6 ms·

Suppose almost all work in the future is done via LLMs, just like almost all transportation is done today via cars instead of horses. Do you think your worldvi

Suppose almost all work in the future is done via LLMs, just like almost all transportation is done today via cars instead of horses. Do you think your worldview is still a reasonable one under those conditions?

logicprog 8mo ago
I say let people hold this stance. We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project and add whatever the features or refinements we wanted, and use that fork for ourselves, but also make it available for others in case other people want to use it for the extra features and polish as well. With AI, it's very easy to form a good architectural understanding of a large code base and figure out how to modify it in a sane, solid way that matches the existing patterns. And it's also very easy to resolve conflicts when you rebase your changes on top of whatever is new from upstream. So, maintaining a fork is really not that serious of and endeavor anymore. I'm actually maintaining a fork of Zed with several additional features (Claude Code style skills and slash commands, as well as a global agents.md file, instead of the annoying rules library system, which I removed, as well as the ability to choose models for sub-agents instead of always inheriting the model from the parent thread; and yes, master branch Zed has subagents! and another tool, jjdag) That seems like a win-win in a sense: let the agentic coders do their thing, and the artisanal coders do their thing, and we'll see who wins in the long run.
- short_sells_poo 8mo ago
  > We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project And this is why eventually you are likely to run the artisanal coders who tend to do most of the true innovation out of the room. Because by and large, agentic coders don't contribute, they make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them and the code quality is questionable at best. Eventually, I'm sure LLM code quality will catch up, but the ease with which an existing codebase can be forked and slightly tuned, instead of contributing to the original, is a double edged sword.
  - sanderjd 8mo ago
    Maybe! Or maybe there is really a competitive advantage to "artisanal" coding. Personally, I would not currently expect a fork of RedoxOS that is AI-implemented to become more popular than RedoxOS itself.
    - logicprog 8mo ago
      Indeed, maybe there is. I'm interested to see how it plays out.
  - geoffmunn 8mo ago
    "make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them" Isn't that literally how open-source works, and why there's so many Linux distros? Code quality is a subjective term as well, I feel like everyone dunking on AI coding is a defensive reaction - over time this will become an entirely acceptable concept.
    - short_sells_poo 8mo ago
      For a human to be able to do any customization, they have to dive into the code and work with it, understand it, gain intuition for it. Engage with the maintainers and community. In the process, there's a good chance that they'll be encouraged to contribute improvements upstream even if they have their own fork. Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their LLMs do some modifications that are completely opaque to the vibe coder. Perhaps the long term steady state will be a goldilocks renaissance of open source where lots of new ideas and contributors spring up, made capable with AI assistance. But so far what I've seen is the opposite. These people just feed existing work into their LLMs, produce derivative works and never bother to engage with the original authors or community.
      - logicprog 8mo ago
        > Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their LLMs do some modifications that are completely opaque to the vibe coder. I spend time using my agent to better understand existing codebases and their best practices than I'd ever have the time/energy to do before, giving me a broader and more holistic view on whatever I'm changing, before I make a change.
- officeplant 8mo ago
  Well at least you, agentic coders, already understand they need to fork off. Saves the rest of us from having to tell you.
- skeeter2020 8mo ago
  >> but also make it available for others in case other people want to use it for the extra features and polish as well. this feels like the place where your approach breaks down. I have had very poor results trying to build a foundation that CAN be polished, or where features don't quickly feel like a jenga tower. I'm wondering if the success we've seen is because AI is building on top of, or we're early days in "foundational" work? Is anyone aware of studies comparing longer term structural aspects? is it too early?
  - logicprog 8mo ago
    I've been able to make very clear, modular, well put together architectural foundations for my greenfield projects with AI. We don't have studies, of course, so it is only your anecdote versus mine.
- FridgeSeal 8mo ago
  > We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project and add whatever the features Bold of you to assume that people won’t move (and their code along with it) to spaces where parasitic behaviour like this doesn’t occur, locking you out. In addition to just being a straight-up rude, disrespectful and parasite position to take, you’re effectively poisoning your own well.
  - logicprog 8mo ago
    Since when is maintaining a personal patch set / fork parasitic? And in what way does it harm them, such that they should move to spaces where it doesn't happen, as a result? Also, isn't the entire point of open source precisely to enable people to make and use modifications of code if they want even if they don't want to hand code over? Also, that would be essentially making code closed source — do you think OSS is just going to die completely? Or would people make alternative projects? Additionally, this assumes coders who are fine with AI can't make anything new themselves, when if anything we've seen the opposite (see the phenomenon of reimplementing other projects that's been going around). Additionally, if they accept AI contributions, I try, when I have the time and energy, make sure my PRs are high quality, and provide them. If they don't, then I'll go off and do my own thing, because that's literally what they asked me to do, and I wasn't going to contribute otherwise. I fail to see how that's rude or parasitic or disrespectful in any way except my assumption that the more featureful and polished forks might eventually win out.
