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NilMostChill

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1. I mean, yes ? the average farm worker is probably capable of writing a sentence similar to the one you just did and sicking it a prompt.

Unless you mean without LLM assistance, then no.

2. I've no idea, i haven't touched c++ in an age, if i got back up to speed then possibly.

3. To learn how to program in c++ again, figure out best practices and then write the code? A while probably.

But then i'd have to to that anyway to be able to spot any problems in the code and know what to test.

because i'm for sure not putting code out there that i don't understand, especially when the code has been generated by a non-deterministic system prone to subtle hallucinations.

I'm not saying LLM's have no uses, they do some things fine, inflating the capabilities of a tool because of hype isn't a viable mid to long term strategy.

LLM's are poor(but improving in some ways) at consistent multiple-boundary complexity.

My issue wasn't with the statement itself, just that is was very broad, hence my reply.

LLMs can assist with all of those steps, potentially, if you use them for the things they are suited for and have a plan for maintaining quality and consistency beyond "let the LLM's review and test it for me", i'd consider that professional negligence given the current SOTA.

The assistance should be subject an accurate cost/benefit analysis before implying the assistance is worthwhile, was my point.

TL;DR;

If it's working for you, great, but presenting it like it's a general direct replacement for development teams is disingenuous.

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Looks like we just have different expectations: i don't want to micromanage my coding agents any more than i micromanage the developers i work with as a product manager. If the output does what it is supposed to do, and the software is maintainable and extendable by following certain best practices, i'm happy. And i expect that goes for most business people.

None of what i said implied any expectations of the process of using the tools, but if you've found something that works for you that's good.

On the subject of maintainability and extension, that is usually bound to the level of complexity of the project and the increase in requirements is not generally linear.

I agree, many business people would love what you've described, very few are getting it.

And in practice i have more control with a coding agent than with developers as i can iterate over ideas quickly: "build this idea", "no change this", "remove this and replace it with this". Within an hour you can quickly iterate an idea into something that works well. With developers this would have taken days if not more. And they would've complained i need to better prepare my requirements.

Up to a point, yes.

If your application of this methodology works well enough before you hit the limitations of the tooling, that's great.

There is , however, a threshold of complexity where this starts to break down, this threshold can be mitigated somewhat with experience and a better understanding on how to utilise the tooling, but it still exists (currently).

Once you reach this threshold the approaches you are talking about start to work less effectively and even actively hinder progress.

There are techniques and approaches to software development that can further push this threshold out, but then you're getting into the territory of having to know enough to be able to instruct the LLM to use these approaches.

I think i have enough control.

This is probably just a disagreement about the term "control", so we can agree to disagree on that one i suppose.

The rest of the reply doesn't really relate to any of the points i mentioned.

That it's possible to successfully use the tool to achieve your goals wasn't in dispute.

I'll try to narrow it down:

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You are not a victim at the mercy of your LLM.

Yes, you absolutely are, it's how they work.

As i said, you can suggest guidelines and directions but it's not guaranteed they'll be adhered to.

To be clear , this also applies to people as well.

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Directing an LLM (or LLM based orchestration system) is not the same as directing a team of people.

The "interface" is similar in that you provide instructions and guidelines and receive an attempt at the wanted outcome.

However, the underlying mechanisms of how they work are so different that the analogy you were trying to use doesn't make sense.

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Again, LLM's can be useful tools, but presenting them as something they aren't only serves to muddy the waters of understanding how best to use them.

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As an aside, IMO, the sketchy salesmen approach to over-promising on features and obscuring the the limitations will do great harm to the adoption of LLM's in the medium to long term.

The misrepresentation of terminology is also contributing to this.

The term AI is intentionally being used to attribute a level of reasoning and problem solving capability beyond what actually exists in these systems.

You have a lot of control over what the LLM creates.

No, you don't, you have "influence" or "suggestion".

You can absolutely narrow down the probability ranges of what is produced , but there is no guarantee that it will stick to your guidelines.

So far, at least, it's just not how they work.

You don't have 100% control over what your LLM devs are doing, but more than you think. Just like normal managers don't micromanage every action of their team.

This overlooks the role of actual reasoning/interpretation that is found when dealing with actual people.

While it might seem like directing an LLM is similar in practice to managing a team of people, the underlying mechanisms are not the same.

