4 ms·

> “Agentic workflow” (or whatever they’re calling it at the time you’re reading this article) > Unlike the silver bullets of the past (like microservices or N

> “Agentic workflow” (or whatever they’re calling it at the time you’re reading this article) > Unlike the silver bullets of the past (like microservices or NoSQL) > Hallucinations are an inherent property of how LLMs work. > It’s all marketing and buzzwords Not a serious article or thinker. I can get this stuff on Reddit if I want to read thrice-regurgitated cliches about AI.

Sharlin 2mo ago
I'd like to hear actual rebuttals to those quotes.
- daishi55 2mo ago
  If the author can’t put in the effort to think of something original to say that hasn’t been said 1000x, why should I put the effort into rebutting cliches that were last relevant in 2024?
  - nesarkvechnep 2mo ago
    So you basically agree but complain there are no new arguments against AI programming in the article?
    - daishi55 2mo ago
      No, I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that I agree with what I am referring to as cliches last relevant in 2024.
      - beepbooptheory 2mo ago
        How can it be both irrelevant and cliché?
      - archagon 2mo ago
        Why are you posting such cliche responses? There is literally nothing to see in this subthread.
  - brazukadev 2mo ago
    what's the point of making a ragebait comment if you didn't like the article? Whatever you think about the post, your reaction is much lower quality.
- abirch 2mo ago
  If you're using an LLM and not an agentic workflow then you're doing things wrong in 2026. My agents have to pass tests meaning that if their LLM hallucinates, the agent tools capture it and not me.
  - joshribakoff 2mo ago
    Some people have the agent hallucinating its own meaningless tests
    - CuriouslyC 2mo ago
      Hence the advice to read the tests? Interesting how people make the argument that AI code is garbage and can't be trusted (it's inelegant and poorly structured, sure, but that's a different matter), and how the only option isn't to just spot check the work, but to laboriously write it by hand.
      - unknownfuture 2mo ago
        > Hence the advice to read the tests? Reading tests and actually catching issues requires a heck of a lot of effort. IME code reviews of tests are often more laborious than reviewing the code itself since so much if it is reasoning about corner cases. I'm not saying don't do it, but the LOE is high. Done well I'd argue it runs close to the effort involved in just authoring those tests by hand. And that's ignoring that the "vibe all the things" crowd is explicitly telling people not to read the code. At all. (And if you think I'm exaggerating: an exec where I work decided to own rebuilding one of our services. They told me how recently the LLM generated multiple thousands of lines of code and they pushed it with minimal review, figuring we'll just fix the bugs as they happen...).
    - abirch 2mo ago
      If people misuse or don't understand a tool, that doesn't invalidate the usefulness of the tool.
- hahahaa 2mo ago
  > Hallucinations are an inherent property of how LLMs work. While technically true the hallucination rates on modern models is low and other checks can ensure that by the time a human sees it it is most likely solid. For research there is more danger as there is less feedback loop other than other LLM scrutinising the first. For research I get it to come to a conclusion but provide me with links so I can judge. More like advanced search.
  - righthand 2mo ago
    > it it is most likely solid. Most likely? That’s not reassuring at all. So you’re saying the other checks can result in hallucinations?
    - hahahaa 2mo ago
      Most likely solid is definitely better than a lot of human made PRs I have seen. But making a decision the human reviewer disagrees with or misunderstanding a spec but maybe not asking a follow up isn't hallucination in my book. Hallucination is just making stuff up without checking.
  - kamranjon 2mo ago
    “While technically true the hallucination rates on modern models is low…” Isn’t this entirely context dependent? Where did you get the information that modern models have low hallucination rates? I’d love to see the benchmark if there is one, it seems like it would be useful to track.