    - hunterpayne 8mo ago
      Its only parasitic if you are tricking users into thinking you are the original or providing something better. You could be providing something different (which would be valuable) but if you are not, you are just scamming users for your own benefit.
      - logicprog 8mo ago
        I have no intention of tricking anyone into thinking I'm the original! I do think I offer improvements in some cases, so in cases where the project is something I intend for other people to ever see/use, I do explain why I think it is better, but I also will always put the original prominently to make sure people can find their way back to that if they want to. For example, the only time I've done this so far: https://github.com/alexispurslane/jjdag https://github.com/alexispurslane/jjdag
lkjdsklf 8mo ago
But all work isn't done by LLMs at the moment and we can't be sure that it will be so the question is ridiculous. Maybe one day it will be.. And then people can reevaluate their stance then. Until that time, it's entirely reasonable to hold the position that you just don't This is especially true with how LLM generated code may affect licensing and other things. There's a lot of unknowns there and it's entirely reasonable to not want to risk your projects license over some contributions. I use them all the time at work because, rightly or wrongly, my company has decided that's the direction they want to go. For open source, I'm not going to make that choice for them. If they explicitly allow for LLM generated code, then I'll use it, but if not I'm not going to assume that the project maintainers are willing to deal with the potential issues it creates. For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.
- ndriscoll 8mo ago
  Basically all of my actual programming work has been done by LLMs since January. My team actually demoed a PoC last week to hook up Codex to our Slack channel to become our first level on-call, and in the case of a defect (e.g. a pagerduty alert, or a question that suggests something is broken), go debug, push a fix for review, and suggest any mitigations. Prior to that, I basically pushed for my team to do the same with copy/paste to a prompt so we could iterate on building its debugging skills. People might still code by hand as a hobby, but I'd be surprised if nearly all professional coding isn't being done by LLMs within the next year or two. It's clear that doing it by hand would mostly be because you enjoy the process. I expect people that are more focused on the output will adopt LLMs for hobby work as well.
  - notpachet 8mo ago
    > It's clear that doing it by hand would mostly be because you enjoy the process. This is gaslighting. We're only a few years into coding agents being a thing. Look at the history of human innovation and tell me that I'm unreasonable for suspecting that there is an iceberg worth of unmitigated externalities lurking beneath the surface that haven't yet been brought to light. In time they might. Like PFAS, ozone holes, global warming.
bandrami 8mo ago
That would only be a world where the copyright and other IP uncertainties around the output (and training!) of LLMs were a solved and known question. So that's not the world we currently live in.
- gehdhffh 8mo ago
  The ruling capital class has decided that it is in their best interest for copyright to not be an obstacle, so it will not be. It is delusional to pretend that there is even a legal question here, because America is no longer a country of laws, to the extent that it ever was. I would bet you at odds of 10,000 to 1 that there will never be any significant intellectual property obstacles to the progress of generative AI. They might need to pay some fines here and there, but never anything that actually threatens their businesses in the slightest. There clearly should be, but that is not the world we live in.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
TuxPowered 8mo ago
> just like almost all transportation is done today via cars instead of horses. That sounds very Usanian. In the meantime transportation in around me is done on foot, bicycle, bus, tram, metro, train and cars. There are good use cases for each method including the car. If you really want to use an automotive analogy, then sure, LLMs can be like cars. I've seen cities made for cars instead of humans, and they are a horrible place to live. Signed, a person who totally gets good results from coding with LLMs. Sometimes, maybe even often.
sanderjd 8mo ago
As someone who enjoys working with AI tools, I honestly think the best approach here might be bifurcation. Start new projects using LLM tools, or maybe fork projects where that is acceptable. Don't force the volunteer maintainers of existing projects with existing workflows and cultures to review AI generated code. Create your own projects with workflows and cultures that are supportive of this, from the ground up. I'm not suggesting this will come without downside, but it seems better to me than expecting maintainers to take on a new burden that they really didn't sign up for.
skeeter2020 8mo ago
even if this was true or someday will be (big IF), is it worth looking for valid counter workflows? example: in many parts of the US and Canada the Mennonites are incredibly productive farmers and massive adopters of technology while also keeping very strict limits on where/how and when it is used. If we had the same motivations and discipline in software could we walk a line that both benefited from and controlled AI? I don't know the answer.
- jacquesm 8mo ago
  Good one, I had not made the connection, but yes. Tech is here to serve, at our pleasure, not to be forcibly consumed.
timando 8mo ago
I don't see any cars racing in the Melbourne Cup.

