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The author seems to think they've hit upon something revolutionary... They've actually hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally. LLM's
by chaboud 8mo ago
The author seems to think they've hit upon something revolutionary...
They've actually hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally.
LLM's are like unreliable interns with boundless energy. They make silly mistakes, wander into annoying structural traps, and have to be unwound if left to their own devices. It's like the genie that almost pathologically misinterprets your wishes.
So, how do you solve that? Exactly how an experienced lead or software manager does: you have systems write it down before executing, explain things back to you, and ground all of their thinking in the code and documentation, avoiding making assumptions about code after superficial review.
When it was early ChatGPT, this meant function-level thinking and clearly described jobs. When it was Cline it meant cline rules files that forced writing architecture.md files and vibe-code.log histories, demanding grounding in research and code reading.
Maybe nine months ago, another engineer said two things to me, less than a day apart:
- "I don't understand why your clinerules file is so large. You have the LLM jumping through so many hoops and doing so much extra work. It's crazy."
- The next morning: "It's basically like a lottery. I can't get the LLM to generate what I want reliably. I just have to settle for whatever it comes up with and then try again."
These systems have to deal with minimal context, ambiguous guidance, and extreme isolation. Operate with a little empathy for the energetic interns, and they'll uncork levels of output worth fighting for. We're Software Managers now. For some of us, that's working out great.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- blackarrow36 8mo ago[flagged]
- marc_g 8mo agoI’ve also found that a bigger focus on expanding my agents.md as the project rolls on has led to less headaches overall and more consistency (non-surprisingly). It’s the same as asking juniors to reflect on the work they’ve completed and to document important things that can help them in the future. Software Manger is a good way to put this.
- zozbot234 8mo agoAGENTS.md should mostly point to real documentation and design files that humans will also read and keep up to date. It's rare that something about a project is only of interest to AI agents.
- jeffreygoesto 8mo agoOh no, maybe the V-Model was right all the time? And right sizing increments with control stops after them. No wonder these matrix multiplications start to behave like humans, that is what we wanted them to do.
- baxtr 8mo agoSo basically you’re saying LLMs are helping us be better humans?
- shevy-java 8mo agoBetter humans? How and where?
- vishnugupta 8mo agoRevolutionary or not it was very nice of the author to make time and effort to share their workflow. For those starting out using Claude Code it gives a structured way to get things done bypassing the time/energy needed to “hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally”.
- ffsm8 8mo agoIts ai written though, the tells are in pretty much every paragraph.
- ratsimihah 8mo agoI don’t think it’s that big a red flag anymore. Most people use ai to rewrite or clean up content, so I’d think we should actually evaluate content for what it is rather than stop at “nah it’s ai written.”
- elaus 8mo agoI think as humans it's very hard to abstract content from its form. So when the form is always the same boring, generic AI slop, it's really not helping the content.
- rmnclmnt 8mo agoAnd maybe writing an article or a keynote slides is one of the few places we can still exerce some human creativity, especially when the core skills (programming) is almost completely in the hands of LLMs already
- shevy-java 8mo agoWell, real humans may read it though. Personally I much prefer real humans write real articles than all this AI generated spam-slop. On youtube this is especially annoying - they mix in real videos with fake ones. I see this when I watch animal videos - some animal behaviour is taken from older videos, then AI fake is added. My own policy is that I do not watch anything ever again from people who lie to the audience that way so I had to begin to censor away such lying channels. I'd apply the same rationale to blog authors (but I am not 100% certain it is actually AI generated; I just mention this as a safety guard).
- CodeBit26 8mo agoI really like your analogy of LLMs as 'unreliable interns'. The shift from being a 'coder' to a 'software manager' who enforces documentation and grounding is the only way to scale these tools. Without an architecture.md or similar grounding, the context drift eventually makes the AI-generated code a liability rather than an asset. It's about moving the complexity from the syntax to the specification.
- BoredPositron 8mo agoIt's alchemy all over again.
- shevy-java 8mo agoAlchemy involved a lot of do-it-yourself though. With AI it is like someone else does all the work (well, almost all the work).
- BoredPositron 8mo agoIt was mainly a jab at the protoscientific nature of it.
- vntok 8mo agoReproducing experimental results across models and vendors is trivial and cheap nowadays.
- BoredPositron 8mo agoNot if anthropic goes further in obfuscating the output of claude code.
- vntok 8mo agoWhy would you test implementation details? Test what's delivered, not how it's delivered. The thinking portion, synthetized or not, is merely implementation. The resulting artefact, that's what is worth testing.
