6 ms·

Meanwhile, I asked this morning Claude 4 to write a simple EXIF normalizer. After two rounds of prompting it to double-check its code, I still had to point out

Meanwhile, I asked this morning Claude 4 to write a simple EXIF normalizer. After two rounds of prompting it to double-check its code, I still had to point out that it makes no sense to load the entire image for re-orientating if the EXIF orientation is fine in the first place. Vibe vs reality, and anyone actually working in the space daily can attest how brittle these systems are. Maybe this changes in SWE with more automated tests in verifiable simulators, but the real world is far to complex to simulate in its vastness.

diggan 1y ago
> Meanwhile What do you mean "meanwhile", that's exactly (among other things) the kind of stuff he's talking about? The various frictions and how you need to approach it > anyone actually working in the space Is this trying to say that Karpathy doesn't "actually work" with LLMs or in the ML space? I feel like your whole comment is just reacting to the title of the YouTube video, rather than actually thinking and reflecting on the content itself.
- demaga 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure "actually work" part refers to SWE space rather than LLM/ML space
coreyh14444 1y ago
https://theeducationist.info/everything-amazing-nobody-happy/ https://theeducationist.info/everything-amazing-nobody-happy...
- belter 1y ago
  AI Snake Oil: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249131/ai-snake-oil https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249131/ai...
ramon156 1y ago
The real question is how long it'll take until they're not brittle
- yahoozoo 1y ago
  “Treat it like a junior developer” … 5 years later … “Treat it like a junior developer”
  - agile-gift0262 1y ago
    while True: print("This model that just came out changes everything. It's flawless. It doesn't have any of the issues the model from 6 months ago had. We are 1 year away from AGI and becoming jobless") sleep(timedelta(days=180).total_seconds)
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    Usable LLMs are 3 years old at this point. ChatGPT, not Github Copilot, is the marker.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      Usable for fun yes.
- kubb 1y ago
  Or will they ever be reliable. Your question is already making an assumption.
  - diggan 1y ago
    They're reliable already if you change the way you approach them. These probabilistic token generators probably never will be "reliable" if you expect them to 100% always output exactly what you had in mind, without iterating in user-space (the prompts).
    - kubb 1y ago
ApeWithCompiler 1y ago
A manager in our company introduced Gemini as a chat bot coupled to our documentation. > It failed to write out our company name.The rest was flawed with hallucinations also, hardly worth to mention. I wish this is a rage bait towards others, but what should me feelings be? After all this is the tool thats sold to me, I am expected to work with.
- gorbachev 1y ago
  We had exactly the opposite experience. CoPilot was able to answer questions accurately and reformatted the existing documentation to fit the context of users' questions, which made the information much easier to understand. Code examples, which we offer as sort of reference implementations, were also adopted to fit the specific questions without much issues. Granted these aren't whole applications, but 10 - 25 line examples of doing API setup / calls. We didn't, of course, just send users' questions directly to CoPilot. Instead there's a bit of prompt magic behind the scenes that tweaks the context so that CoPilot can produce better quality results.
sensanaty 1y ago
There's also those instances where Microsoft unleashed Copilot on the .NET repo, and it resulted in the most hilariously terrible PRs that required the maintainers to basically tell Copilot every single step it should take to fix the issue. They were basically writing the PRs themselves at that point, except doing it through an intermediary that was much dumber, slower and less practical than them. And don't get me started on my own experiences with these things, and no, I'm not a luddite, I've tried my damndest and have followed all the cutting-edge advice you see posted on HN and elsewhere. Time and time again, the reality of these tools falls flat on their face while people like Andrej hype things up as if we're 5 minutes away from having Claude become Skynet or whatever, or as he puts it, before we enter the world of "Software 3.0" (coincidentally totally unrelated to Web 3.0 and the grift we had to endure there, I'm sure). To intercept the common arguments, - no I'm not saying LLMs are useless or have no usecases - yes there's a possibility if you extrapolate by current trends (https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/) that they indeed will be Skynet - yes I've tried the latest and greatest model released 7 minutes ago to the best of my ability - yes I've tried giving it prompts so detailed a literal infant could follow along and accomplish the task - yes I've fiddled with providing it more/less context - yes I've tried keeping it to a single chat rather than multiple chats, as well as vice versa - yes I've tried Claude Code, Gemini Pro 2.5 With Deep Research, Roocode, Cursor, Junie, etc. - yes I've tried having 50 different "agents" running and only choosing the best output form the lot. I'm sure there's a new gotcha being written up as we speak, probably something along the lines of "Well for me it doubled my productivity!" and that's great, I'm genuinely happy for you if that's the case, but for me and my team who have been trying diligently to use these tools for anything that wasn't a microscopic toy project, it has fallen apart time and time again. The idea of an application UI or god forbid an entire fucking Operating System being run via these bullshit generators is just laughable to me, it's like I'm living on a different planet.
- diggan 1y ago
  You're not the first, nor the last person, to have a seemingly vastly different experience than me and others. So I'm curious, what am I doing differently from what you did/do when you try them out? This is maybe a bit out there, but would you be up for sending me like a screen recording of exactly what you're doing? Or maybe even a video call sharing your screen? I'm not working in the space, have no products or services to sell, only curious is why this gap seemingly exists between you and me, and my only motive would be to understand if I'm the one who is missing something, or there are more effective ways to help people understand how they can use LLMs and what they can use them for. My email is on my profile if you're up for it. Invitation open for others in the same boat as parent too.
Seanambers 1y ago
Seems to me that this is just another level of throwing compute at the problem. Same way programs was way more efficient before and now they are "bloated" with packages, abstractions, slow implementations of algos and scaffolding. The concept of what is good software development might be changing as well. LLMs might not write the best code, but they sure can write a lot of it.
hombre_fatal 1y ago
On the other hand, posts like this are like watching someone writing ask jeeves search queries into google 20 years ago and then gesturing how google sucks while everyone else in the room has figured out how to be productive with it and cringes at his "boomer" queries. If you're still struggling to make LLMs useful for you by now, you should probably ask someone. Don't let other noobs on HN +1'ing you hold you back.
- mirrorlake 1y ago
  Perhaps consider making some tutorials, then, and share your wealth of knowledge rather than calling people stupid.
  - hombre_fatal 1y ago
    I wouldn't want to rob them of the satisfaction of self-reliance.

