend effort trying to get it to do something I end up with subtle errors or a conclusion that isn't actually correct despite looking correct. Most people tell me I'm just not that good at prompting, which is probably true. But if I'm learning how to prompt, that's basically coding with more steps. At that point it's faster for me to write the code directly. The one area where it actually has been successful is (unsurprisingly) translating code from one language to another. That's been a great help.
      - kaoD 2y ago
        I have never been told I'm bad at prompting, but people swear LLMs are so useful to them I ended up thinking I must be bad at prompting. Then I decided to take on offers to help me with a couple problems I had and, surprise, LLMs were indeed useless even when being piloted by people that swear by them, in the pilot's area of expertise! I just suspect we're indeed not bad at prompting but instead have different kinds of problems that LLMs are just not (yet?) good at. I tend to reach for LLMs when I'm (1) lazy or (2) stuck. They never help with (2) so it must mean I'm still as smart as them (yay!) They beat me at (1) though. Being indefatigable works in their favor.
    - Scarblac 2y ago
      I do the designing, then I write a comment explaining what happens, and the LLM then adds a few lines of code. Write another comment, etc. I get very similar code to what I would normally write but much faster and with comments.
    - 2y ago
  - chneu 2y ago
    Some people just don't want to use AI and there are very legitimate reasons for that. Why are you so willing to teach a program how to do your job? Why are you so willing to give your information to a LLM that doesn't care about your privacy?
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      I agree there can be very legitimate reasons for personally not wanting to use AI. At the same time, I'm not sure I find either of those questions to be related to particularly convincing reasons. Teaching a program how to do your job has been part of the hacker mindset for many decades now, I don't think there is anything new to be said as to why. Anyone here reading this on the internet has long since decided they are fine preferring technical automations over preserving traditional ways of completing work. LLMs don't inherently imply anything about privacy handling, the service you select does (if you aren't just opting to self host in the first place). On the hosted service side there's anything from "free and sucks up everything" to "business data governance contracts about what data can be used how".
      - daveguy 2y ago
        > Anyone here reading this on the internet has long since decided they are fine preferring technical automations over preserving traditional ways of completing work. Well, that's a huge unsubstantiated leap. Also, it's not about "preserving traditional ways of completing work." It's just about recognizing that humans are much better at the vast majority of real world work.
        zamadatix 1y ago
        > Well, that's a huge unsubstantiated leap. I suppose that might depend on how you read "preferring". As in "is what one would ideally like" then sure, it's a bit orthogonal. As in "is what one would decides to use" is what I mean in that we are willing to try and use technical automations over traditional means by nature of being here, even if a face to face conversation would be higher quality or an additional mailman would be employed. > Also, it's not about "preserving traditional ways of completing work." It's just about recognizing that humans are much better at the vast majority of real world work. While an interesting topic I'm not sure this really relates to why people are willing to teach a program how to do their job. It would be more "why people don't bother to", which is a bit of the opposite assumption (that we should if it were worth it). The most interesting thing about recognizing humans are much better at the vast majority of real world work is it doesn't define where the boundary currently sits or how far it's moving. I suspect people will continue to be the best option for the majority of work for a very long time to come by our nature to stop considering automated things work. "Work" ends up being "what we're employed to do" rather than "things that happen". Things like lights, electricity, hvac, dishwasher, washer/dryer, water delivery & waste removal, instances of music or entertainment performances, and so on used to require large amounts of human work but now that the majority of work in those areas is automated we call them "expenses" and "work" is having to load/unload the washer instead of clean the clothes and so on. So, by one measure, I'd disagree wholeheartedly. Machine automation is responsible for more quality production output that humans if, for anything, because of the sheer volume of output and use than being better at a randomly chosen task. On another measure I'd agree wholeheartedly - the things we define as being better at tend to be the things it's worth us doing which become the things we still call "work". Anything which truly has the majority done better (on average) by machines becomes an expense.
  - apercu 2y ago
    I use LLMs often - a few times a week. Every time I gain confidence in a model I get burned. Sometimes verifying takes longer than doing the task myself, so “AI” gets a narrower and narrower scope in my workflow as time goes by.
  - black_13 2y ago
    [dead]
  - mhh__ 2y ago
    A lot of people just don't have the dexterity. Doesn't mean they're stupid necessarily (although the two do rhyme)
nottorp 2y ago
This comment is really sad: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/a-proof-of-concept-tool-to-verify-estimates/#comment-687872 https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/a-proof-of-concept...

85 points by jjgreen 2y ago

Nice to LLMs being put to such use! I see the heavy lifting here is due to linear programming: https://github.com/teorth/estimates/blob/main/src/estimates.py#L398-L414 https://github.com/teorth/estimates/blob/main/src/estimates....

eh_why_not 2y ago

The ChatGPT session he links [0] shows how powerful the LLM is in aiding and teaching programming. A patient, resourceful, effective, and apparently deeply knowledgeable tutor! At least for beginners. [0] https://chatgpt.com/share/68143a97-9424-800e-b43a-ea9690485bd8 https://chatgpt.com/share/68143a97-9424-800e-b43a-ea9690485b...

