3 ms·

If you're right, there will soon be a flood of software teams with no programmers on them - either across all domains, or in some domains where this works well.

by yosefk 1y ago

If you're right, there will soon be a flood of software teams with no programmers on them - either across all domains, or in some domains where this works well. We shall see. Indeed I have no experience with Claude Code, but I use Claude via chat, and it fails all the time on things not remotely as hard as orientation in a large code base. Claude Code is the same thing with the ability to run tools. Of course tools help to ground its iterations in reality, but I don't think it's a panacea absent a consistent ability to model the reality you observe thru your use of tools. Let's see...

adastra22 1y ago
> Indeed I have no experience with Claude Code, but I use Claude via chat... These are not even remotely similar, despite the name. Things are moving very fast, and the sort of chat-based interface that you describe in your article is already obsolete. Claude is the LLM model. Claude Code is a combination of internal tools for the agent to track its goals, current state, priorities, etc., and a looped mechanism for keeping it on track, focused, and debugging its own actions. With the proper subagents it can keep its context from being poisoned from false starts, and its built-in todo system keeps it on task. Really, try it out and see for yourself. It doesn't work magic out of the box, and absolutely needs some hand-holding to get it to work well, but that's only because it is so new. The next generation of tooling will have these subagent definitions auto selected and included in context so you can hit the ground running. We are already starting to see a flood of software coming out with very few active coders on the team, as you can see on the HN front page. I say "very few active coders" not "no programmers" because using Claude Code effectively still requires domain expertise as we work out the bugs in agent orchestration. But once that is done, there aren't any obvious remaining stumbling blocks to a PM running a no-coder, all-AI product team.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Claude Code isn't an LLM. It's a hybrid architecture where an LLM provides the interface and some of the reasoning, embedded inside a broader set of more or less deterministic tools. It's obvious LLMs can't do the job without these external tools, so the claim above - that LLMs can't do this job - is on firm ground. But it's also obvious these hybrid systems will become more and more complex and capable over time, and there's a possibility they will be able to replace humans at every level of the stack, from junior to CEO. If that happens, it's inevitable these domain-specific systems will be networked into a kind of interhybrid AGI, where you can ask for specific outputs, and if the domain has been automated you'll be guided to what you want. It's still a hybrid architecture though. LLMs on their own aren't going to make this work. It's also short of AGI, never mind ASI, because AGI requires a system that would create high quality domain-specific systems from scratch given a domain to automate.
  - adastra22 1y ago
    If you want to be pedantic about word definitions, it absolutely is AGI: artificial general intelligence. Whether you draw the system boundary of an LLM to include the tools it calls or not is a rather arbitrary distinction, and not very interesting.
    - nomel 1y ago
      Nearly every definition I’ve seen that involves AGI (there are many) includes the ability to self learn and create “novel ideas”. The LLM behind it isn’t capable of this, and I don’t think the addition of the current set of tools enables this either.
      - adastra22 1y ago
        Artificial general intelligence was a phrase invented to draw distinction from “narrow intelligence” which are algorithms that can only be applied to specific problem domains. E.g. Deep Blue was amazing at playing chess, but couldn’t play Go much less prioritize a grocery list. Any artificial program that could be applied to arbitrary tasks not pre-trained on is AGI. ChatGPT and especially more recent agentic models are absolutely and unquestionably AGI in the original definition of the term. Goalposts are moving though. Through the efforts of various people in the rationalist-connected space, the word has since morphed to be implicitly synonymous with the notion of superintellgence and self-improvement, hence the vague and conflicting definitions people now ascribe to it. Also, fwiw the training process behind the generation of an LLM is absolutely able to discover new and novel ideas, in the same sense that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion were new and novel if all you had were Tycho Brache’s astronomical observations. Inference can tease out these novel discoveries, if nothing else. But I suspect also that your definition of creative and novel would also exclude human creativity if it were rigorously applied—our brains after all are merely remixing our own experiences too.
    - Vegenoid 1y ago
      > If you want to be pedantic about word definitions, it absolutely is AGI: artificial general intelligence. This isn't being pedantic, it's deliberately misinterpreting a commonly used term by taking every word literally for effect. Terms, like words, can take on a meaning that is distinct from looking at each constituent part and coming up with your interpretation of a literal definition based on those parts.
boxed 1y ago
I was very skeptical of Claude Code but was finally convinced to try it and it does feel very different to use. I made three hobby projects in a weekend that I had pushed up for years due to "it's too much hassle to get started" inertia. Two of the projects it did very well with, the third I had to fight with it and it still is subtly wrong (swiftUI animations and claude code seemingly is not a good mix!) That being said, I think your analysis is 100% correct. LLMs are fundamentally stupid beyond belief :P
- Terretta 1y ago
  > SwiftUI animations and claude code seemingly is not a good mix Where is the corpus of SwiftUI animations to train Claude what probable soup you probably want regurgitated? Hypothesis: iOS devs don't share their work openly for reasons associated with how the App Store ecosystem (mis)behaves. Relatedly, the models don't know about Swift 6 except from maybe mid-2024 WWDC announcements. It's worth feeding them your own context. If you are 5.10, great. If you want to ship iOS 26 changes, wait till 2026 or again, roll your own context.
  - boxed 1y ago
    In my case the big issue seems to be that if you hide a component in SwiftUI, it's by default animated with a fade. This not shown in the API surface area at all.
Vegenoid 1y ago
I am more skeptical of the rate of AI progress than many here, but Claude Code is a huge step. There were a few "holy shit" moments when I started using it. Since then, after much more experimentation, I see its limits and faults, and use it less now. But I think it's worth giving it a try if you want to be informed about the current state of LLM-assisted programming.