    - munksbeer 2mo ago
      Put it this way, the agent may well be hallucinating behind the scenes when it is coding for me, but I never see that, because it obviously verifies by compiling and testing the solution and won't show me something that is broken.
    - hahahaa 2mo ago
      Anecdotal. Older models felt they were on drugs.
- saghm 2mo ago
  Programming by hand also empircally leads to quite a lot of bugs. The actual calculus for whether these tools are worth it to solve a given problem is as function of how much time it takes to reach the desired level of quality compared to writing by hand. I struggle to see why "they hallucinate and aren't deterministic" is enough to conclude that it doesn't ever end up being worth it when there's no alternative that doesn't also produce some bugs. I don't particularly like these tools, but I also can't deny that for some things I'm genuinely able to get to the results I want faster with them than without. Yes, some people will use them to produce low quality software, but in my experience it's mostly people who already would have been producing low quality software as well, just at a much slower pace. Having a higher volume of low quality software is a problem, but it's distinct from the claim that the tools not ever being useful in producing high quality software. It's possible that from reading my rebuttals you'll think I'm one of the people using these tools to produce low quality software, but it's not clear how to falsify that claim. If that's the conclusion you'd draw, then you probably weren't really open to considering rebuttals in the first place though.
- perching_aix 2mo ago
  Rebuttals to what? Ill-faith rhetorics and circular judgement? Points 1-2 were clearly cited not because of their factual content, but because they boil down to the author mocking the existence of industry trends, and writing them off whole (incl. this one). This is unsound, both because it doesn't actually follow by default, and because it violates the principle of suspending (prior) judgement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_judgment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_judgment - it sets both the author and their readers up for a specific conclusion, rather than inspiring nonbias. Hopefully one does not need to explain why this is problematic? It is further incredibly trite to bring up how AI is an ongoing trend (self-evident), and the fact that trends distort perception (also self-evident). Them fighting fire with fire and bringing their own gut instinct is not any more intellectually respectable. Point 3 is completely unsupported and misleading. The author probably means that hallucinations are formally unavoidable, but that on its own doesn't carry much weight, and is not the same thing. Point 4 is factually wrong. AI is an entire academic field with a half a century of history to its name, and this is trivial to learn. Clearly not why it was cited once again either however, but because it's blatantly ill faith too. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
- grumbel 2mo ago
  Whenever an AI hallucinates an API call, you run the compiler, give it the error messages and it fixes it. A proper agentic workflow might do it all automatically. These are arguments form 2023 ChatGPT3.5 days when it didn't have tool access or Web search. The modern problem with AI is more the opposite, you give the AI a task that is impossible with the tools at hand and instead of saying "That doesn't work", it starts elaborate workarounds to make it happen anyway.
  - munksbeer 2mo ago
    > A proper agentic workflow might do it all automatically. Might?! Every agentic workflow should be doing this automatically for nearly a year now. And yes, I agree with the latter. The lengths AI will go to, to get you a working solution is sometimes scary.
gqrt100 2mo ago
The author is a real C++ programmer. Not like the PyTorch guys who use std::shrared_ptr for cyclical graphs and then go on to overpromise on threaded Python only to find out that the slowdown is much larger and everything is brittle as expected years ago. The times that Meta people can browbeat honest engineers are over. Nice corporate take.
- daishi55 2mo ago
  lol

