6 ms·

> I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, That's the point champ. They seem great to people when they apply them to some domai

> I’ve done things with Claude I never thought possible for myself to do, That's the point champ. They seem great to people when they apply them to some domain they are not competent it, that's because they cannot evaluate the issues. So you've never programmed but can now scaffold a React application and basic backend in a couple of hours? Good for you, but for the love of god have someone more experienced check it before you push into production. Once you apply them to any area where you have at least moderate competence, you will see all sorts of issues that you just cannot unsee. Security and performance is often an issue, not to mention the quality of code....

aspenmartin 10mo ago
Seems fine, works, is fine, is better than if you had me go off and write it on my own. You realize you can check the results? You can use Claude to help you understand the changes as you read through them? I mean I just don’t get this weird “it makes mistakes and it’s horrible if you understand the domain that it is generating over” I mean yes definitely sometimes and definitely not other times. What happens if I DONT have someone more experienced to consult with or that will ignore me because they are busy or be wrong because they are also imperfect and not focused. It’s really hard to be convinced that this point of view is not just some knee jerk reaction justified post hoc
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- hansmayer 10mo ago
  Yes you can ask them "to check it for you". The only little problem is as you said yourself "they make mistakes", therefore : YOU CANNOT TRUST THEM. Just because you tell them to "check it" does not mean they will get it right this time. Again, however it seems "fine" to you, please, please, please / have a more senior person check that crap before you inflict serious damage somewhere.
  - aspenmartin 10mo ago
    Nope, you read their code, ask them to summarize changes to guide your reading, ask it why it made certain decisions you don’t understand and if you don’t like their explanations you change it (with the agent!). Own and be responsible for the code you commit. I am the “most senior”, and at large tech companies that track, higher level IC corresponds to more AI usage, hmm almost like it’s a useful tool.
    - bccdee 10mo ago
      Ok but you understand that the fundamental nature of LLMs amplifies errors, right? A hallucination is, by definition, a series of tokens which is plausible enough to be indistinguishable from fact to the model. If you ask an LLM to explain its own hallucinations to you, it will gladly do so, and do it in a way that makes them seem utterly natural. If you ask an LLM to explain its motivations for having done something, it will extemporize whichever motivation feels the most plausible in the moment you're asking it. LLMs can be handy, but they're not trustworthy. "Own and be responsible for the code you commit" is an impossible ideal to uphold if you never actually sit down and internalize the code in your code base. No "summaries," no "explanations."
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - dent9 10mo ago
        So your argument is that if people don't use the tool correctly they might get incorrect results? How is that relevant? If you Google search for the wrong query you'll similarly get incorrect results
cmrdporcupine 10mo ago
This is remarkably dismissive and comes across as arrogant. In reality they assist many people with expert skills in a domain in getting things done in areas they are competent in, without getting bogged down in tedium. They need a heavy hand to police to make sure they do the right thing. Garbage in, garbage out. The smarter the hand of the person driving them, the better the output. You see a problem, you correct it. Or make them correct it. The stronger the foundation they're starting from, the better the production. It's basically the opposite of what you're asserting here.
oooyay 10mo ago
> That's the point champ. Friendly reminder that this style of discourse is not very welcome on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
threethirtytwo 10mo ago
What you wrote here was relevant about 9 months ago. It’s now outdated. The pace and velocity of improvement of Ai can only be described as violent. It is so fast that there are many people like you who don’t get it.
- hansmayer 10mo ago
  Yeah, sure buddy :)
  - baq 10mo ago
    Disrespect the trend line and get rolled over by the steamroller. Labs are cooking and what is available commercially is lobotomized for safety and alignment. If your baseline of current max capability is sonnet 4.5 released just this summer you’re going to be very surprised in the next few months.
    - leptons 10mo ago
      meh. I'll believe it when I see it. We've been promised so many things in this space, over and over, that never seem to materialize.
    - llmslave2 10mo ago
      I don't understand this idea that non-believers will be "steamrolled" by those who are currently adopting AI into their workflows. If their claims are validated and the new AI workflows end up achieving that claimed 10x productivity speedup, or even a 2x speedup, nobody is cursed to be steamrolled - they'll simply adopt those same workflows same as everyone else. In the meantime they aren't wasting their time trying to figure out the best way to coax and beg the LLM's into better performance.
      - baq 10mo ago
        That's actually what I'm arguing for; use tools where they are applicable. I'm against blind contrarianism and the 'nothing ever happens' attitude since that IME is being proven more wrong each week.
wiseowise 10mo ago
> So you've never programmed but can now scaffold a React application and basic backend in a couple of hours? Ahaha, weren’t you the guy who wrote an opus about planes? Is this your baseline for “stuff where LLMs break and real engineering comes into the room”? There’s a harsh wake up call for you around the corner.
- hansmayer 10mo ago
  What wake up call mate? I've been on board as early adopter with GH Copilot closed beta since 2021, it was around time when you did not even hear about the LLMs. I am just being realistic about the limits of the technology. In the 90s, we did not need to convince people about the Internet. It just worked. Also - what opus? Have the LLMs affected your attention span so much, that you consider what typically an primary school first-grader would read during their first school class, an "opus" no less? No wonder you are so easily impressed.
  - matthewmacleod 10mo ago
    I expect it’s your “I’m an expert and everyone else is merely an idiot child” attitude that’s probably making it hard to take you seriously. And don’t get me wrong - I totally understand this personality. There are a similar few I’ve worked with recently who are broadly quite skeptical of what seems to be an obvious fact to me - their roles will need to change and their skillsets will have to develop to take advantage of this new technology.
    - hansmayer 10mo ago
      I am a bit tired of explaining, but I run my own company, so its not like I have to fear my "roles and responsibilities" changing - I am designing them myself. I also am not a general skeptic of the "YAGNI" type - my company and myself have been early adopters on many trends. Those that made sense of course. We also tried to be early adopters of LLMs, all the way since 2021. And I am sorry if that sounds arrogant to you, but anyone still working on them and with them to me looks like the folks who were trying to build computers and TVs with the vaccuum tubes. With the difference that vaccuum tubes computers were actually useful at the time.