If you analyse based on comparisons between those two approaches, without understanding the fundamental differences in what's happening beneath the surface, then any conclusions drawn will be flawed.

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I'm not against LLM's, i'm against using them poorly and presenting them as something they are not.

Isn't the whole point of amphetamine based treatement for ADHD to correct(or beneficially alter, depending on your point of view) an non-standard brain chemistry?

AFAIK some neurodivergent brains deal with amphetamines differently and the baseline levels of chemical affected by amphetamines is different.

Wear and tear might be a thing, i don't know, but the analogy of putting NO2 in their car feels a bit off.

It'd be more like finally putting premium unleaded in your car after years of "back of the lorry" pseudo-unleaded.

Depends on how metaphorical and/or political you want to get.

Arguably books could be considered warning waystones, but that's a stretch in this context.

Physical monuments though, we have loads, lots of war memorials are/were intended as warning about the cost of war.

Auschwitz-Birkenau being left as as it is could be considered another.

If you want to get really close to similar intentions there are the long term nuclear waste warnings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin...

A bit more esoteric (and less warningy) and you get the signals we send in to space intentionally as a time-capsule/marker for potential alien contact.

Indeed, there are lots of methods, but i was specifically thinking of the possibility of a method an isolated AI might feasibly figure out with only the tools it has easily available to it.

But as someone said earlier, the real interesting part is when/if they start figuring out novel concepts we as humans haven't even considered.

There is an argument to be made that it's good training, like coding kata's just with the end to end.

If you're looking to make a living off of it, the training argument only works if you then go on to used the trained skills though.

In this instance, if the numbers provided are to be believed they made bank.

i'm seeing a six figure sale on a five figure investment, among others.

Though i suspect, like is usually it, that the provided cost numbers are much higher in reality when factoring in time and opportunity cost etc.

There's a comic out right now positing that a sufficiently intelligent AI with appropriate access could use imperceptible (to us) vibrations from mechanical computing parts like spinning rust HDD's etc.

It's a throwaway mechanic in the comic, but it seems plausible.

In certain places the power companies are/were passing time information throughout the whole grid - https://www.nist.gov/publications/time-and-frequency-electri...

That's generally how it is with opinionated frameworks (and i use that term as a literal, as opposed to agnostic), you do the thing in the way expected or it's a fight.

Svelte is one of the less opinionated ones i've used but it does still have it's eccentricities.

Woke as a pejorative is a big red flag for a lot of people btw, especially here, you're going to get significantly less positive interactions by starting your text with the textual equivalent of a red baseball cap.

LLMs in their current state have integrated into the workflows for many, many IT roles. They'll never be niche, unless governing bodies come together to kill them.

That is an exaggeration, it is integrated into some workflows, usually in a provisional manner while the full implications of such integrations are assessed for viability in the mid to long term.

At least in the fields of which i have first hand knowledge.

Straw man argument - this is in no way a metric for validating the power of LLMs as a tool for IT roles. Can you not find open source code bases that leverage LLMS because you haven't looked, or because you can't tell the difference between human and LLM code?

Straw man rebuttal, presenting an imaginary position in which this statement is doesn't apply doesn't invalidate the statement as a whole.

As I said, you haven't been paying attention.

Or alternatively you've been paying attention to a selective subset of your specific industry and have made wide extrapolations based on that.

Denialism - the practice of denying the existence, truth, or validity of something despite proof or strong evidence that it is real, true, or valid

What's the one where you claim strong proof or evidence while only providing anecdotal "trust me bro" ?

The author definitely saw it as a targeted attack that, when it failed, caused the attacker to switch tactics to intentionally cause harm.

Saying "someone or something" is generic and also accurate it doesn't explicitly imply a specific person or targeting, though I'll concede it could be interpreted that way.

As interesting a side conversation as this is it isn't my original point.

As i said in my original reply:

It being common doesn't mean it's OK, it also doesn't mean people aren't allowed to be upset by it.

"You probably need to calm down a bit" is dismissive and condescending.

It's entirely possible to explain context to someone without being dismissive of their feelings on the subject.

None of what i said had anything to do with the nature of the attack, personal or otherwise.

The author seems to be taking it a bit personally but they don't seem to be implying an attack targeted to them exclusively as much as an attack that they experienced personally but it could be either i suppose.

