Thread

1. hombre_fatal · 1790094395 · focus · HN ↗

   If it can be measured, then LLMs can optimize it.

   Once I had repo commands that could dump `sample` results and a cpu profiler/trace and then a benchmark tool that let me A/A + ABBA/BAAB-test the current modified git workspace against HEAD or any commit, the LLMs could just do their thing.

   And that's how my homemade terminal uses much less memory than ghostty/kitty/iterm yet has more throughput.

   AI is going to increasingly unmask people and companies who don't care about correct and performant software now that it's become so trivial to guarantee both. It used to at least be expensive and time-consuming and expertise-demanding to do those things.

   1. ashkankiani · 1790097927 · focus · HN ↗

      I think they can be useful for quickly iterating through benchmarks and trying lots of ideas, but they won't come up with them on their own. Also, I'm not sure why, maybe some mean reversion thing, but they will never, ever suggest writing a tool to make their own life easier, get more accurate information, or anything. Once I point it at a tool, it can be ok at using it (I say ok because they seem to skim the help docs, which is truly ironic, considering I seem to read it more thoroughly even though I'm 100x slower at it. I assume this is some token saving system prompt), but they won't suggest it for you.

      This is why I'm not worried about being replaced for now or the forseeable future. For all of the improvements they've made, this part just never seems to change. They could slap another heuristic prompt for the edge case, but eventually it'll revert to the mean again.

      I think there is a way to use LLMs to help with programming, but not when I'm not the driver in the seat writing the tests and deciding the architecture. Also I would never ship code written by them as the final product for anything I care about. Since I, like most people, find reading code to be arduous. The more fun thing to do is to force yourself to rewrite it all, treating the LLM's work as a rough draft.

      1. hombre_fatal · 1790100341 · focus · HN ↗

         > they will never, ever suggest writing a tool to make their own life easier, get more accurate information, or anything

         Make sure you process doesn't depend on anyone reading your mind.

         When I run into things like this, it becomes a one-liner in my instructions/harness or in the canned prompt/skill I use that sets off a process.

         In this case, I instruct agents to proactively build/improve diagnostic tooling if it would help them with their task + if it meets a bar of generalization/reusability (else it should be an ephemeral probe that gets abandoned at the end of the solution).

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