5 ms·

I know there are good uses of LLMs out there. I do. But. The current fever pitch mandates from above seem to want it applied liberally, and pushing back agai

I know there are good uses of LLMs out there. I do. But. The current fever pitch mandates from above seem to want it applied liberally, and pushing back against that is so discouraging and often career-limiting as to wear the fabric of one's psyche threadbare. With all the obvious problems being pointed out to people, there are just as many workarounds; and these workarounds, as is often revealed shortly thereafter, have their own problems, which beget new solutions, ad infinitum. At some point it genuinely seems like all this work is for the sake of the machine itself. I suppose that is true: The real goal has become obscured at so many firms today, that all that remains is the LLM. Are the people betting the farm and helping implement the visions of those who have done so guaranteed a soft exit to cushion them from the consequences, or is rationality really being discarded altogether? Sure, sound engineering principles can help work around these problems, but what efficiency is truly gained, in terms of cognitive load, developer time, money, or finite resources? Or were those ever an earnest concern?

Daishiman 5mo ago
There's two sides to the AI mandates. The degenerate side is clueless upper management and fad-driven engineering. We have talked extensively about this. There is a more rational side to it that I've seen in my org: some engineers absolutely refuse to use AI and as a consequence they are now, clearly and objectively, much less productive than other engineers. The thing is, you still need to learn how to use the tool, so a nontrivial percentage of obstinate engineers need to be driven to use this in the same way that some developers have refused to use Docker or k8s or whatever.
- callc 5mo ago
  Ah yes, we must force these obstinate engineers to the right path! Only after getting everyone to see the light will they understand and thank us for boundless productivity!! /s Perhaps these “obstinate” engineers have good reason in their decision. And it should be their decision! To be so confident in what is “the right way (TM)” and try to force it onto others is... revealing.
  - empthought 5mo ago
    Engineers that didn't move past src.v35.final.zip version control don't really have jobs today, either.
    - jaggederest 5mo ago
      You would be absolutely shocked how many software projects are still run, to this day, without source control at all. Or automated (or manual) testing. And how many hand crafted artisanal servers are running on AWS, never to be recovered if their EC2 instance is killed for some reason.
      - zbentley 5mo ago
        Sure, but that’s a small and shrinking market. Not a source of economic security or growth for its employees, nor for most of its companies (though some have defended niches).
        jaggederest 5mo ago
        I've seen growing companies running multiple million ARR through systems like that. It's way more common than you'd think if you're a professional software developer.
    - seanw444 5mo ago
      I seriously don't see how version control and LLMs are comparable. A deterministic way to track code changes over time, versus an essentially non-deterministic statistical code generator that might get you what you want, and might do it in a reasonable time frame, and that might not land you in a minefield of short-term-good/long-term-bad design points.
      - foldr 5mo ago
        > an essentially non-deterministic statistical code generator that might get you what you want, and might do it in a reasonable time frame, and that might not land you in a minefield of short-term-good/long-term-bad design points. Sounds like a human? The ‘statistical’ part is arguable, I suppose.
user34283 5mo ago
In my opinion you are just wrong. It’s an absolute game changer, and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Maybe half a year ago it was as you said. You had to wait for the agent to finish, you had to review carefully, and often the result was not that great. You did not save a lot of time. Now I can spin up 3+ parallel conversations in Codex, each in a git worktree. My work is mainly QA testing the features, refining the behavior, and sometimes making architectural decisions. The results are now undeniable. In the past I could not have developed a product of that scope in my free time. That is what is possible today. I suspect many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months. Like parallel agents, resolving merge conflicts, separating out functionality from a large branch into proper PRs.
- atomicnumber3 5mo ago
  "many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months" I have heard this statement every single day for 2 years and yet we still have no companies compressing 10 years into 1 year thus exploding past all the incumbents who don't "get it".
  - passivepinetree 5mo ago
    Well, the GP mentioned > if it’s a solo greenfield project which is a pretty large caveat. Anecdotally, I've found my side projects (which are solo greenfield projects, and don't need to be supported to the same standards as enterprise software) have gained the boost the GP was talking about. At work, it's different, since design, review, and maintenance is much more onerous.
  - simonw 5mo ago
    If you want an example of a project that condensed 5 years into 6 months and exploded past the competition I suggest looking at OpenClaw. The first line of code was written on November 25th. It achieved adoption in the "personal agents" space that far exceeded the other companies that had tried the same thing. (Whether or not you trust the quality of the software you can't deny the impact it had in such a short time. It defined a new category of software.)
steventhedev 5mo ago
The dirty secret if you work inside BigCorp and look around at the projects they're showcasing: 1. They're low stakes to get wrong. 2. The most common is MCPs or similar ai-tooling. 3. Making them look good takes time and effort still. It's a multiplier, not a replacement. 4. Quality and maintainability require investment. I had to restart an agentic project several times because it painted itself into a corner.