diggan 1y ago

> Meanwhile What do you mean "meanwhile", that's exactly (among other things) the kind of stuff he's talking about? The various frictions and how you need to approach it > anyone actually working in the space Is this trying to say that Karpathy doesn't "actually work" with LLMs or in the ML space? I feel like your whole comment is just reacting to the title of the YouTube video, rather than actually thinking and reflecting on the content itself.

demaga 1y ago
I'm pretty sure "actually work" part refers to SWE space rather than LLM/ML space

coreyh14444 1y ago

https://theeducationist.info/everything-amazing-nobody-happy/ https://theeducationist.info/everything-amazing-nobody-happy...

belter 1y ago
AI Snake Oil: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249131/ai-snake-oil https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249131/ai...

ramon156 1y ago

The real question is how long it'll take until they're not brittle

yahoozoo 1y ago
“Treat it like a junior developer” … 5 years later … “Treat it like a junior developer”
- agile-gift0262 1y ago
  while True: print("This model that just came out changes everything. It's flawless. It doesn't have any of the issues the model from 6 months ago had. We are 1 year away from AGI and becoming jobless") sleep(timedelta(days=180).total_seconds)
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Usable LLMs are 3 years old at this point. ChatGPT, not Github Copilot, is the marker.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Usable for fun yes.
kubb 1y ago
Or will they ever be reliable. Your question is already making an assumption.
- diggan 1y ago
  They're reliable already if you change the way you approach them. These probabilistic token generators probably never will be "reliable" if you expect them to 100% always output exactly what you had in mind, without iterating in user-space (the prompts).
  - kubb 1y ago

