3 ms·

Yes but it’s far better than anything anyone, let alone a small child, could make in 15 minutes On the other hand an engineer might take a couple hours and bui

by gxs 2mo ago

Yes but it’s far better than anything anyone, let alone a small child, could make in 15 minutes On the other hand an engineer might take a couple hours and build this in a clean way with the right prompting These “got ‘em” ai criticism comments are getting so old

ranger_danger 2mo ago
The only reason it's a spaghetti mess is because it's not being prompted correctly by an expert.
- gxs 2mo ago
  100% A novice writing code by hand could also write spaghetti code If you've worked in enterprise software, you might have seen that even competent professionals can write spaghetti code At this point AI really is just garbage in garbage out
  - gxs 2mo ago
    Haha it’s so comical how predictable downvotes are - which is a proxy for knowing what developers sensibilities are Wild to me that we see this even in what is a relatively more “sophisticated” forum
    - Dylan16807 2mo ago
      The downvotes are because you're just saying some devs are bad, you're not explaining how/why incorrect prompting is the only reason it's a mess. Or even the main reason.
- bakugo 2mo ago
  Are these experts in the room with us right now? Because if even the creators of Claude seemingly can't prompt non spaghetti code (see: Claude Code leak), I'd like to know who can.
  - ranger_danger 2mo ago
    How do you know they were even trying in the first place? Have you analyzed the prompt they used?
    - bakugo 2mo ago
      How do you know they weren't? Have you analyzed the prompt they used? There's no shortage of examples of unmaintainable spaghetti AI code, Claude Code is just one of many. If you have examples of good codebases maintained by "prompting experts", I'd love to see them.
      - gxs 2mo ago
        The difference is he’s not passing judgement on it or jumping to conclusions, fyi
        Dylan16807 2mo ago
        Nobody is jumping to conclusions. There's enough examples to come to perfectly reasonable conclusions and judgements.
      - ranger_danger 2mo ago
        Pretty much any existing project (that started before LLMs were a thing) who accepts LLM-generated code, I would argue fits your requirement, since the PRs adhere to their existing code style and guidelines, or they wouldn't be accepted in the first place. In those cases it may be impossible to tell that an LLM was even involved. Recent notable examples would be the Linux kernel or cURL.
  - Ancapistani 2mo ago
    Speaking for myself - they may not have cared to. I can absolutely prompt AI to following established patterns and produce nice, clean output in a legacy codebase. I also have a completely separate set of skill files that I’ve been building organically by allowing the agent to do make most decisions about conventions. The latter produces code that would be a nightmare to modify by hand, but I’m still able to iterate on it many times faster than I could in the codebase where code quality is a requirement. “Code quality” is mostly “human readability”, and I’m simply not sure that’s a valuable attribute anymore.
- koiueo 2mo ago
  Writing sufficiently detailed prompt sometimes takes more time than writing code by hand. However, the latter is an exercise that lets you become an expert. The former – not at all.
aidos 2mo ago
I wasn’t trying to make a “got em” comment. The fact that this is possible and works at all is mind blowing - even more mind blowing is that my 8 yo is growing up in a world where they can talk to a machine to produce a custom application in seconds and they don’t realise how mind blowing it is! In terms of the code, it would take even less time than that to tidy it up. For this application you wouldn’t bother. That’s almost a form of “premature optimisation” unless you’re actually planning on doing more work on it. My hunch is that what the world is about to see a lot of is much bigger bits of work, or changes to other bigger existing systems done by people without the skills to know how to contain the complexity. That’s going to come with a burden.

by gxs 2mo ago

ranger_danger 2mo ago

The only reason it's a spaghetti mess is because it's not being prompted correctly by an expert.

gxs 2mo ago
100% A novice writing code by hand could also write spaghetti code If you've worked in enterprise software, you might have seen that even competent professionals can write spaghetti code At this point AI really is just garbage in garbage out
- gxs 2mo ago
  Haha it’s so comical how predictable downvotes are - which is a proxy for knowing what developers sensibilities are Wild to me that we see this even in what is a relatively more “sophisticated” forum
  - Dylan16807 2mo ago
    The downvotes are because you're just saying some devs are bad, you're not explaining how/why incorrect prompting is the only reason it's a mess. Or even the main reason.
bakugo 2mo ago
Are these experts in the room with us right now? Because if even the creators of Claude seemingly can't prompt non spaghetti code (see: Claude Code leak), I'd like to know who can.
- ranger_danger 2mo ago
  How do you know they were even trying in the first place? Have you analyzed the prompt they used?
  - bakugo 2mo ago
    How do you know they weren't? Have you analyzed the prompt they used? There's no shortage of examples of unmaintainable spaghetti AI code, Claude Code is just one of many. If you have examples of good codebases maintained by "prompting experts", I'd love to see them.
    - gxs 2mo ago
      The difference is he’s not passing judgement on it or jumping to conclusions, fyi
      - Dylan16807 2mo ago
        Nobody is jumping to conclusions. There's enough examples to come to perfectly reasonable conclusions and judgements.
    - ranger_danger 2mo ago
      Pretty much any existing project (that started before LLMs were a thing) who accepts LLM-generated code, I would argue fits your requirement, since the PRs adhere to their existing code style and guidelines, or they wouldn't be accepted in the first place. In those cases it may be impossible to tell that an LLM was even involved. Recent notable examples would be the Linux kernel or cURL.
- Ancapistani 2mo ago
  Speaking for myself - they may not have cared to. I can absolutely prompt AI to following established patterns and produce nice, clean output in a legacy codebase. I also have a completely separate set of skill files that I’ve been building organically by allowing the agent to do make most decisions about conventions. The latter produces code that would be a nightmare to modify by hand, but I’m still able to iterate on it many times faster than I could in the codebase where code quality is a requirement. “Code quality” is mostly “human readability”, and I’m simply not sure that’s a valuable attribute anymore.
koiueo 2mo ago
Writing sufficiently detailed prompt sometimes takes more time than writing code by hand. However, the latter is an exercise that lets you become an expert. The former – not at all.

aidos 2mo ago

I wasn’t trying to make a “got em” comment. The fact that this is possible and works at all is mind blowing - even more mind blowing is that my 8 yo is growing up in a world where they can talk to a machine to produce a custom application in seconds and they don’t realise how mind blowing it is! In terms of the code, it would take even less time than that to tidy it up. For this application you wouldn’t bother. That’s almost a form of “premature optimisation” unless you’re actually planning on doing more work on it. My hunch is that what the world is about to see a lot of is much bigger bits of work, or changes to other bigger existing systems done by people without the skills to know how to contain the complexity. That’s going to come with a burden.