Daishiman 5mo ago

There's two sides to the AI mandates. The degenerate side is clueless upper management and fad-driven engineering. We have talked extensively about this. There is a more rational side to it that I've seen in my org: some engineers absolutely refuse to use AI and as a consequence they are now, clearly and objectively, much less productive than other engineers. The thing is, you still need to learn how to use the tool, so a nontrivial percentage of obstinate engineers need to be driven to use this in the same way that some developers have refused to use Docker or k8s or whatever.

callc 5mo ago
Ah yes, we must force these obstinate engineers to the right path! Only after getting everyone to see the light will they understand and thank us for boundless productivity!! /s Perhaps these “obstinate” engineers have good reason in their decision. And it should be their decision! To be so confident in what is “the right way (TM)” and try to force it onto others is... revealing.
- empthought 5mo ago
  Engineers that didn't move past src.v35.final.zip version control don't really have jobs today, either.
  - jaggederest 5mo ago
    You would be absolutely shocked how many software projects are still run, to this day, without source control at all. Or automated (or manual) testing. And how many hand crafted artisanal servers are running on AWS, never to be recovered if their EC2 instance is killed for some reason.
    - zbentley 5mo ago
      Sure, but that’s a small and shrinking market. Not a source of economic security or growth for its employees, nor for most of its companies (though some have defended niches).
      - jaggederest 5mo ago
        I've seen growing companies running multiple million ARR through systems like that. It's way more common than you'd think if you're a professional software developer.
  - seanw444 5mo ago
    I seriously don't see how version control and LLMs are comparable. A deterministic way to track code changes over time, versus an essentially non-deterministic statistical code generator that might get you what you want, and might do it in a reasonable time frame, and that might not land you in a minefield of short-term-good/long-term-bad design points.
    - foldr 5mo ago
      > an essentially non-deterministic statistical code generator that might get you what you want, and might do it in a reasonable time frame, and that might not land you in a minefield of short-term-good/long-term-bad design points. Sounds like a human? The ‘statistical’ part is arguable, I suppose.

user34283 5mo ago

In my opinion you are just wrong. It’s an absolute game changer, and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Maybe half a year ago it was as you said. You had to wait for the agent to finish, you had to review carefully, and often the result was not that great. You did not save a lot of time. Now I can spin up 3+ parallel conversations in Codex, each in a git worktree. My work is mainly QA testing the features, refining the behavior, and sometimes making architectural decisions. The results are now undeniable. In the past I could not have developed a product of that scope in my free time. That is what is possible today. I suspect many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months. Like parallel agents, resolving merge conflicts, separating out functionality from a large branch into proper PRs.

atomicnumber3 5mo ago
"many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months" I have heard this statement every single day for 2 years and yet we still have no companies compressing 10 years into 1 year thus exploding past all the incumbents who don't "get it".
- passivepinetree 5mo ago
  Well, the GP mentioned > if it’s a solo greenfield project which is a pretty large caveat. Anecdotally, I've found my side projects (which are solo greenfield projects, and don't need to be supported to the same standards as enterprise software) have gained the boost the GP was talking about. At work, it's different, since design, review, and maintenance is much more onerous.
- simonw 5mo ago
  If you want an example of a project that condensed 5 years into 6 months and exploded past the competition I suggest looking at OpenClaw. The first line of code was written on November 25th. It achieved adoption in the "personal agents" space that far exceeded the other companies that had tried the same thing. (Whether or not you trust the quality of the software you can't deny the impact it had in such a short time. It defined a new category of software.)

steventhedev 5mo ago

The dirty secret if you work inside BigCorp and look around at the projects they're showcasing: 1. They're low stakes to get wrong. 2. The most common is MCPs or similar ai-tooling. 3. Making them look good takes time and effort still. It's a multiplier, not a replacement. 4. Quality and maintainability require investment. I had to restart an agentic project several times because it painted itself into a corner.