nh23423fefe 2y ago
I'm constantly shocked by the number of my coworkers who won't even try to use an LLM to get stuff done faster. It's like they want it to be bad so they don't have to improve.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Ygg2 2y ago
  And I'm constantly shocked by number of people still shilling for it, despite it hallucinating constantly. Plus having used it in JetBrains IDE it makes me sad to see them ditching their refactoring for LLM refuctoring.
  - regularjack 2y ago
    The normal refactorings are still there AFAICT.
    - Ygg2 2y ago
      That implies that they were there in the first place. For some IDEs the refactoring are essentially rename, and buy JetBrains AI plugin.
      - lazyasciiart 2y ago
        Then don't complain about them going away?
        Ygg2 2y ago
        I didn't complain about them going away. I complained about using LLMs upsell rather than implementing refactoring like they used to for their previous IDEs (e.g. IntelliJ).
        lazyasciiart 1y ago
        You did, actually.
        Ygg2 1y ago
        I complained about them no longer being added, not being removed (at least not yet). Look at CLion refactorings, compare this to IDEA and Rider that preceded the LLM enshittification. For C++, there should be quite a few refactoring on the count of it being OOP like Java. Even IDEA and Rider didn't add any new refactorings, despite Java advancing quite a bit.
- bcrosby95 2y ago
  Maybe they have tried and found it lacking? I have an on again off again relationship with LLMs. I always walk away disappointed. Most recently for a hobby project around 1k lines so far, and it outputs bugs galore, makes poor design decisions, etc. It's ok for one off scripts, but even those it rarely one shots. I can only assume people who find it useful are working on different things than I am.
  - kevmo314 2y ago
    Yeah I'm in the holding it wrong camp too. I really want LLMs to work, but every time I spend effort trying to get it to do something I end up with subtle errors or a conclusion that isn't actually correct despite looking correct. Most people tell me I'm just not that good at prompting, which is probably true. But if I'm learning how to prompt, that's basically coding with more steps. At that point it's faster for me to write the code directly. The one area where it actually has been successful is (unsurprisingly) translating code from one language to another. That's been a great help.
    - kaoD 2y ago
      I have never been told I'm bad at prompting, but people swear LLMs are so useful to them I ended up thinking I must be bad at prompting. Then I decided to take on offers to help me with a couple problems I had and, surprise, LLMs were indeed useless even when being piloted by people that swear by them, in the pilot's area of expertise! I just suspect we're indeed not bad at prompting but instead have different kinds of problems that LLMs are just not (yet?) good at. I tend to reach for LLMs when I'm (1) lazy or (2) stuck. They never help with (2) so it must mean I'm still as smart as them (yay!) They beat me at (1) though. Being indefatigable works in their favor.
  - Scarblac 2y ago
    I do the designing, then I write a comment explaining what happens, and the LLM then adds a few lines of code. Write another comment, etc. I get very similar code to what I would normally write but much faster and with comments.
  - 2y ago
- chneu 2y ago
  Some people just don't want to use AI and there are very legitimate reasons for that. Why are you so willing to teach a program how to do your job? Why are you so willing to give your information to a LLM that doesn't care about your privacy?
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    I agree there can be very legitimate reasons for personally not wanting to use AI. At the same time, I'm not sure I find either of those questions to be related to particularly convincing reasons. Teaching a program how to do your job has been part of the hacker mindset for many decades now, I don't think there is anything new to be said as to why. Anyone here reading this on the internet has long since decided they are fine preferring technical automations over preserving traditional ways of completing work. LLMs don't inherently imply anything about privacy handling, the service you select does (if you aren't just opting to self host in the first place). On the hosted service side there's anything from "free and sucks up everything" to "business data governance contracts about what data can be used how".
    - daveguy 2y ago
      > Anyone here reading this on the internet has long since decided they are fine preferring technical automations over preserving traditional ways of completing work. Well, that's a huge unsubstantiated leap. Also, it's not about "preserving traditional ways of completing work." It's just about recognizing that humans are much better at the vast majority of real world work.
      - zamadatix 1y ago
        > Well, that's a huge unsubstantiated leap. I suppose that might depend on how you read "preferring". As in "is what one would ideally like" then sure, it's a bit orthogonal. As in "is what one would decides to use" is what I mean in that we are willing to try and use technical automations over traditional means by nature of being here, even if a face to face conversation would be higher quality or an additional mailman would be employed. > Also, it's not about "preserving traditional ways of completing work." It's just about recognizing that humans are much better at the vast majority of real world work. While an interesting topic I'm not sure this really relates to why people are willing to teach a program how to do their job. It would be more "why people don't bother to", which is a bit of the opposite assumption (that we should if it were worth it). The most interesting thing about recognizing humans are much better at the vast majority of real world work is it doesn't define where the boundary currently sits or how far it's moving. I suspect people will continue to be the best option for the majority of work for a very long time to come by our nature to stop considering automated things work. "Work" ends up being "what we're employed to do" rather than "things that happen". Things like lights, electricity, hvac, dishwasher, washer/dryer, water delivery & waste removal, instances of music or entertainment performances, and so on used to require large amounts of human work but now that the majority of work in those areas is automated we call them "expenses" and "work" is having to load/unload the washer instead of clean the clothes and so on. So, by one measure, I'd disagree wholeheartedly. Machine automation is responsible for more quality production output that humans if, for anything, because of the sheer volume of output and use than being better at a randomly chosen task. On another measure I'd agree wholeheartedly - the things we define as being better at tend to be the things it's worth us doing which become the things we still call "work". Anything which truly has the majority done better (on average) by machines becomes an expense.
- apercu 2y ago
  I use LLMs often - a few times a week. Every time I gain confidence in a model I get burned. Sometimes verifying takes longer than doing the task myself, so “AI” gets a narrower and narrower scope in my workflow as time goes by.
- black_13 2y ago
  [dead]
- mhh__ 2y ago
  A lot of people just don't have the dexterity. Doesn't mean they're stupid necessarily (although the two do rhyme)

nottorp 2y ago

This comment is really sad: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/a-proof-of-concept-tool-to-verify-estimates/#comment-687872 https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/a-proof-of-concept...