4 ms·

Well, I'll try to do a sticky note here: - they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes

Well, I'll try to do a sticky note here: - they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient - they fail at doing clean DRY practices even though they are supposed to skim through the codebase much faster than me - they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues - they cannot properly pick the context and the files to read in a mid-size app - they suggest to download some random packages, sometimes low quality ones, or unmaintained ones

travisjungroth 1y ago
Those aren't tasks.
bdangubic 1y ago
they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient of course they can, teach them / feed them latest changes or whatever you need (much like another developer unaware of the same thing) they fail at doing clean DRY practices even though they are supposed to skim through the codebase much faster than me tell them it is not DRY until they make it DRY. for some (several projects I’ve been involved with) DRY is generally anti-pattern when taken to extremes (abstraction gone awry etc…). instruct it what you expect and it and watch it deliver (much like you would another developer…) they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues tell it when it hallucinates, it’ll correct itself they cannot properly pick the context and the files to read in a mid-size app provide it with context (you should always do this anyways) they suggest to download some random packages, sometimes low quality ones, or unmaintained ones tell it about it, it will correct itself
- esjeon 1y ago
  Anecdotally, ChatGPT still struggles with its own API. It keeps juggling between different versions of its API and hallucinates API parameters, even when I force-feed official documents into the context (to be fair, the documentation is straight awful). Sometimes it totally refuses to change its basic assumptions, so I have to blow up the context just to make it use the up-to-date API correctly. LLMs are stupid - nothing magic, nothing great. They’re just tools. The problem with the recent LLM craze is that people make too many obviously partially true statements.
  - simonw 1y ago
    That's because GPT-4o's training cut-off is Sep 30, 2023 (see https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-4o https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-4o) and the OpenAI API has changed a LOT since then. Claude 4 has a training cut-off of March 2025, I tried something today about its own API and it gave me useful code.
- karn97 1y ago
  [dead]
- apwell23 1y ago
  > tell it when it hallucinates, it’ll correct itself no it doesn't. Are you serious?
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    just today 3 times and countless times before… you just gotta take some serious time to learn and understand it… or alternatively write snarky comments on the internet…
    - apwell23 1y ago
      intresting. for me it just keeps making up new stuff that doesn't exist when i feed it the error and telling it hallucinates. perhaps ppl building crud webapps have different experience than ppl building something niche?
      - bdangubic 1y ago
        I don't build CRUD apps, 1099 contractor so too expensive to do that kind of work :)
    - soraminazuki 1y ago
      So when LLMs go around in circles, as it often does [1], that's a skill issue. But when it gets it right some of the time, that's proof of superiority. This is the kind of reasoning that dominates LLM zealotry. No evidence given for extraordinary claims. Just a barrage of dismissals of legitimate problems. Including the article in discussion. All of this makes me have a hard time taking any of it seriously. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44050152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44050152
simonw 1y ago
"they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient" That's mostly solved by the most recent ones that can run searches. I've had great results from o4-mini for this, since it can search for the latest updates - example here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/21/ai-assisted-search/#lazily-porting-code-to-a-new-library-version-via-search https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/21/ai-assisted-search/#la... Or for a lot of libraries you can dump the ENTIRE latest version into the prompt - I do this a lot with the Google Gemini 2.5 models since those can handle up to 1m tokens of input. "they fail at doing clean DRY practices" - tell them to DRY in your prompt. "they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues" - really not an issue if you're actually testing your code! I wrote about that one here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/2/hallucinations-in-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/2/hallucinations-in-code/ - and if you're using one of the systems that runs your code for you (as promoted in tptacek's post) it will spot and fix these without you even needing to intervene. "they cannot properly pick the context and the files to read in a mid-size app" - try Claude Code. It has a whole mechanism dedicated to doing just that, I reverse-engineered it this morning: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/2/claude-trace/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/2/claude-trace/ "they suggest to download some random packages, sometimes low quality ones, or unmaintained ones" - yes, they absolutely do that. You need to maintain editorial control over what dependencies you add.
- karn97 1y ago
  [dead]
- TheRoque 1y ago
  Thanks for the links. You mentioned 2 models in your posts, how should I proceed ? I can't possibly pay 2 subscriptions.. do you have a question for the better one to use ?
  - simonw 1y ago
    If you're only going to pay one $20/month subscription I think OpenAI wins at the moment - their search tools are better and their voice chat interface is better too. I personally prefer the Claude models but they don't offer quite as rich a set of extra features. If you want to save money, consider getting API accounts with them and spending money that way. My combined API bill across OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini rarely comes to more than about $10/month.
motza 1y ago
I have definitely noticed these as well. Have you ever tried prompting these issues away? I'm thinking this might be a good list to add to every coding prompt
bradfa 1y ago
They also can’t hold copyright on their creations.
apwell23 1y ago
> - they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues yes. this happens to me almost every time i use it. I feel like a crazy person reading all the AI hype.
agotterer 1y ago
> they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient This is where collaboration comes in play. If you solely rely on the LLM to “vibe code” everything, then you’re right, you get whatever it thinks is best at the time of generation. That could be wrong or outdated. My workflow is to first provide clear requirements, generally one objective at a time. Sometimes I use an llm to format the requirements for the llm to generate code from. It then writes some code, and I review it. If I notice something is outdated I give it a link to the docs and tell it to update it using X. A few seconds later it’s made the change. I did this just yesterday when building out an integration with an api. Claude wrote the code using a batch endpoint because the steaming endpoint was just released and I don’t think it was aware of it. My role in this collaboration, is to be aware of what’s possible and how I want it to work (e.g.. being aware of the latest features and updates of the frameworks and libraries). Then it’s just about prompting and directing the llm until it works the way I want. When it’s really not working, then I jump in.

