3 ms·

What's the latest novel insight you have encountered?

brookst 8mo ago
Not the person you asked, and “novel” is a minefield. What’s the last novel anything, in the sense you can’t trace a precursor or reference? But.. I recently had a LLM suggest an approach to negative mold-making that was novel to me. Long story, but basically isolating the gross geometry and using NURBS booleans for that, plus mesh addition/subtraction for details. I’m sure there’s prior art out there, but that’s true for pretty much everything.
- measurablefunc 8mo ago
  I don't know, that's why I asked b/c I always see a lot of empty platitudes when it comes to LLM praise so I'm curious to see if people can actually back up their claims. I haven't done any 3D modeling so I'll take your word for it but I can tell you that I am working on a very simple interpreter & bytecode compiler for a subset of Erlang & I have yet to see anything novel or even useful from any of the coding assistants. One might naively think that there is enough literature on interpreters & compilers for coding agents to pretty much accomplish the task in one go but that's not what happens in practice.
  - pushedx 8mo ago
    Which agents are you using, and are you using them in an agent mode (Codex, Claude Code etc.)? The difference in quality of output between Claude Sonnet and Claude Opus is around an order of magnitude. The results that you can get from agent mode vs using a chat bot are around two orders of magnitude.
    - measurablefunc 8mo ago
      The workflow is not the issue. You are welcome to try the same challenge yourself if you want. Extra test cases (https://drive.proton.me/urls/6Z6557R2WG#n83c6DP6mDfc https://drive.proton.me/urls/6Z6557R2WG#n83c6DP6mDfc) & specification (https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/5581b499-a471-4d58-8e05-147ab7c3ef4e https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/5581b499-a471-4d58-8e05-1...). I know enough about compilers, bytecode VMs, parsers, & interpreters to know that this is well within the capabilities of any reasonably good software engineer but the implementation from Gemini 3.1 Pro (high & low) & Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) have been less than impressive.
      - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
        Possibly a dumb question: but are you running this in claude code, or an ide, or basically what are you using to allow for iteration?
        measurablefunc 8mo ago
        I'm using Google's antigravity IDE. I initially had it configured to run allowed commands (cargo add|build|check|run, testing shell scripts, performance profiling shell scripts, etc.) so that it would iterate & fix bugs w/ as little intervention from me as possible but all it did was burn through the daily allotted tokens so I switched to more "manual" guidance & made a lot more progress w/o burning through the daily limits. What I've learned from this experiment is that the hype does not actually live up to the reality. Maybe the next iteration will manage the task better than the current one but it's obvious that basic compiler & bytecode virtual machine design in a language like Rust is still beyond the capabilities of the current coding agents & whoever thinks I'm wrong is welcome to implement the linked specification to see how far they can get by just "vibing".
        Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
        That's roughly where I'm at too. I have seen people have some more success after having practices though. Possibly the actual workflows needed for full auto are still kind of tacit. Smaller green-field projecs do work for me already though.
        measurablefunc 8mo ago
        In my experience a few hundred lines w/ a few crates w/ well-defined scopes & a detailed specification is within current capabilities, e.g. compressing wav files w/ wavelets & arithmetic coding. But it's obvious that a correct parser, compiler, & bytecode VM is still beyond current agents even if the specification is detailed enough to cover basically everything.
      - pushedx 8mo ago
    - kmaitreys 8mo ago
      Can you clarify a bit more about the this two orders of magnitude? In what context? Sure, they have "agency" and can do more than outputting text, but I would like see a proper example of this claim.
  - brookst 8mo ago
    It’s taken me a while to get good at using them. My advice: ask for more than what you think it can do. #1 mistake is failing to give enough context about goals, constraints, priorities. Don’t ask “complete this one small task”, ask “hey I’m working on this big project, docs are here, source is there, I’m not sure how to do that, come up with a plan”
    - measurablefunc 8mo ago
      The specification is linked in another comment in this thread & you can decide whether it is ambitious enough or not but what I can tell you is that none of the existing coding agents can complete the task even w/ all the details. If you do try it you will eventually get something that will mostly work on simple tests but fail miserably on slightly more complicated test cases.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - joquarky 8mo ago
    Most humans can't force themselves to come up with something novel immediately upon demand.
    - measurablefunc 8mo ago
      Completely unrelated to the topic or any of the points I was making so did you get confused & respond to the wrong thread?
- kennyloginz 8mo ago
  There is prior art, so it’s not novel.
  - brookst 8mo ago
    Great. Can you point to anything at all that is truly novel, no prior art?
    - rsync 8mo ago
      Sliding down handrails on a skateboard.