by yosefk 1y ago

adastra22 1y ago

> Indeed I have no experience with Claude Code, but I use Claude via chat... These are not even remotely similar, despite the name. Things are moving very fast, and the sort of chat-based interface that you describe in your article is already obsolete. Claude is the LLM model. Claude Code is a combination of internal tools for the agent to track its goals, current state, priorities, etc., and a looped mechanism for keeping it on track, focused, and debugging its own actions. With the proper subagents it can keep its context from being poisoned from false starts, and its built-in todo system keeps it on task. Really, try it out and see for yourself. It doesn't work magic out of the box, and absolutely needs some hand-holding to get it to work well, but that's only because it is so new. The next generation of tooling will have these subagent definitions auto selected and included in context so you can hit the ground running. We are already starting to see a flood of software coming out with very few active coders on the team, as you can see on the HN front page. I say "very few active coders" not "no programmers" because using Claude Code effectively still requires domain expertise as we work out the bugs in agent orchestration. But once that is done, there aren't any obvious remaining stumbling blocks to a PM running a no-coder, all-AI product team.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Claude Code isn't an LLM. It's a hybrid architecture where an LLM provides the interface and some of the reasoning, embedded inside a broader set of more or less deterministic tools. It's obvious LLMs can't do the job without these external tools, so the claim above - that LLMs can't do this job - is on firm ground. But it's also obvious these hybrid systems will become more and more complex and capable over time, and there's a possibility they will be able to replace humans at every level of the stack, from junior to CEO. If that happens, it's inevitable these domain-specific systems will be networked into a kind of interhybrid AGI, where you can ask for specific outputs, and if the domain has been automated you'll be guided to what you want. It's still a hybrid architecture though. LLMs on their own aren't going to make this work. It's also short of AGI, never mind ASI, because AGI requires a system that would create high quality domain-specific systems from scratch given a domain to automate.
- adastra22 1y ago
  If you want to be pedantic about word definitions, it absolutely is AGI: artificial general intelligence. Whether you draw the system boundary of an LLM to include the tools it calls or not is a rather arbitrary distinction, and not very interesting.
  - nomel 1y ago
    Nearly every definition I’ve seen that involves AGI (there are many) includes the ability to self learn and create “novel ideas”. The LLM behind it isn’t capable of this, and I don’t think the addition of the current set of tools enables this either.
    - adastra22 1y ago
      Artificial general intelligence was a phrase invented to draw distinction from “narrow intelligence” which are algorithms that can only be applied to specific problem domains. E.g. Deep Blue was amazing at playing chess, but couldn’t play Go much less prioritize a grocery list. Any artificial program that could be applied to arbitrary tasks not pre-trained on is AGI. ChatGPT and especially more recent agentic models are absolutely and unquestionably AGI in the original definition of the term. Goalposts are moving though. Through the efforts of various people in the rationalist-connected space, the word has since morphed to be implicitly synonymous with the notion of superintellgence and self-improvement, hence the vague and conflicting definitions people now ascribe to it. Also, fwiw the training process behind the generation of an LLM is absolutely able to discover new and novel ideas, in the same sense that Kepler’s laws of planetary motion were new and novel if all you had were Tycho Brache’s astronomical observations. Inference can tease out these novel discoveries, if nothing else. But I suspect also that your definition of creative and novel would also exclude human creativity if it were rigorously applied—our brains after all are merely remixing our own experiences too.
  - Vegenoid 1y ago
    > If you want to be pedantic about word definitions, it absolutely is AGI: artificial general intelligence. This isn't being pedantic, it's deliberately misinterpreting a commonly used term by taking every word literally for effect. Terms, like words, can take on a meaning that is distinct from looking at each constituent part and coming up with your interpretation of a literal definition based on those parts.

boxed 1y ago

I was very skeptical of Claude Code but was finally convinced to try it and it does feel very different to use. I made three hobby projects in a weekend that I had pushed up for years due to "it's too much hassle to get started" inertia. Two of the projects it did very well with, the third I had to fight with it and it still is subtly wrong (swiftUI animations and claude code seemingly is not a good mix!) That being said, I think your analysis is 100% correct. LLMs are fundamentally stupid beyond belief :P

Terretta 1y ago
> SwiftUI animations and claude code seemingly is not a good mix Where is the corpus of SwiftUI animations to train Claude what probable soup you probably want regurgitated? Hypothesis: iOS devs don't share their work openly for reasons associated with how the App Store ecosystem (mis)behaves. Relatedly, the models don't know about Swift 6 except from maybe mid-2024 WWDC announcements. It's worth feeding them your own context. If you are 5.10, great. If you want to ship iOS 26 changes, wait till 2026 or again, roll your own context.
- boxed 1y ago
  In my case the big issue seems to be that if you hide a component in SwiftUI, it's by default animated with a fade. This not shown in the API surface area at all.

Vegenoid 1y ago

I am more skeptical of the rate of AI progress than many here, but Claude Code is a huge step. There were a few "holy shit" moments when I started using it. Since then, after much more experimentation, I see its limits and faults, and use it less now. But I think it's worth giving it a try if you want to be informed about the current state of LLM-assisted programming.