logicprog 8mo ago

I say let people hold this stance. We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project and add whatever the features or refinements we wanted, and use that fork for ourselves, but also make it available for others in case other people want to use it for the extra features and polish as well. With AI, it's very easy to form a good architectural understanding of a large code base and figure out how to modify it in a sane, solid way that matches the existing patterns. And it's also very easy to resolve conflicts when you rebase your changes on top of whatever is new from upstream. So, maintaining a fork is really not that serious of and endeavor anymore. I'm actually maintaining a fork of Zed with several additional features (Claude Code style skills and slash commands, as well as a global agents.md file, instead of the annoying rules library system, which I removed, as well as the ability to choose models for sub-agents instead of always inheriting the model from the parent thread; and yes, master branch Zed has subagents! and another tool, jjdag) That seems like a win-win in a sense: let the agentic coders do their thing, and the artisanal coders do their thing, and we'll see who wins in the long run.

short_sells_poo 8mo ago
> We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project And this is why eventually you are likely to run the artisanal coders who tend to do most of the true innovation out of the room. Because by and large, agentic coders don't contribute, they make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them and the code quality is questionable at best. Eventually, I'm sure LLM code quality will catch up, but the ease with which an existing codebase can be forked and slightly tuned, instead of contributing to the original, is a double edged sword.
- sanderjd 8mo ago
  Maybe! Or maybe there is really a competitive advantage to "artisanal" coding. Personally, I would not currently expect a fork of RedoxOS that is AI-implemented to become more popular than RedoxOS itself.
  - logicprog 8mo ago
    Indeed, maybe there is. I'm interested to see how it plays out.
- geoffmunn 8mo ago
  "make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them" Isn't that literally how open-source works, and why there's so many Linux distros? Code quality is a subjective term as well, I feel like everyone dunking on AI coding is a defensive reaction - over time this will become an entirely acceptable concept.
  - short_sells_poo 8mo ago
    For a human to be able to do any customization, they have to dive into the code and work with it, understand it, gain intuition for it. Engage with the maintainers and community. In the process, there's a good chance that they'll be encouraged to contribute improvements upstream even if they have their own fork. Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their LLMs do some modifications that are completely opaque to the vibe coder. Perhaps the long term steady state will be a goldilocks renaissance of open source where lots of new ideas and contributors spring up, made capable with AI assistance. But so far what I've seen is the opposite. These people just feed existing work into their LLMs, produce derivative works and never bother to engage with the original authors or community.
    - logicprog 8mo ago
      > Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their LLMs do some modifications that are completely opaque to the vibe coder. I spend time using my agent to better understand existing codebases and their best practices than I'd ever have the time/energy to do before, giving me a broader and more holistic view on whatever I'm changing, before I make a change.
officeplant 8mo ago
Well at least you, agentic coders, already understand they need to fork off. Saves the rest of us from having to tell you.
skeeter2020 8mo ago
>> but also make it available for others in case other people want to use it for the extra features and polish as well. this feels like the place where your approach breaks down. I have had very poor results trying to build a foundation that CAN be polished, or where features don't quickly feel like a jenga tower. I'm wondering if the success we've seen is because AI is building on top of, or we're early days in "foundational" work? Is anyone aware of studies comparing longer term structural aspects? is it too early?
- logicprog 8mo ago
  I've been able to make very clear, modular, well put together architectural foundations for my greenfield projects with AI. We don't have studies, of course, so it is only your anecdote versus mine.
FridgeSeal 8mo ago
> We, agentic coders, can easily enough fork their project and add whatever the features Bold of you to assume that people won’t move (and their code along with it) to spaces where parasitic behaviour like this doesn’t occur, locking you out. In addition to just being a straight-up rude, disrespectful and parasite position to take, you’re effectively poisoning your own well.
- logicprog 8mo ago
  Since when is maintaining a personal patch set / fork parasitic? And in what way does it harm them, such that they should move to spaces where it doesn't happen, as a result? Also, isn't the entire point of open source precisely to enable people to make and use modifications of code if they want even if they don't want to hand code over? Also, that would be essentially making code closed source — do you think OSS is just going to die completely? Or would people make alternative projects? Additionally, this assumes coders who are fine with AI can't make anything new themselves, when if anything we've seen the opposite (see the phenomenon of reimplementing other projects that's been going around). Additionally, if they accept AI contributions, I try, when I have the time and energy, make sure my PRs are high quality, and provide them. If they don't, then I'll go off and do my own thing, because that's literally what they asked me to do, and I wasn't going to contribute otherwise. I fail to see how that's rude or parasitic or disrespectful in any way except my assumption that the more featureful and polished forks might eventually win out.
  - hunterpayne 8mo ago
    Its only parasitic if you are tricking users into thinking you are the original or providing something better. You could be providing something different (which would be valuable) but if you are not, you are just scamming users for your own benefit.
    - logicprog 8mo ago
      I have no intention of tricking anyone into thinking I'm the original! I do think I offer improvements in some cases, so in cases where the project is something I intend for other people to ever see/use, I do explain why I think it is better, but I also will always put the original prominently to make sure people can find their way back to that if they want to. For example, the only time I've done this so far: https://github.com/alexispurslane/jjdag https://github.com/alexispurslane/jjdag

