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Comments (78)

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  zmmmmm
  The tendency to over-engineer and over-build is one of the main challenges I'm seeing. When it comes for free, why not build a class hierarchy of 8 classes each with a 200 line unit test? Something I might have previously thought really hard to minimalise down to 30 lines is now bloated out to hundreds or even thousands.Previously, pretty much everyone all agreed on YAGNI and KISS because code was so expensive to create and more expensive to maintain. Now the code generation is "free" - but at a design level, YAGNI and KISS do still matter. But they are enforced now only by sheer will power. You have to actively restrain the code from being created if you don't want it. Perfectly good code - I can't even fault it. I just know, if it doesn't need to exist yet, it's a mistake to create it earlier than needed.
• osmukka
  Superhuman intelligence is much easier for an LLM to achieve if humans are made dumber first.
• tra3
  Great post. I particularly like the 4 column pr view idea. I’ve built something similar to review speckit specs. The scaffolding to ensure that code actually works makes sense too.There’s one thing that’s bothering me though — all of these have us consuming what LLMs produce. I learned and internalized how things worked by building systems. At least within the constraints of the abstractions I was using. This makes me think of TikTok and shorts. Everybody is just watching. Maybe that’s not charitable though. Maybe the abstraction has now changed from an “os/gui/event loop” to “llm” and the rest is just accidental complexity.
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  mixedbit
  Maybe things will evolve into projects having a well-defined, hard boundary between agents generated code and human generated code. Where agents generated code is strictly separated from human engineered code and and can call only a strictly defined set of APIs designed by humans.Think of platforms like Shopify. Shopify allows huge number of external users to write code customizing their web shops. But Shopify engineers do not need to review and understand the users' code, because there is a boundary which limits what the external code can do. The external code can be A Big Ball of Mud without making the whole platform a A Big Ball of Mud.
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  gus_massa
  >> A more serious irony is that the automatic control system has been put in place because it can do the job better than the operator, yet the operator is being asked to monitor that it is working effectively.Automatic control is good for standard case, and the expected errors. For weird cases, for now humans are better to detect them and press the big red button.
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  ashishmax31
  i sometimes wonder how all carpenters or music producers in the world would react if tomorrow a magic box arrives where they type-in/dictate what they want and voila... out comes a table/composition.. Will the worlds music producers and carpenters just "accept" this new magic genie? I would hope they wont. Yet here we are as software engineers...ready to surrender our craft to mere "prompts" with reckless abandon.
• hypfer
  The most difficult part of LLMs and agents seems to be - surprisingly - humans.Specifically, humans and their dysfunctions. Their fragility. Their ego tied to stuff.This is an excellent post/reflection on the topic of solo LLM use. The only gap I see is that it assumes that one works on something alone and not in a team. Though, that might be a different essay in itself.Edit: Turns out that footnote 3 actually mentions that already. Nice. Good post
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  lioeters
  "Yup, looks good to me!" said the human reviewing thousands of lines of generated code everyday.This has become common now, and I've seen it ruin large projects until nobody understands the codebase full of verbose nonsensical code and comments. It becomes impossible to further develop the project without AI. Contributors not using AI for any reason are all leaving because no one enjoys working with mindless robots (and humans) as colleagues. It's demeaning and devaluing their labor and humanity. They're not getting "left behind", they are leaving the madness of crowds behind.> ..the possibility of runaway dynamics: once a critical threshold is crossed, small increases in adoption can trigger rapid population-level shifts toward *persistent dependence, with abrupt losses in cognitive competence*.We can all see it happening. As this technology permeates society, the challenge to maintain control, coherence, and quality will become greater and ever more serious - for example, AI in healthcare, military, management and governance.
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  wanderingmind
  Cognitive surrender is intellectually convenient. As humans, its instinctive for us to chose convenience: path of least resistance. The tyranny of convenience is what drives most economic activity today, especially the gig economy[1]. Unless there are structural frameworks put in place to resist convenience (exams in schools), nature will always entice to chose the path of least resistance[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-co...
• gosen
  What an amazing article! It's really hard to find the balance between "ship faster, fix later because AI will help" and "efficient thoughtful engineering" these days. The world is kind of pushing everybody to work faster because "with AI you're more efficient" and it's also pushing to surrender and just accept it from time to time. Maybe that's occasional thoughtful surrender mentioned in the article, or it's just lack of energy to resist to it at that point.The article is inspiring though, I have more motivation to work on my thinking process and my engineering setup (and vibe limit haha) to be more thoughtful, thank you.
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  samuell
  Related: The cost of cognitive debt:https://epiq.sh/blog/cost-of-cognitive-debt.html
• bheadmaster
  I know I've cognitively surrendered when my first instinct is to ask AI to summarize the article.I am losing more of what little focus I've had every day.
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  skybrian
  Making a quick prototype is probably the best way to find out if an idea is worth keeping. Vibe-coding it and then throwing it away seems like a good way to go?
• totetsu
  I am often thinking recently of the littel loop diagrams from the "The Capability Trap" paper. We need to keep a loop reinvesting into our own Human capability in anything we're doing.
• caporaltito
  Excellent article.
• bbeonx
  Maybe it's because I'm not working in the workforce (grad student), but I find my best workflow is to fight and argue with my agents throughout the entire process. Often times, since the agent is such a sycophant, I end up arguing with myself...I actually find this useful because it gets me to think about the other side of a problem and poke holes in it. This is not fast, but it is effective.
• ur-whale
  > Resisting Cognitive SurrenderThe economics of the whole affair unfortunately point squarely in the opposite direction.
• anal_reactor
  I simply don't care. As a student I thought that the mythical production code is perfect and error-free, but in reality 99% of systems are a hot potato game sprinkled with politics where you don't want the grenade to explode in your hands.I mean, if the management doesn't see value in decent engineering, then who am I to butt myself into the conversation?
• sjdh76
  [dead]
• jdw64
  [dead]
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  augment_me
  This is copium that is gone with the wind when the models perform up to the level of standard that the user requires. I'll give the author 6 months before they feel like its okay to just send it.Karpathy had the same trajectory. Primeagean had the same trajectory. I think in the end everyone except for Jonathan Blow will have the same trajectory