Sharlin 2mo ago

I'd like to hear actual rebuttals to those quotes.

daishi55 2mo ago
If the author can’t put in the effort to think of something original to say that hasn’t been said 1000x, why should I put the effort into rebutting cliches that were last relevant in 2024?
- nesarkvechnep 2mo ago
  So you basically agree but complain there are no new arguments against AI programming in the article?
  - daishi55 2mo ago
    No, I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that I agree with what I am referring to as cliches last relevant in 2024.
    - beepbooptheory 2mo ago
      How can it be both irrelevant and cliché?
    - archagon 2mo ago
      Why are you posting such cliche responses? There is literally nothing to see in this subthread.
- brazukadev 2mo ago
  what's the point of making a ragebait comment if you didn't like the article? Whatever you think about the post, your reaction is much lower quality.
abirch 2mo ago
If you're using an LLM and not an agentic workflow then you're doing things wrong in 2026. My agents have to pass tests meaning that if their LLM hallucinates, the agent tools capture it and not me.
- joshribakoff 2mo ago
  Some people have the agent hallucinating its own meaningless tests
  - CuriouslyC 2mo ago
    Hence the advice to read the tests? Interesting how people make the argument that AI code is garbage and can't be trusted (it's inelegant and poorly structured, sure, but that's a different matter), and how the only option isn't to just spot check the work, but to laboriously write it by hand.
    - unknownfuture 2mo ago
      > Hence the advice to read the tests? Reading tests and actually catching issues requires a heck of a lot of effort. IME code reviews of tests are often more laborious than reviewing the code itself since so much if it is reasoning about corner cases. I'm not saying don't do it, but the LOE is high. Done well I'd argue it runs close to the effort involved in just authoring those tests by hand. And that's ignoring that the "vibe all the things" crowd is explicitly telling people not to read the code. At all. (And if you think I'm exaggerating: an exec where I work decided to own rebuilding one of our services. They told me how recently the LLM generated multiple thousands of lines of code and they pushed it with minimal review, figuring we'll just fix the bugs as they happen...).
  - abirch 2mo ago
    If people misuse or don't understand a tool, that doesn't invalidate the usefulness of the tool.
hahahaa 2mo ago
> Hallucinations are an inherent property of how LLMs work. While technically true the hallucination rates on modern models is low and other checks can ensure that by the time a human sees it it is most likely solid. For research there is more danger as there is less feedback loop other than other LLM scrutinising the first. For research I get it to come to a conclusion but provide me with links so I can judge. More like advanced search.
- righthand 2mo ago
  > it it is most likely solid. Most likely? That’s not reassuring at all. So you’re saying the other checks can result in hallucinations?
  - hahahaa 2mo ago
    Most likely solid is definitely better than a lot of human made PRs I have seen. But making a decision the human reviewer disagrees with or misunderstanding a spec but maybe not asking a follow up isn't hallucination in my book. Hallucination is just making stuff up without checking.
- kamranjon 2mo ago
  “While technically true the hallucination rates on modern models is low…” Isn’t this entirely context dependent? Where did you get the information that modern models have low hallucination rates? I’d love to see the benchmark if there is one, it seems like it would be useful to track.
  - munksbeer 2mo ago
    Put it this way, the agent may well be hallucinating behind the scenes when it is coding for me, but I never see that, because it obviously verifies by compiling and testing the solution and won't show me something that is broken.
  - hahahaa 2mo ago
    Anecdotal. Older models felt they were on drugs.
saghm 2mo ago
Programming by hand also empircally leads to quite a lot of bugs. The actual calculus for whether these tools are worth it to solve a given problem is as function of how much time it takes to reach the desired level of quality compared to writing by hand. I struggle to see why "they hallucinate and aren't deterministic" is enough to conclude that it doesn't ever end up being worth it when there's no alternative that doesn't also produce some bugs. I don't particularly like these tools, but I also can't deny that for some things I'm genuinely able to get to the results I want faster with them than without. Yes, some people will use them to produce low quality software, but in my experience it's mostly people who already would have been producing low quality software as well, just at a much slower pace. Having a higher volume of low quality software is a problem, but it's distinct from the claim that the tools not ever being useful in producing high quality software. It's possible that from reading my rebuttals you'll think I'm one of the people using these tools to produce low quality software, but it's not clear how to falsify that claim. If that's the conclusion you'd draw, then you probably weren't really open to considering rebuttals in the first place though.
perching_aix 2mo ago
Rebuttals to what? Ill-faith rhetorics and circular judgement? Points 1-2 were clearly cited not because of their factual content, but because they boil down to the author mocking the existence of industry trends, and writing them off whole (incl. this one). This is unsound, both because it doesn't actually follow by default, and because it violates the principle of suspending (prior) judgement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_judgment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_judgment - it sets both the author and their readers up for a specific conclusion, rather than inspiring nonbias. Hopefully one does not need to explain why this is problematic? It is further incredibly trite to bring up how AI is an ongoing trend (self-evident), and the fact that trends distort perception (also self-evident). Them fighting fire with fire and bringing their own gut instinct is not any more intellectually respectable. Point 3 is completely unsupported and misleading. The author probably means that hallucinations are formally unavoidable, but that on its own doesn't carry much weight, and is not the same thing. Point 4 is factually wrong. AI is an entire academic field with a half a century of history to its name, and this is trivial to learn. Clearly not why it was cited once again either however, but because it's blatantly ill faith too. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
grumbel 2mo ago
Whenever an AI hallucinates an API call, you run the compiler, give it the error messages and it fixes it. A proper agentic workflow might do it all automatically. These are arguments form 2023 ChatGPT3.5 days when it didn't have tool access or Web search. The modern problem with AI is more the opposite, you give the AI a task that is impossible with the tools at hand and instead of saying "That doesn't work", it starts elaborate workarounds to make it happen anyway.
- munksbeer 2mo ago
  > A proper agentic workflow might do it all automatically. Might?! Every agentic workflow should be doing this automatically for nearly a year now. And yes, I agree with the latter. The lengths AI will go to, to get you a working solution is sometimes scary.

gqrt100 2mo ago

The author is a real C++ programmer. Not like the PyTorch guys who use std::shrared_ptr for cyclical graphs and then go on to overpromise on threaded Python only to find out that the slowdown is much larger and everything is brittle as expected years ago. The times that Meta people can browbeat honest engineers are over. Nice corporate take.

daishi55 2mo ago
lol