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Yeah I have found that AI in general has a procrastination nullifying effect. Before dealing with anything that might put me off. I can just ask the agent to d

Yeah I have found that AI in general has a procrastination nullifying effect. Before dealing with anything that might put me off. I can just ask the agent to do it for me. And then, do something else, take that break, but regardless in a few minutes I will have something to jump on instead of the same blank terminal with the same blinking cursor judging me. It really makes taking the first step, much easier and then the ball just gets rolling. I see what his point is to be honest though, it's easy to say just one more week of polish, just 5 more features, etc.

theshrike79 3mo ago
It's the empty page problem. For some people (most?) it's really hardhard, almost impossible, to fill the page with text, but when you have a page of text - even if it's shit - suddenly it's easy to critique it and interate to make it better. AI lets me poop out an MVP out of any idea or spec with very little effort on my part, then I can go in and start improving it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago
  > MVP I guess a lot of folks are having better luck than I am, in getting ship-quality results from LLMs. In my case, I find that the first iteration is almost never suitable for shipping. In fact, the more intricate the functionality, the more likely it is, to contain some real showstopper bugs. In my experience, iteration really requires that I know my shit. I have to know what to look for, and how to form effective prompts. Testing is absolutely vital. I can’t ever “just assume” that the code is fundamentally sound; even for extremely basic stuff. That lack of trust in my output is something I haven’t had, in decades. It can be a bit stressful. For example, I write a lot of mobile software, so resource usage is a big deal. I had gotten used to not testing for battery usage, leaks, or out-of-control allocations, over the years of using Swift. I am now back to routinely running Instruments. In a couple of instances, I was just unable to get anything useful from the LLM, had to toss all its output, and rewrite by hand. That’s why I can’t even imagine directly shipping anything the LLM gives me. That said, I have generally had extremely positive experiences with LLMs. It’s now a basic component of my workflow.
  - theshrike79 3mo ago
    If you never ship, how can you iterate? Do you spend weeks running benchmarks and optimising your code without asking/observing a single actual user whether they care if that bit is fast or not? Or would it be more efficient to ship something, gather data and iterate where relevant? Because if you're not doing that, I can guarantee other people are. Sadly being the first and moving fast (adding features as users request them) is in many cases better in the mobile market than having the snappiest app with zero memory leaks and excellent battery efficiency. The whole Turkish mobile gaming industry works on this principle, they ship like crazy and iterate quickly to see what sticks.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago
      It depends on the target market. The mistake many people make, is casting what’s good for the goose, onto the gander. I Serve a demographic that can suffer great harm, from half-baked crap. Also, there’s no money to be made, so what’s the hurry? If someone else comes up with something better, that’s actually a good thing. I have been shipping software for my entire career. It’s quite possible to ship good stuff. It’s just more work, and less financially rewarding, so fewer people do it. It just gets my goat, to hear people say that it’s not possible.
    - feoren 3mo ago
      > If you never ship, how can you iterate? Our discipline has swung way too far in this direction. The useful insight of "watch your users use your product -- you will always be surprised about something" has turned into "you cannot possibly have any vision or produce a useful product without constantly probing your users". A/B testing, design by committee -- it reeks of cowardice and produces garbage. It reminds me of an SNL skit where politicians in a debate were able to see real-time social media responses to their talking points, and they immediately started playing a sort of "hotter/colder" game, changing their politics to try to get the graph to go up. I promise you it's possible to just have an actual vision yourself. Yes, talking to users will surprise you, and it's important. But the idea that you cannot possibly iterate without shipping code is way, way too extreme.

theshrike79 3mo ago

It's the empty page problem. For some people (most?) it's really hardhard, almost impossible, to fill the page with text, but when you have a page of text - even if it's shit - suddenly it's easy to critique it and interate to make it better. AI lets me poop out an MVP out of any idea or spec with very little effort on my part, then I can go in and start improving it.

ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago
> MVP I guess a lot of folks are having better luck than I am, in getting ship-quality results from LLMs. In my case, I find that the first iteration is almost never suitable for shipping. In fact, the more intricate the functionality, the more likely it is, to contain some real showstopper bugs. In my experience, iteration really requires that I know my shit. I have to know what to look for, and how to form effective prompts. Testing is absolutely vital. I can’t ever “just assume” that the code is fundamentally sound; even for extremely basic stuff. That lack of trust in my output is something I haven’t had, in decades. It can be a bit stressful. For example, I write a lot of mobile software, so resource usage is a big deal. I had gotten used to not testing for battery usage, leaks, or out-of-control allocations, over the years of using Swift. I am now back to routinely running Instruments. In a couple of instances, I was just unable to get anything useful from the LLM, had to toss all its output, and rewrite by hand. That’s why I can’t even imagine directly shipping anything the LLM gives me. That said, I have generally had extremely positive experiences with LLMs. It’s now a basic component of my workflow.
- theshrike79 3mo ago
  If you never ship, how can you iterate? Do you spend weeks running benchmarks and optimising your code without asking/observing a single actual user whether they care if that bit is fast or not? Or would it be more efficient to ship something, gather data and iterate where relevant? Because if you're not doing that, I can guarantee other people are. Sadly being the first and moving fast (adding features as users request them) is in many cases better in the mobile market than having the snappiest app with zero memory leaks and excellent battery efficiency. The whole Turkish mobile gaming industry works on this principle, they ship like crazy and iterate quickly to see what sticks.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago
    It depends on the target market. The mistake many people make, is casting what’s good for the goose, onto the gander. I Serve a demographic that can suffer great harm, from half-baked crap. Also, there’s no money to be made, so what’s the hurry? If someone else comes up with something better, that’s actually a good thing. I have been shipping software for my entire career. It’s quite possible to ship good stuff. It’s just more work, and less financially rewarding, so fewer people do it. It just gets my goat, to hear people say that it’s not possible.
  - feoren 3mo ago
    > If you never ship, how can you iterate? Our discipline has swung way too far in this direction. The useful insight of "watch your users use your product -- you will always be surprised about something" has turned into "you cannot possibly have any vision or produce a useful product without constantly probing your users". A/B testing, design by committee -- it reeks of cowardice and produces garbage. It reminds me of an SNL skit where politicians in a debate were able to see real-time social media responses to their talking points, and they immediately started playing a sort of "hotter/colder" game, changing their politics to try to get the graph to go up. I promise you it's possible to just have an actual vision yourself. Yes, talking to users will surprise you, and it's important. But the idea that you cannot possibly iterate without shipping code is way, way too extreme.