- hghbbjh 8mo ago> Why would you test implementation details Because this has never been sufficient. From things like various hard to test cases to things like readability and long term maintenance. Reading and understanding the code is more efficient and necessary for any code worth keeping around.
- fy20 8mo agoIt's nice to have it written down in a concise form. I shared it with my team as some engineers have been struggling with AI, and I think this (just trying to one-shot without planning) could be why.
- bambax 8mo agoAgreed. The process described is much more elaborate than what I do but quite similar. I start to discuss in great details what I want to do, sometimes asking the same question to different LLMs. Then a todo list, then manual review of the code, esp. each function signature, checking if the instructions have been followed and if there are no obvious refactoring opportunities (there almost always are). The LLM does most of the coding, yet I wouldn't call it "vibe coding" at all. "Tele coding" would be more appropriate.
- mlaretallack 8mo agoI use AWS Kiro, and its spec driven developement is exactly this, I find it really works well as it makes me slow down and think about what I want it to do. Requirements, design, task list, coding.
- bonoboTP 8mo agoIt feels like retracing the history of software project management. The post is quite waterfall-like. Writing a lot of docs and specs upfront then implementing. Another approach is to just YOLO (on a new branch) make it write up the lessons afterwards, then start a new more informed try and throw away the first. Or any other combo. For me what works well is to ask it to write some code upfront to verify its assumptions against actual reality, not just be telling it to review the sources "in detail". It gains much more from real output from the code and clears up wrong assumptions. Do some smaller jobs, write up md files, then plan the big thing, then execute.
- 0x696C6961 8mo agoThis is exactly what I do. I assume most people avoid this approach due to cost.
- le-mark 8mo agoPlease explain what do you mean by “cost”?
- 0x696C6961 8mo agoYou burn a lot of money on tokens for a solution that you throw away.
- nurettin 8mo agoIt makes an endless stream of assumptions. Some of them brilliant and even instructive to a degree, but most of them are unfounded and inappropriate in my experience.
- jerryharri 8mo ago'The post is quite waterfall-like. Writing a lot of docs and specs upfront then implementing' - It's only waterfall if the specs cover the entire system or app. If it's broken up into sub-systems or vertical slices, then it's much more Agile or Lean.
- deleted 8mo ago
- user3939382 8mo agoIf you have a big rules file you’re in the right direction but still not there. Just as with humans, the key is that your architecture should make it very difficult to break the rules by accident and still be able to compile/run with correct exit status. My architecture is so beautifully strong that even LLMs and human juniors can’t box their way out of it.
- kaycey2022 8mo agoI've been doing the exact same thing for 2 months now. I wish I had gotten off my ass and written a blog post about it. I can't blame the author for gathering all the well deserved clout they are getting for it now.
- LeafItAlone 8mo agoDon’t worry. This advice has been going around for much more than 2 months, including links posted here as well as official advice from the major companies (OpenAI and Anthropic) themselves. The tools literally have had plan mode as a first class feature. So you probably wouldn’t have any clout anyways, like all of the other blog posts.
- noisy_boy 8mo agoI went through the blog. I started using Claude Code about 2 weeks ago and my approach is practically the same. It just felt logical. I think there are a bunch of us who have landed on this approach and most are just quietly seeing the benefits.
- qudat 8mo ago> LLM's are like unreliable interns with boundless energy This isn’t directed specifically at you but the general community of SWEs: we need to stop anthropomorphizing a tool. Code agents are not human capable and scaling pattern matching will never hit that goal. That’s all hype and this is coming from someone who runs the range of daily CC usage. I’m using CC to its fullest capability while also being a good shepherd for my prod codebases. Pretending code agents are human capable is fueling this koolaide drinking hype craze.
- MrDarcy 8mo agoIt’s pretty clear they effectively take on the roles of various software related personas. Designer, coder, architect, auditor, etc… Pretending otherwise is counter-productive. This ship has already sailed, it is fairly clear the best way to make use of them is to pass input messages to them as if they are an agent of a person in the role.
- kobe_bryant 8mo agoif only there was another simpler way to use your knowledge to write code...
- locknitpicker 8mo ago> The author seems to think they've hit upon something revolutionary... > They've actually hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally. I agree, it looks like the author is talking about spec-driven development with extra time-consuming steps. Copilot's plan mode also supports iterations out of the box, and draft a plan only after manually reviewing and editing it. I don't know what the blogger was proposing that ventured outside of plan mode's happy path.
- xnx 8mo ago> LLM's are like unreliable interns with boundless energy. This was a popular analogy years ago, but is out of date in 2026. Specs and a plan are still good basis, they are of equal or more importance than the ephemeral code implementation.