> "ooh it would be cool if" had to answer to "yeah but it'll take too long". Now, it's more like, "how important is that really?" to stupid ideas that never would have seen the light of day before.
My answer was it to "ooh it would be cool if" has always to build a PoC of the thing or a MVP, then I can flesh it out when I need more features. Sometimes a web app can be a single PHP script, and a cli command can be as simple as a single file C program. Or using tkinter with python for GUI.
The answer to "ooh it would be cool if I can travel fast" is not "yeah but it'll take too long to build a car". It's "let's build a kick scooter first".
> yes, being able to bang out leetcode hard from head on an interview on paper matters so much... oh wait. it does not.
That's about reciting standard data structures like stack and queues. I think parent is talking more about the design of primitives for the domain of the software. That requires creativity and insight.
That reminds me of something on my last job. Before AI, we had not so good communication, but if we had a question, the person on the other end will try to give you a passable answer. After AI, everyone seems to be a proxy for the LLM tools they're using and any misleading statement you point out is answered by "Why don't you use $llm_tool to check it out?".
> For people without sufficient clarity I imagine it amplifies that lack of clarity, which is where it is factually unproductive while it still ‘seem’ to be productive
Convenient way of saying "you're holding it wrong".
I get flamed here whenever I say it's a skill issue, but it absolutely is. Not everyone has what it takes to be a successful CTO but that's the role you play if have 20 agents working on something you designed. I see you got downvoted too.
It would be a skill issue if someone would show they’re able to use it to produce good software while showcasing that it’s due to their mastery. Till this day, I don’t think there’s any such demonstration. Any defects of the technology is always blamed on skill issue.
There's a ton of people out there in various unknown companies grinding away and managing a reasonable number of well-prompted, parallel agents with decent CI and deployment strategy making judicious use of human review.
But that's boring and you can't build a YouTube audience around it.
Have you tried live programming (smalltalk, LISP)? Or a proper Edit-Compile-Run cycle with a good editor?
A lot of people are bashing old practices, but from y standpoint, it always seems like a lack of proper (usage of) tooling to streamline the coding phase of building software.
Dear sir, I appreciate the help but, as I mentioned, I've been around since the Assembly days... Been there, done that. I currently have a crazy efficient Edit-Compile-Run setup and a great VSCode personal config, all of which were made a lot more crazy efficient with Codex.
LISP has been around since 1959. To the point: the proclaimed advantage of operating at new levels of "abstraction" is not a novel contribution of LLMs to coding.
Put another way: live coding, meta programming, high level abstraction, all have been possible for some 60 years now. Two generations! We don't need the monstrous amounts of accidental complexity involved in running dozens of GB in RAM for LLMs and all the "harness" apparatus, we have had from the right tooling for almost a century (!) now.
Learning ML, there was a high emphasis on the error part of things as most of the course was on minimizing errors. After ChatGPT, there is a weird anthropomorphization going on, where it's all about hallucinations, alignment and what not.
We have something that is statistical in nature so there should never been any expectation of error-free results/actions. The value has always been about discerning trends or the cost of errors being way lower than any good result.
> Much of Hacker News seems to be incapable of understanding the average user doesn't care about memory use at all, beyond a few extreme examples.
They don't care, but they care about their computer being slow because of swapping. While they can't identify the cause and link it to the various Electron apps they're using (Teams, Slack,...) it's obvious for the tech-aware person they complain to.
That's true, but greater efficiency isn't going to sell more software if the users don't know they need it.
At some level in your management chain there's someone who cares about selling more software above all else, and it's your job to do what they want.
I don't like it either, but I've fought against it for too long to my own detriment. I think ICs have a responsibility to deliver quality software regardless of external pressures, but there's only so much you have time to do.
Also they bloated it to death. VSCodium gets you the same solid core app without the oodles and oodles of useless "features" Microsoft has bolted to it.
> it is in the product and organizational challenges of keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync.
They're two different platforms where the capabilities and UI patterns differs, so I don't see why they should be in sync. The web platform is not in sync with them. And using native features can give you a nice boost in maintenance and speed, unlike React Native where you always needs to align library semantics.
The capabilities of Android and iOS don't meaningfully differ for the purposes of Shopify; Shopify doesn't need LIDAR. Most large brands throw the UI design patterns of the platforms out the window in favor of their own UI guidelines.
Saying the web platform is not in sync with mobile is not a relevant metaphor to justify why Android and iOS should be considered separately.
They vary in terms of architectural patterns and ui widgets. RN tries to prevent a single interface, but you quickly reach the point where it becomes a pain. You can use Expo to help, but their libraries are unstable.
It's useful when starting a thread of research of research as new tabs will be opened to the right (Ctrl+Clicking a link). So after it's done, close to the right can be quite useful.
My answer was it to "ooh it would be cool if" has always to build a PoC of the thing or a MVP, then I can flesh it out when I need more features. Sometimes a web app can be a single PHP script, and a cli command can be as simple as a single file C program. Or using tkinter with python for GUI.
The answer to "ooh it would be cool if I can travel fast" is not "yeah but it'll take too long to build a car". It's "let's build a kick scooter first".
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