3 ms·

Lots of money being made by luring people into this trap. The reality is that if you actually know what you want, and can communicate it well (where the produc

Lots of money being made by luring people into this trap. The reality is that if you actually know what you want, and can communicate it well (where the productivity app can be helpful), then you can do a lot with AI. My experience is that most people don't actually know what they want. Or they don't understand what goes into what they want. Asking for a plan is a shortcut to gaining that understanding.

thbb123 7mo ago
Or, as I like to put it: I need to activate my personal transformers on my inner embeddings space to figure what is it I really want. And still, quite often, I think in terms of the programming language I'm used to and the library I'm familiar with. So, to really create something new that I care about, LLMs don't help much. They are still useful for plenty of other tasks.
luisgvv 7mo ago
This is why the grill me skill went viral - https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/grill-me/SKILL.md https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/grill-me/SKIL...
- soulchild77 7mo ago
  I asked Claude whether these elaborate words like "walk down the design tree" actually mean anything to the LLM and make a difference. The answer confirmed my gut feeling: You can just tell me to "be critical" and get mostly the same results. Matt did incredible work teaching people TS, but this feels more like trying to create FOMO to sell snake oil and AI courses.
  - Leynos 7mo ago
    It feels to me that "walk down the design tree" has a specific meaning with respect to treating the design as a hierarchy (although whether that means BFS or DFS is still ambiguous). "Be critical" lacks that specificity.
    - stingraycharles 7mo ago
      Yes but then it’s better to spell those instructions out explicitly, eg state facts, state ambiguities / assumptions, inspect codebase, challenge assumptions, etc. This particular skill is not great.
  - Rumudiez 7mo ago
    I thought that was supposed to be “decision tree” but otherwise, totally agree the exact words don’t actually matter all that much in most instances. I copy-paste templated prompts and every now and then notice some baffling grammar on my side after the fact… claude doesn’t mind
  - krisoft 7mo ago
    > I asked Claude […]. The answer confirmed my gut feeling. And i drawn a tarot card and the card refuted your gut feeling. Joking asside, there is no reason to suspect that an LLM is telling you correct information about how best to use an LLM. The way to confirm your thesis is by running experiments, or finding someone who has already done them. It is a valid move to use an LLM to find primary sources, but in itself the LLM is not an authority you could or should trust.
  - suttontom 7mo ago
    How odd, are you under the impression that LLMs have self-awareness or understand their own internal mechanisms? Do you know that you can tell an LLM almost anything and, absent a tool, it will tell you that you're correct? By your logic, why do we even experiment with skills, planning modes, harnesses, etc. when we could just ask the model what the best way to get it to produce information is?
ModernMech 7mo ago
Problem is they don’t know how to express themselves and many people, especially those interested in tech, don’t want to learn. I can’t tell you how many times I have a CS student in my office for advising and they tell me they only want to take technical courses, because anything reading or writing or psychology or history based is “soft”, unrelated to their major, and a waste of their time. I’ve spent years telling them critical reading and expressive writing skills are very important to being a functioning adult, but they insist what they need to know can only be found in the Engineering college.
- abustamam 7mo ago
  Much of my time at work is reading through quickly typed messages from my boss and understanding exactly what questions I need to ask in order to make it easy for him to answer clearly. Engineers who lack soft skills cannot be effective in team environments.
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    Being able (and willing) to write shit down is a superpower among 10x programmers who think "code is self-documenting" and don't even add comments.
    - abustamam 7mo ago
      Haha. I always say that I'm only a good IC not because of my technical skills but because of my communication skills and my willingness to, as Steven Covey says, seek first to understand.
      - theshrike79 7mo ago
        I literally got a transfer to a more exciting position and most likely a raise (discussing it on Tuesday =P) just because I communicated things related to the new position proactively and more than other people who, after the fact, expressed interest in the position.
gffrd 7mo ago
> My experience is that most people don't actually know what they want. Or they don't understand what goes into what they want. 1000%. This is why people whose job it was to figure out how to make a thing are thriving with AI tools, and those who operate in the conceptual/abstract are flailing and frustrated with it. (it really is a mirror in this case, and the frustration they have is unknowingly directed at themselves)

thbb123 7mo ago

Or, as I like to put it: I need to activate my personal transformers on my inner embeddings space to figure what is it I really want. And still, quite often, I think in terms of the programming language I'm used to and the library I'm familiar with. So, to really create something new that I care about, LLMs don't help much. They are still useful for plenty of other tasks.

