Not so long ago I read something on HN which resonated with me: we’re moving into the era that is comparable to car mechanics enthusiasts. You have a previous generation of cars where people just enjoy working on with hand tools, and there’s modern cars where people like to tune with software patches.
From the very start of llms I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with code that was generated for me. Either it’s buggy, it works but I end up losing an evening on some obscure bug, or it’s full of red flags.
My latest hobby project is just in a text editor with markup and that’s it. I’m also done with the augmented assistance in the IDE. I google things I forgot. I constantly read these amazing stories of people vibe-coding some firmware/driver that just works, and honestly I’m starting to question whether I’m reading the posts of some promotional bot.
> The second thing is that using LLMs in a useful way is a skill in itself.
I have to disagree here. People who are really into agentic coding like to say/believe this, but come on, it's not rocket science! You literally ask the agent to do something and it does it, that's it. As long as you use a recent model it will do it really well regardless of how fancy your prompt is. There's no moat here, anyone can do it. Your job will be gone and so will mine.
It very much is a skill. You wont get good results by asking it to "go do X" and walking away from the desk. You have to know how to use it as a tool to:
1) research the task
2) develop a plan the agent can follow to complete the task
3) check the plan for completeness/issues
After a (potentially long) session of investigation and planning _then_ you let it code. Even just being aware of this process is part of the skill involved (then you have to actually get used to doing it effectively).
Ask a human to "build twitter" and walk away and tell me how it goes. Vague requests will never work, no matter how intelligent the person being asked is, because they don't have enough information to give you what you want.
"No no no, when I said build twitter I meant without the character limit!"
Dealing with the situation would mean actually acting in your self interest instead of deferring to a cookie-cutter narrative to justify yourself as an essential meat proxy. Maybe stop feeding your data into the job destroying machine while paying for the privilege? Maybe come up with a better story for management than prompt wispersing, like at least writing your integration code yourself...
chicken-stew · · focus · HN ↗
From the very start of llms I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with code that was generated for me. Either it’s buggy, it works but I end up losing an evening on some obscure bug, or it’s full of red flags.
My latest hobby project is just in a text editor with markup and that’s it. I’m also done with the augmented assistance in the IDE. I google things I forgot. I constantly read these amazing stories of people vibe-coding some firmware/driver that just works, and honestly I’m starting to question whether I’m reading the posts of some promotional bot.
xgb84j · · focus · HN ↗
The second thing is that using LLMs in a useful way is a skill in itself.
i_love_retros · · focus · HN ↗
I have to disagree here. People who are really into agentic coding like to say/believe this, but come on, it's not rocket science! You literally ask the agent to do something and it does it, that's it. As long as you use a recent model it will do it really well regardless of how fancy your prompt is. There's no moat here, anyone can do it. Your job will be gone and so will mine.
mat_b · · focus · HN ↗
After a (potentially long) session of investigation and planning _then_ you let it code. Even just being aware of this process is part of the skill involved (then you have to actually get used to doing it effectively).
lelanthran · · focus · HN ↗
You soon will. If not next year, then maybe the year after, or the year after that.
Whatever value you are providing will evaporate in a few years.
Are you planning on stopping eating in 3 years?
MisterMunchkin · · focus · HN ↗
"No no no, when I said build twitter I meant without the character limit!"
mat_b · · focus · HN ↗
pona-a · · focus · HN ↗
i_love_retros · · focus · HN ↗
but you will!! you absolutely will!