I’m confused how LLM code is so different from open source code, from the perspective of the developer.
Like if someone gave you a magic wand that let you conjure a mature open source library that did most of what you needed for your project, that would be amazing right? Would you refuse to use it because you miss writing your own database or API framework? Or would you just get to build way more ambitious things?
Software is already stitching a bunch of things together in most cases, why not stitch together things made by a machine instead of by an open source developer? What percent of developers primarily work on bare metal algorithms? .0001%? Everything else is stitching together existing pieces at some level of abstraction.
The real difference seems to be the non-determinism, not that the code is produced automatically. And I think a lot of the work right now that people don’t like seems to be people dealing with the non-determinism, not that so much code can now get generated.
I have read accounts of people have similar freak outs about higher level languages, object oriented programming and web services, and all of those just made more demand for software because the potential of software has not nearly been reached. I wonder if the extreme growth of the field has resulted in most people feeling like those huge changes that reduced the amount of code that had to be written per unit of functionality have been around since the dawn of time, and now that another level of code generation has been reached it’s the end of the world (again).
Well cause I don't really care about the code so much as I care that there's someone or some group maintaining it. You've never looked at the last commit time when you want to include some library in your project? I need proof of some buy-in from someone else. That someone is putting their time on the line. Otherwise I know using that package is gonna cost more time than its worth.
If I wanted a pyramid, I'd want to build it out of stone blocks and be sure that each block is actually stone. I wouldn't want to get halfway and find out that they were actually fragile.
Trusted engineers (of open source projects) can deliver me stone, both the authors and the community (often >100,000 devs) have checked that a specific block is stone and can bear the load.
AI is proven to output all sorts of random stuff. Sometimes a pebble, sometimes foam. It almost always looks like stone to most analysis. However as soon as it's load bearing it's likely to crumble.
Agentic agents have a habit of rebuilding the pyramid and randomly replacing stone blocks with "something else" but we don't know what just yet.
pfannkuchen · · focus · HN ↗
Like if someone gave you a magic wand that let you conjure a mature open source library that did most of what you needed for your project, that would be amazing right? Would you refuse to use it because you miss writing your own database or API framework? Or would you just get to build way more ambitious things?
Software is already stitching a bunch of things together in most cases, why not stitch together things made by a machine instead of by an open source developer? What percent of developers primarily work on bare metal algorithms? .0001%? Everything else is stitching together existing pieces at some level of abstraction.
The real difference seems to be the non-determinism, not that the code is produced automatically. And I think a lot of the work right now that people don’t like seems to be people dealing with the non-determinism, not that so much code can now get generated.
I have read accounts of people have similar freak outs about higher level languages, object oriented programming and web services, and all of those just made more demand for software because the potential of software has not nearly been reached. I wonder if the extreme growth of the field has resulted in most people feeling like those huge changes that reduced the amount of code that had to be written per unit of functionality have been around since the dawn of time, and now that another level of code generation has been reached it’s the end of the world (again).
abejfehr · · focus · HN ↗
sejje · · focus · HN ↗
CoolestBeans · · focus · HN ↗
pfannkuchen · · focus · HN ↗
gridspy · · focus · HN ↗
Trusted engineers (of open source projects) can deliver me stone, both the authors and the community (often >100,000 devs) have checked that a specific block is stone and can bear the load.
AI is proven to output all sorts of random stuff. Sometimes a pebble, sometimes foam. It almost always looks like stone to most analysis. However as soon as it's load bearing it's likely to crumble.
Agentic agents have a habit of rebuilding the pyramid and randomly replacing stone blocks with "something else" but we don't know what just yet.