3 ms·

I think there is a fundamental issue here of what building software even means If you think you can just assign Github tickets to AI agents and go drink daiqui

by firasd 3mo ago

I think there is a fundamental issue here of what building software even means If you think you can just assign Github tickets to AI agents and go drink daiquiris on the beach I think you'll find that you end up with more and more towers of abstraction and indirection. There are 'points of view' that emerge during coding I think. And at some point you as a human have to be like "wait... what if we use Redis here". "Wait.. the API is already returning the data we need". "Wait... let's not add customers to the report who have not been active in the past year". Stuff like that

dhorthy 3mo ago
yeah I 100% agree - and I think the most popular coding agent workflows / skill kits are designed to pull those insights and intuition out of humans in a way that optimizes for the developer's experience building the plans or building the code, e.g. - claude code plan mode - mattpocock/skills - obra/superpowers - research/plan/implement etc etc
- piker 3mo ago
  Hard to see them though if you’re not in the weeds and your agents are stacking abstraction on abstraction to pass tests.
  - dhorthy 3mo ago
    yes exactly
AmericanOP 3mo ago
The machine gives you what you ask for even when that thing doesn’t exist yet. Rather than “lights off,” utilizing information theory, decision-making theory and creativity theory makes me better at asking for the right things. Memory is not transcribed to weights like when humans sleep. Memory is notes handed to someone on groundhog’s day who can’t remember yesterday. We hope they believe us. Don’t be too surprised when a highly entropic system introduces entropy to a project over time.
claytonjy 3mo ago
> There are 'points of view' that emerge during coding I know it’s a bit cliche at this point, but this harkens to “programming as theory building”[0] which I agree is easy to lose out on when embracing agentic coding today. [0]: https://gwern.net/doc/cs/algorithm/1985-naur.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/cs/algorithm/1985-naur.pdf
- dhorthy 3mo ago
  I have had the phrase "programming is building a theory" spinning in my head for days, especially since watching this pragmatic engineer pod with Kent Beck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHQQtjIOpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHQQtjIOpw
  - _doctor_love 3mo ago
    You're hopefully already aware that this references a famous paper from 1985? https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf
TacticalCoder 3mo ago
> "Wait.. the API is already returning the data we need" To me that's a huge one. I witnessed this firsthand more than once and the fact that you make that comment too just shows there's a problem: I've seen top frontier models go wild, adding shitload of code to spout something that, eventually (after burning shitload of tokens), worked. While it was basically a one-line change because the data was already there on the client-side. The thing thought it noticed a pattern and went ballistic, mimicking some existing client-server communication, to "solve" my problem. The worst is: all vibe-coded projects are full of such nonsense and the "prompt engineers" (such engineers, much wow btw!) who wrote their magical incantations have zero clue about it. I use these tools daily, I love the time they save me. But sheesh...
dboreham 3mo ago
If you're working with the 1% of human developers who think like that, sure. My experience has been that current models are way beyond all but the most highly competent developers I've encountered in my several decades career.

by firasd 3mo ago

dhorthy 3mo ago

yeah I 100% agree - and I think the most popular coding agent workflows / skill kits are designed to pull those insights and intuition out of humans in a way that optimizes for the developer's experience building the plans or building the code, e.g. - claude code plan mode - mattpocock/skills - obra/superpowers - research/plan/implement etc etc

piker 3mo ago
Hard to see them though if you’re not in the weeds and your agents are stacking abstraction on abstraction to pass tests.
- dhorthy 3mo ago
  yes exactly

AmericanOP 3mo ago

The machine gives you what you ask for even when that thing doesn’t exist yet. Rather than “lights off,” utilizing information theory, decision-making theory and creativity theory makes me better at asking for the right things. Memory is not transcribed to weights like when humans sleep. Memory is notes handed to someone on groundhog’s day who can’t remember yesterday. We hope they believe us. Don’t be too surprised when a highly entropic system introduces entropy to a project over time.

claytonjy 3mo ago

> There are 'points of view' that emerge during coding I know it’s a bit cliche at this point, but this harkens to “programming as theory building”[0] which I agree is easy to lose out on when embracing agentic coding today. [0]: https://gwern.net/doc/cs/algorithm/1985-naur.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/cs/algorithm/1985-naur.pdf

dhorthy 3mo ago
I have had the phrase "programming is building a theory" spinning in my head for days, especially since watching this pragmatic engineer pod with Kent Beck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHQQtjIOpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddHQQtjIOpw
- _doctor_love 3mo ago
  You're hopefully already aware that this references a famous paper from 1985? https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

TacticalCoder 3mo ago

> "Wait.. the API is already returning the data we need" To me that's a huge one. I witnessed this firsthand more than once and the fact that you make that comment too just shows there's a problem: I've seen top frontier models go wild, adding shitload of code to spout something that, eventually (after burning shitload of tokens), worked. While it was basically a one-line change because the data was already there on the client-side. The thing thought it noticed a pattern and went ballistic, mimicking some existing client-server communication, to "solve" my problem. The worst is: all vibe-coded projects are full of such nonsense and the "prompt engineers" (such engineers, much wow btw!) who wrote their magical incantations have zero clue about it. I use these tools daily, I love the time they save me. But sheesh...

dboreham 3mo ago

If you're working with the 1% of human developers who think like that, sure. My experience has been that current models are way beyond all but the most highly competent developers I've encountered in my several decades career.