lkjdsklf 8mo ago

But all work isn't done by LLMs at the moment and we can't be sure that it will be so the question is ridiculous. Maybe one day it will be.. And then people can reevaluate their stance then. Until that time, it's entirely reasonable to hold the position that you just don't This is especially true with how LLM generated code may affect licensing and other things. There's a lot of unknowns there and it's entirely reasonable to not want to risk your projects license over some contributions. I use them all the time at work because, rightly or wrongly, my company has decided that's the direction they want to go. For open source, I'm not going to make that choice for them. If they explicitly allow for LLM generated code, then I'll use it, but if not I'm not going to assume that the project maintainers are willing to deal with the potential issues it creates. For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.

ndriscoll 8mo ago
Basically all of my actual programming work has been done by LLMs since January. My team actually demoed a PoC last week to hook up Codex to our Slack channel to become our first level on-call, and in the case of a defect (e.g. a pagerduty alert, or a question that suggests something is broken), go debug, push a fix for review, and suggest any mitigations. Prior to that, I basically pushed for my team to do the same with copy/paste to a prompt so we could iterate on building its debugging skills. People might still code by hand as a hobby, but I'd be surprised if nearly all professional coding isn't being done by LLMs within the next year or two. It's clear that doing it by hand would mostly be because you enjoy the process. I expect people that are more focused on the output will adopt LLMs for hobby work as well.
- notpachet 8mo ago
  > It's clear that doing it by hand would mostly be because you enjoy the process. This is gaslighting. We're only a few years into coding agents being a thing. Look at the history of human innovation and tell me that I'm unreasonable for suspecting that there is an iceberg worth of unmitigated externalities lurking beneath the surface that haven't yet been brought to light. In time they might. Like PFAS, ozone holes, global warming.

bandrami 8mo ago

That would only be a world where the copyright and other IP uncertainties around the output (and training!) of LLMs were a solved and known question. So that's not the world we currently live in.

gehdhffh 8mo ago
The ruling capital class has decided that it is in their best interest for copyright to not be an obstacle, so it will not be. It is delusional to pretend that there is even a legal question here, because America is no longer a country of laws, to the extent that it ever was. I would bet you at odds of 10,000 to 1 that there will never be any significant intellectual property obstacles to the progress of generative AI. They might need to pay some fines here and there, but never anything that actually threatens their businesses in the slightest. There clearly should be, but that is not the world we live in.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

TuxPowered 8mo ago

> just like almost all transportation is done today via cars instead of horses. That sounds very Usanian. In the meantime transportation in around me is done on foot, bicycle, bus, tram, metro, train and cars. There are good use cases for each method including the car. If you really want to use an automotive analogy, then sure, LLMs can be like cars. I've seen cities made for cars instead of humans, and they are a horrible place to live. Signed, a person who totally gets good results from coding with LLMs. Sometimes, maybe even often.

sanderjd 8mo ago

As someone who enjoys working with AI tools, I honestly think the best approach here might be bifurcation. Start new projects using LLM tools, or maybe fork projects where that is acceptable. Don't force the volunteer maintainers of existing projects with existing workflows and cultures to review AI generated code. Create your own projects with workflows and cultures that are supportive of this, from the ground up. I'm not suggesting this will come without downside, but it seems better to me than expecting maintainers to take on a new burden that they really didn't sign up for.

skeeter2020 8mo ago

even if this was true or someday will be (big IF), is it worth looking for valid counter workflows? example: in many parts of the US and Canada the Mennonites are incredibly productive farmers and massive adopters of technology while also keeping very strict limits on where/how and when it is used. If we had the same motivations and discipline in software could we walk a line that both benefited from and controlled AI? I don't know the answer.

jacquesm 8mo ago
Good one, I had not made the connection, but yes. Tech is here to serve, at our pleasure, not to be forcibly consumed.

timando 8mo ago

I don't see any cars racing in the Melbourne Cup.