The blog post was, "this is a thing that happened, followed by another thing i think was related, i am upset, here is why"

Your response was "this is common, suck it up"

The post itself doesn't mention any sort of persecution or targeted attack.

What you said was dismissive and condescending, being technically correct about things that are unrelated doesn't negate that.

It being common doesn't mean it's OK, it also doesn't mean people aren't allowed to be upset by it.

Casual racism and bigotry are common, "You probably need to calm down a bit" is dismissive and condescending.

I'm aware of my own perspective, i don't generally crusade against whatever flavour of machine learning is being pushed currently.

I was just pointing out that arguing against crusading by using an argument (or analogies) that leaves out half of the salient context could be considered disingenuous.

The difference between:

You're using it incorrectly

vs

Of the ones that are fit for a particular purpose, they can work well if used correctly.

Perhaps i'm just nitpicking.

I'm not who you were asking but i can provide a specific encroachment example.

The anti-protest law update that was passed over the last few years specifically (using the law) curbs the ability to protest freely in public spaces.

It's technically lawful and curbs expression from what it was previously, the same way they are doing it in general, by adding additional laws (or clauses to existing laws) that are intentionally vague so they can make it fit whatever definition they like after the fact.

I'm aware that the legal system is partly based on judicial interpretation etc, but these are so much more vague than previously.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with it, it still curbs freedoms.

incidentally, i think it might have recently been overturned (or has at least been challenged successfully) but the point is , the government pulled some legal shenanigans to curb expression.

another example of the vagueness would be IR35 legislation, again, not debating the pro's and cons, just saying the law is purposely vague when actual guidelines could be provided.

It sounds interesting, but its still just moving the problem surface elsewhere.

Bringing model definition and usage closer to the storage layer thereby reducing the need for translation and transport might cut down on the need for repeated and variant definitions across layers but it doesn't remove the other issues related to data storage.

There will need to be a system for storage and that will have to deal with transactional state management as well as consistency schemes, having that in an actor layer that is shared with other parts of the system might solve some issues, but it'd need to be really carefully managed so as not to inflict the solutions to those problems on the other parts of the system using the same transport mechanisms.

i dislike javascript with a passion but I'd be down for using a wasm based system that does what you say, my skepticism is usually just me shouting at clouds so it'd be interesting to see a working model.

If you're putting advanced feature support into a db engine , you're probably also putting in semi-competent debugging support (at least i'd hope so).

But again, at that point you're really just moving the surface rather than addressing the issues.

That's....certainly a take.

it hurts that it's not exactly wrong.

but i don't think it's 100% right either, there are some things that you just can't do reliably, in current db engines at least.

As soon as you start baking this kind of support in to the db all you have if a db engine that has all the other bits stuffed in it.

They'll still have most of the issues you describe, it'll just be all in the "db layer" of the engine.

I will defer to your superior knowledge of his actual writing, i haven't read them, i was referring purely to your reply to the statement provided.

The quote mentioned faith and philosophy by name, if the actual writings are more about religion than faith then i retract my statement.

To be clear, i'm not religious nor do i have much in the way of faith.

I just don't think faith and philosophy are mutually exclusive.

My impression of organised religion is unfavourable so I'm almost certainly biased in my perspective of religion being the reason faith gets such a bad reputation.

Perhaps you're conflating faith with religion.

Faith being "confidence, trust or belief in a thing , person or concept, sometimes in the absence of proof"

Not to be confused with "blind faith" which is the above but with wilful ignorance or dismissal of proof that contradicts the aspect of the faith.

Also not to be confused with "religion" which is the social construct or organisation around a central faith.

You can have faith without religion, but you can't generally have a religion without faith.

That's a possibility for me, sure, but your original reply was basically:

"a solution is, everybody should be able to do everything, that way we don't have to do any actual skill based resource management because everyone is interchangeable"

with some vague allusion to "if they can't do everything then they probably aren't good at their job"

My reply was that i don't think that everyone being able to do everything is a good solution to what i think should be a skill resource management problem.

There are people who have the time, ability and resources to pick up (and more crucially , stay up to date with) all the disciplines, i don't think that should be a *requirement* and i don't think making it one is a good way of doing things in most circumstances.