aspenmartin 10mo ago

Seems fine, works, is fine, is better than if you had me go off and write it on my own. You realize you can check the results? You can use Claude to help you understand the changes as you read through them? I mean I just don’t get this weird “it makes mistakes and it’s horrible if you understand the domain that it is generating over” I mean yes definitely sometimes and definitely not other times. What happens if I DONT have someone more experienced to consult with or that will ignore me because they are busy or be wrong because they are also imperfect and not focused. It’s really hard to be convinced that this point of view is not just some knee jerk reaction justified post hoc

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
hansmayer 10mo ago
Yes you can ask them "to check it for you". The only little problem is as you said yourself "they make mistakes", therefore : YOU CANNOT TRUST THEM. Just because you tell them to "check it" does not mean they will get it right this time. Again, however it seems "fine" to you, please, please, please / have a more senior person check that crap before you inflict serious damage somewhere.
- aspenmartin 10mo ago
  Nope, you read their code, ask them to summarize changes to guide your reading, ask it why it made certain decisions you don’t understand and if you don’t like their explanations you change it (with the agent!). Own and be responsible for the code you commit. I am the “most senior”, and at large tech companies that track, higher level IC corresponds to more AI usage, hmm almost like it’s a useful tool.
  - bccdee 10mo ago
    Ok but you understand that the fundamental nature of LLMs amplifies errors, right? A hallucination is, by definition, a series of tokens which is plausible enough to be indistinguishable from fact to the model. If you ask an LLM to explain its own hallucinations to you, it will gladly do so, and do it in a way that makes them seem utterly natural. If you ask an LLM to explain its motivations for having done something, it will extemporize whichever motivation feels the most plausible in the moment you're asking it. LLMs can be handy, but they're not trustworthy. "Own and be responsible for the code you commit" is an impossible ideal to uphold if you never actually sit down and internalize the code in your code base. No "summaries," no "explanations."
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - dent9 10mo ago
      So your argument is that if people don't use the tool correctly they might get incorrect results? How is that relevant? If you Google search for the wrong query you'll similarly get incorrect results