ApeWithCompiler 1y ago

A manager in our company introduced Gemini as a chat bot coupled to our documentation. > It failed to write out our company name.The rest was flawed with hallucinations also, hardly worth to mention. I wish this is a rage bait towards others, but what should me feelings be? After all this is the tool thats sold to me, I am expected to work with.

gorbachev 1y ago
We had exactly the opposite experience. CoPilot was able to answer questions accurately and reformatted the existing documentation to fit the context of users' questions, which made the information much easier to understand. Code examples, which we offer as sort of reference implementations, were also adopted to fit the specific questions without much issues. Granted these aren't whole applications, but 10 - 25 line examples of doing API setup / calls. We didn't, of course, just send users' questions directly to CoPilot. Instead there's a bit of prompt magic behind the scenes that tweaks the context so that CoPilot can produce better quality results.

sensanaty 1y ago

There's also those instances where Microsoft unleashed Copilot on the .NET repo, and it resulted in the most hilariously terrible PRs that required the maintainers to basically tell Copilot every single step it should take to fix the issue. They were basically writing the PRs themselves at that point, except doing it through an intermediary that was much dumber, slower and less practical than them. And don't get me started on my own experiences with these things, and no, I'm not a luddite, I've tried my damndest and have followed all the cutting-edge advice you see posted on HN and elsewhere. Time and time again, the reality of these tools falls flat on their face while people like Andrej hype things up as if we're 5 minutes away from having Claude become Skynet or whatever, or as he puts it, before we enter the world of "Software 3.0" (coincidentally totally unrelated to Web 3.0 and the grift we had to endure there, I'm sure). To intercept the common arguments, - no I'm not saying LLMs are useless or have no usecases - yes there's a possibility if you extrapolate by current trends (https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/) that they indeed will be Skynet - yes I've tried the latest and greatest model released 7 minutes ago to the best of my ability - yes I've tried giving it prompts so detailed a literal infant could follow along and accomplish the task - yes I've fiddled with providing it more/less context - yes I've tried keeping it to a single chat rather than multiple chats, as well as vice versa - yes I've tried Claude Code, Gemini Pro 2.5 With Deep Research, Roocode, Cursor, Junie, etc. - yes I've tried having 50 different "agents" running and only choosing the best output form the lot. I'm sure there's a new gotcha being written up as we speak, probably something along the lines of "Well for me it doubled my productivity!" and that's great, I'm genuinely happy for you if that's the case, but for me and my team who have been trying diligently to use these tools for anything that wasn't a microscopic toy project, it has fallen apart time and time again. The idea of an application UI or god forbid an entire fucking Operating System being run via these bullshit generators is just laughable to me, it's like I'm living on a different planet.

diggan 1y ago
You're not the first, nor the last person, to have a seemingly vastly different experience than me and others. So I'm curious, what am I doing differently from what you did/do when you try them out? This is maybe a bit out there, but would you be up for sending me like a screen recording of exactly what you're doing? Or maybe even a video call sharing your screen? I'm not working in the space, have no products or services to sell, only curious is why this gap seemingly exists between you and me, and my only motive would be to understand if I'm the one who is missing something, or there are more effective ways to help people understand how they can use LLMs and what they can use them for. My email is on my profile if you're up for it. Invitation open for others in the same boat as parent too.

Seanambers 1y ago

Seems to me that this is just another level of throwing compute at the problem. Same way programs was way more efficient before and now they are "bloated" with packages, abstractions, slow implementations of algos and scaffolding. The concept of what is good software development might be changing as well. LLMs might not write the best code, but they sure can write a lot of it.

hombre_fatal 1y ago

On the other hand, posts like this are like watching someone writing ask jeeves search queries into google 20 years ago and then gesturing how google sucks while everyone else in the room has figured out how to be productive with it and cringes at his "boomer" queries. If you're still struggling to make LLMs useful for you by now, you should probably ask someone. Don't let other noobs on HN +1'ing you hold you back.

mirrorlake 1y ago
Perhaps consider making some tutorials, then, and share your wealth of knowledge rather than calling people stupid.
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  I wouldn't want to rob them of the satisfaction of self-reliance.