luisgvv 7mo ago

This is why the grill me skill went viral - https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/grill-me/SKILL.md https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/grill-me/SKIL...

soulchild77 7mo ago
I asked Claude whether these elaborate words like "walk down the design tree" actually mean anything to the LLM and make a difference. The answer confirmed my gut feeling: You can just tell me to "be critical" and get mostly the same results. Matt did incredible work teaching people TS, but this feels more like trying to create FOMO to sell snake oil and AI courses.
- Leynos 7mo ago
  It feels to me that "walk down the design tree" has a specific meaning with respect to treating the design as a hierarchy (although whether that means BFS or DFS is still ambiguous). "Be critical" lacks that specificity.
  - stingraycharles 7mo ago
    Yes but then it’s better to spell those instructions out explicitly, eg state facts, state ambiguities / assumptions, inspect codebase, challenge assumptions, etc. This particular skill is not great.
- Rumudiez 7mo ago
  I thought that was supposed to be “decision tree” but otherwise, totally agree the exact words don’t actually matter all that much in most instances. I copy-paste templated prompts and every now and then notice some baffling grammar on my side after the fact… claude doesn’t mind
- krisoft 7mo ago
  > I asked Claude […]. The answer confirmed my gut feeling. And i drawn a tarot card and the card refuted your gut feeling. Joking asside, there is no reason to suspect that an LLM is telling you correct information about how best to use an LLM. The way to confirm your thesis is by running experiments, or finding someone who has already done them. It is a valid move to use an LLM to find primary sources, but in itself the LLM is not an authority you could or should trust.
- suttontom 7mo ago
  How odd, are you under the impression that LLMs have self-awareness or understand their own internal mechanisms? Do you know that you can tell an LLM almost anything and, absent a tool, it will tell you that you're correct? By your logic, why do we even experiment with skills, planning modes, harnesses, etc. when we could just ask the model what the best way to get it to produce information is?

ModernMech 7mo ago

Problem is they don’t know how to express themselves and many people, especially those interested in tech, don’t want to learn. I can’t tell you how many times I have a CS student in my office for advising and they tell me they only want to take technical courses, because anything reading or writing or psychology or history based is “soft”, unrelated to their major, and a waste of their time. I’ve spent years telling them critical reading and expressive writing skills are very important to being a functioning adult, but they insist what they need to know can only be found in the Engineering college.

abustamam 7mo ago
Much of my time at work is reading through quickly typed messages from my boss and understanding exactly what questions I need to ask in order to make it easy for him to answer clearly. Engineers who lack soft skills cannot be effective in team environments.
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  Being able (and willing) to write shit down is a superpower among 10x programmers who think "code is self-documenting" and don't even add comments.
  - abustamam 7mo ago
    Haha. I always say that I'm only a good IC not because of my technical skills but because of my communication skills and my willingness to, as Steven Covey says, seek first to understand.
    - theshrike79 7mo ago
      I literally got a transfer to a more exciting position and most likely a raise (discussing it on Tuesday =P) just because I communicated things related to the new position proactively and more than other people who, after the fact, expressed interest in the position.

gffrd 7mo ago

> My experience is that most people don't actually know what they want. Or they don't understand what goes into what they want. 1000%. This is why people whose job it was to figure out how to make a thing are thriving with AI tools, and those who operate in the conceptual/abstract are flailing and frustrated with it. (it really is a mirror in this case, and the frustration they have is unknowingly directed at themselves)