cmrdporcupine 10mo ago

This is remarkably dismissive and comes across as arrogant. In reality they assist many people with expert skills in a domain in getting things done in areas they are competent in, without getting bogged down in tedium. They need a heavy hand to police to make sure they do the right thing. Garbage in, garbage out. The smarter the hand of the person driving them, the better the output. You see a problem, you correct it. Or make them correct it. The stronger the foundation they're starting from, the better the production. It's basically the opposite of what you're asserting here.

oooyay 10mo ago

> That's the point champ. Friendly reminder that this style of discourse is not very welcome on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

threethirtytwo 10mo ago

What you wrote here was relevant about 9 months ago. It’s now outdated. The pace and velocity of improvement of Ai can only be described as violent. It is so fast that there are many people like you who don’t get it.

hansmayer 10mo ago
Yeah, sure buddy :)
- baq 10mo ago
  Disrespect the trend line and get rolled over by the steamroller. Labs are cooking and what is available commercially is lobotomized for safety and alignment. If your baseline of current max capability is sonnet 4.5 released just this summer you’re going to be very surprised in the next few months.
  - leptons 10mo ago
    meh. I'll believe it when I see it. We've been promised so many things in this space, over and over, that never seem to materialize.
  - llmslave2 10mo ago
    I don't understand this idea that non-believers will be "steamrolled" by those who are currently adopting AI into their workflows. If their claims are validated and the new AI workflows end up achieving that claimed 10x productivity speedup, or even a 2x speedup, nobody is cursed to be steamrolled - they'll simply adopt those same workflows same as everyone else. In the meantime they aren't wasting their time trying to figure out the best way to coax and beg the LLM's into better performance.
    - baq 10mo ago
      That's actually what I'm arguing for; use tools where they are applicable. I'm against blind contrarianism and the 'nothing ever happens' attitude since that IME is being proven more wrong each week.

wiseowise 10mo ago

> So you've never programmed but can now scaffold a React application and basic backend in a couple of hours? Ahaha, weren’t you the guy who wrote an opus about planes? Is this your baseline for “stuff where LLMs break and real engineering comes into the room”? There’s a harsh wake up call for you around the corner.

hansmayer 10mo ago
What wake up call mate? I've been on board as early adopter with GH Copilot closed beta since 2021, it was around time when you did not even hear about the LLMs. I am just being realistic about the limits of the technology. In the 90s, we did not need to convince people about the Internet. It just worked. Also - what opus? Have the LLMs affected your attention span so much, that you consider what typically an primary school first-grader would read during their first school class, an "opus" no less? No wonder you are so easily impressed.
- matthewmacleod 10mo ago
  I expect it’s your “I’m an expert and everyone else is merely an idiot child” attitude that’s probably making it hard to take you seriously. And don’t get me wrong - I totally understand this personality. There are a similar few I’ve worked with recently who are broadly quite skeptical of what seems to be an obvious fact to me - their roles will need to change and their skillsets will have to develop to take advantage of this new technology.
  - hansmayer 10mo ago
    I am a bit tired of explaining, but I run my own company, so its not like I have to fear my "roles and responsibilities" changing - I am designing them myself. I also am not a general skeptic of the "YAGNI" type - my company and myself have been early adopters on many trends. Those that made sense of course. We also tried to be early adopters of LLMs, all the way since 2021. And I am sorry if that sounds arrogant to you, but anyone still working on them and with them to me looks like the folks who were trying to build computers and TVs with the vaccuum tubes. With the difference that vaccuum tubes computers were actually useful at the time.