Comment by andy99
25 days ago
I wish more had been written about the first assertion that using an LLM to code is like gambling and you're always hoping that just one more prompt will get you what you want.
It really captures how little control one has over the process, while simultaneously having the illusion of control.
I don't really believe that code is being made verbose to make more profits. There's probably some element of model providers not prioritizing concise code, but if conciseness while maintaining "quality" was possible is would give one model a sufficient edge over others that I suspect providers would do it.
Agreed, I've been thinking about the first assertion a lot recently as I've been using Cursor to create a react app. I think it's more prevalent in frontend development because it tightens the feedback loop considerably, and the more positive feedback you get, the more conditioned you get to reach for it anytime you need to do anything in code.
I think there's another perverse incentive here - organisations want to produce features/products fast, which LLMs help with, but it comes at the cost of reduced cognitive capabilities/skills in the developers over the longer term as they've given that up through lack of use/practice.
That's not a great argument for talking down their utility for experienced developers, though.
I'm not so sure, I think skills atrophy with disuse no matter what level of experience you have. Like I have around 15 years of experience, but if I stepped away from coding for even just a year a lot of those years of experience will count for nothing.
I don't believe there are perverse incentives yet, right now it's arms race burn money and operate at a loss days. There is no moat only quality and price per token and the leader moves around too quickly. Also Author should really look into Cursor at $20 with unlimited slow requests, I imagine paying per token hurts when it spits out garbage even when you've thought you provided enough context but it wasn't enough.
Someone needs to make a plugin to count lines of discard code and prompts
Something I caught about Andrej Karpathy’s original tweet, was he said “give into the vibes”, and I wonder if he meant that about outcomes too.
I still think the original tweet was tongue-in-cheek and not really meant to be a serious description of how to do things.
> It really captures how little control one has over the process, while simultaneously having the illusion of control.
This is actually a big insight about life, that in some eastern philosophies, you are supposed to arrive to
We love the illusion of control, even though we don’t really have it. Life mostly just unfolds as we experience it
This has certainly been my own experience in life. My step-father was a very studious and responsible person. He worked 30-years from the age of 19 with the state as an HVAC service tech until he retired at 49yo with a full state pension, and then went to work for a private company. His plan was to earn as much as he could until he turned 55, and then retire to live/work on the small farm he and my mother had just purchased. Everything was coming together, his new job placed him in a senior project management position, and gave him a considerable salary compared with the state.
Shortly after he turned 50, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died several months later, following a very painful and difficult attempt to treat it.
In my mind, this kind of thing is the height of tragedy—he did everything right. He exhibited an incredible amount of self-control and deferred his happiness, ensuring that his family and finances were well-cared for and secured, and then having fulfilled his obligations, he was almost immediately robbed of a life that he’d worked so hard to earn.
I experienced a few more object lessons in the same vein myself, namely having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 18, and readjusting my life’s goals to accommodate the prospect of disability. I’m thankfully still churning along under my own capacities, now at 41yo, but MS can be unpredictable, and I find it is necessary to remind myself of this from time to time. I am grateful for every day that I have, and to the extent it’s possible, I try to find nearer-term sources for happiness and fulfillment.
Don’t waste any time planning for more than the next five years (with the obvious exceptions for things like financial planning), as you can’t possible know what’s coming. Even if the unexpected event is a happy one, like an unexpected child or sudden financial windfall, your perspective will almost certainly be dramatically altered 1-2x each decade.
I've experienced this for the first time with a close friend, and it really stays on your mind. There was no reason it had to be him. He didn't roll the dice wrong.
It created a sense of urgency in my own life. You have this idea that you will be the same person until you die of old age, and suddenly you realise that the current year is worth much more than another year two decades from now. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
But just like gambling, there are ways to do it correctly.
Yes, there are the grandmas in a trance vibe-gambling by shoving a bucket of quarters in a slot machine.
But you also have people playing Blackjack and beating the averages by knowing how it's played, maybe having a "feel" for the deck (or counting cards...), and most importantly knowing when to fold and walk away.
Same with LLMs, you need to understand context sizes and prompts and you need to have a feel for when the model is just chasing its own tail or trying to force a "solution" just to please the user.
While I get your point, this also kinda sounds like a gambling addict trying to explain how they're not an addict and how they're losing money the correct way, heh.