Not the person you asked, and “novel” is a minefield. What’s the last novel anything, in the sense you can’t trace a precursor or reference? But.. I recently had a LLM suggest an approach to negative mold-making that was novel to me. Long story, but basically isolating the gross geometry and using NURBS booleans for that, plus mesh addition/subtraction for details. I’m sure there’s prior art out there, but that’s true for pretty much everything.

measurablefunc 8mo ago
I don't know, that's why I asked b/c I always see a lot of empty platitudes when it comes to LLM praise so I'm curious to see if people can actually back up their claims. I haven't done any 3D modeling so I'll take your word for it but I can tell you that I am working on a very simple interpreter & bytecode compiler for a subset of Erlang & I have yet to see anything novel or even useful from any of the coding assistants. One might naively think that there is enough literature on interpreters & compilers for coding agents to pretty much accomplish the task in one go but that's not what happens in practice.
- pushedx 8mo ago
  Which agents are you using, and are you using them in an agent mode (Codex, Claude Code etc.)? The difference in quality of output between Claude Sonnet and Claude Opus is around an order of magnitude. The results that you can get from agent mode vs using a chat bot are around two orders of magnitude.
  - measurablefunc 8mo ago
    The workflow is not the issue. You are welcome to try the same challenge yourself if you want. Extra test cases (https://drive.proton.me/urls/6Z6557R2WG#n83c6DP6mDfc https://drive.proton.me/urls/6Z6557R2WG#n83c6DP6mDfc) & specification (https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/5581b499-a471-4d58-8e05-147ab7c3ef4e https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/5581b499-a471-4d58-8e05-1...). I know enough about compilers, bytecode VMs, parsers, & interpreters to know that this is well within the capabilities of any reasonably good software engineer but the implementation from Gemini 3.1 Pro (high & low) & Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) have been less than impressive.
    - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
      Possibly a dumb question: but are you running this in claude code, or an ide, or basically what are you using to allow for iteration?
      - measurablefunc 8mo ago
        I'm using Google's antigravity IDE. I initially had it configured to run allowed commands (cargo add|build|check|run, testing shell scripts, performance profiling shell scripts, etc.) so that it would iterate & fix bugs w/ as little intervention from me as possible but all it did was burn through the daily allotted tokens so I switched to more "manual" guidance & made a lot more progress w/o burning through the daily limits. What I've learned from this experiment is that the hype does not actually live up to the reality. Maybe the next iteration will manage the task better than the current one but it's obvious that basic compiler & bytecode virtual machine design in a language like Rust is still beyond the capabilities of the current coding agents & whoever thinks I'm wrong is welcome to implement the linked specification to see how far they can get by just "vibing".
        Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
        That's roughly where I'm at too. I have seen people have some more success after having practices though. Possibly the actual workflows needed for full auto are still kind of tacit. Smaller green-field projecs do work for me already though.
        measurablefunc 8mo ago
        In my experience a few hundred lines w/ a few crates w/ well-defined scopes & a detailed specification is within current capabilities, e.g. compressing wav files w/ wavelets & arithmetic coding. But it's obvious that a correct parser, compiler, & bytecode VM is still beyond current agents even if the specification is detailed enough to cover basically everything.
    - pushedx 8mo ago
  - kmaitreys 8mo ago
    Can you clarify a bit more about the this two orders of magnitude? In what context? Sure, they have "agency" and can do more than outputting text, but I would like see a proper example of this claim.
- brookst 8mo ago
  It’s taken me a while to get good at using them. My advice: ask for more than what you think it can do. #1 mistake is failing to give enough context about goals, constraints, priorities. Don’t ask “complete this one small task”, ask “hey I’m working on this big project, docs are here, source is there, I’m not sure how to do that, come up with a plan”
  - measurablefunc 8mo ago
    The specification is linked in another comment in this thread & you can decide whether it is ambitious enough or not but what I can tell you is that none of the existing coding agents can complete the task even w/ all the details. If you do try it you will eventually get something that will mostly work on simple tests but fail miserably on slightly more complicated test cases.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- joquarky 8mo ago
  Most humans can't force themselves to come up with something novel immediately upon demand.
  - measurablefunc 8mo ago
    Completely unrelated to the topic or any of the points I was making so did you get confused & respond to the wrong thread?
kennyloginz 8mo ago
There is prior art, so it’s not novel.
- brookst 8mo ago
  Great. Can you point to anything at all that is truly novel, no prior art?
  - rsync 8mo ago
    Sliding down handrails on a skateboard.