travisjungroth 1y ago

Those aren't tasks.

bdangubic 1y ago

they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient of course they can, teach them / feed them latest changes or whatever you need (much like another developer unaware of the same thing) they fail at doing clean DRY practices even though they are supposed to skim through the codebase much faster than me tell them it is not DRY until they make it DRY. for some (several projects I’ve been involved with) DRY is generally anti-pattern when taken to extremes (abstraction gone awry etc…). instruct it what you expect and it and watch it deliver (much like you would another developer…) they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues tell it when it hallucinates, it’ll correct itself they cannot properly pick the context and the files to read in a mid-size app provide it with context (you should always do this anyways) they suggest to download some random packages, sometimes low quality ones, or unmaintained ones tell it about it, it will correct itself

esjeon 1y ago
Anecdotally, ChatGPT still struggles with its own API. It keeps juggling between different versions of its API and hallucinates API parameters, even when I force-feed official documents into the context (to be fair, the documentation is straight awful). Sometimes it totally refuses to change its basic assumptions, so I have to blow up the context just to make it use the up-to-date API correctly. LLMs are stupid - nothing magic, nothing great. They’re just tools. The problem with the recent LLM craze is that people make too many obviously partially true statements.
- simonw 1y ago
  That's because GPT-4o's training cut-off is Sep 30, 2023 (see https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-4o https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-4o) and the OpenAI API has changed a LOT since then. Claude 4 has a training cut-off of March 2025, I tried something today about its own API and it gave me useful code.
karn97 1y ago
[dead]
apwell23 1y ago
> tell it when it hallucinates, it’ll correct itself no it doesn't. Are you serious?
- bdangubic 1y ago
  just today 3 times and countless times before… you just gotta take some serious time to learn and understand it… or alternatively write snarky comments on the internet…
  - apwell23 1y ago
    intresting. for me it just keeps making up new stuff that doesn't exist when i feed it the error and telling it hallucinates. perhaps ppl building crud webapps have different experience than ppl building something niche?
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      I don't build CRUD apps, 1099 contractor so too expensive to do that kind of work :)
  - soraminazuki 1y ago
    So when LLMs go around in circles, as it often does [1], that's a skill issue. But when it gets it right some of the time, that's proof of superiority. This is the kind of reasoning that dominates LLM zealotry. No evidence given for extraordinary claims. Just a barrage of dismissals of legitimate problems. Including the article in discussion. All of this makes me have a hard time taking any of it seriously. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44050152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44050152

simonw 1y ago

"they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient" That's mostly solved by the most recent ones that can run searches. I've had great results from o4-mini for this, since it can search for the latest updates - example here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/21/ai-assisted-search/#lazily-porting-code-to-a-new-library-version-via-search https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/21/ai-assisted-search/#la... Or for a lot of libraries you can dump the ENTIRE latest version into the prompt - I do this a lot with the Google Gemini 2.5 models since those can handle up to 1m tokens of input. "they fail at doing clean DRY practices" - tell them to DRY in your prompt. "they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues" - really not an issue if you're actually testing your code! I wrote about that one here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/2/hallucinations-in-code/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/2/hallucinations-in-code/ - and if you're using one of the systems that runs your code for you (as promoted in tptacek's post) it will spot and fix these without you even needing to intervene. "they cannot properly pick the context and the files to read in a mid-size app" - try Claude Code. It has a whole mechanism dedicated to doing just that, I reverse-engineered it this morning: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/2/claude-trace/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/2/claude-trace/ "they suggest to download some random packages, sometimes low quality ones, or unmaintained ones" - yes, they absolutely do that. You need to maintain editorial control over what dependencies you add.

karn97 1y ago
[dead]
TheRoque 1y ago
Thanks for the links. You mentioned 2 models in your posts, how should I proceed ? I can't possibly pay 2 subscriptions.. do you have a question for the better one to use ?
- simonw 1y ago
  If you're only going to pay one $20/month subscription I think OpenAI wins at the moment - their search tools are better and their voice chat interface is better too. I personally prefer the Claude models but they don't offer quite as rich a set of extra features. If you want to save money, consider getting API accounts with them and spending money that way. My combined API bill across OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini rarely comes to more than about $10/month.

motza 1y ago

I have definitely noticed these as well. Have you ever tried prompting these issues away? I'm thinking this might be a good list to add to every coding prompt

bradfa 1y ago

They also can’t hold copyright on their creations.

apwell23 1y ago

> - they bait me into inexisting apis, or hallucinate solutions or issues yes. this happens to me almost every time i use it. I feel like a crazy person reading all the AI hype.

agotterer 1y ago

> they can't be aware of the latest changes in the frameworks I use, and so force me to use older features, sometimes less efficient This is where collaboration comes in play. If you solely rely on the LLM to “vibe code” everything, then you’re right, you get whatever it thinks is best at the time of generation. That could be wrong or outdated. My workflow is to first provide clear requirements, generally one objective at a time. Sometimes I use an llm to format the requirements for the llm to generate code from. It then writes some code, and I review it. If I notice something is outdated I give it a link to the docs and tell it to update it using X. A few seconds later it’s made the change. I did this just yesterday when building out an integration with an api. Claude wrote the code using a batch endpoint because the steaming endpoint was just released and I don’t think it was aware of it. My role in this collaboration, is to be aware of what’s possible and how I want it to work (e.g.. being aware of the latest features and updates of the frameworks and libraries). Then it’s just about prompting and directing the llm until it works the way I want. When it’s really not working, then I jump in.