Comment by vFunct
4 days ago
> We're in a transition phase today where agents need special guidance to understand a codebase that go beyond what humans need. Before long, I don't think they will.
This isn't guaranteed. Just like we will never have fully self-driving cars, we likely won't have fully human quality coders.
Right now AI coders are going to be another tool in the tool bucket.
I don't think the bar here is a human level coder, I think the bar is an LLM which reads and follows the README.md.
If we're otherwise assuming it reads and follows an AGENTS.md file, then following the README.md should be within reach.
I think our task is to ensure that our README.md is suitable for any developer to onboard into the codebase. We can then measure our LLMs (and perhaps our own documentation) by if that guidance is followed.
Have you taken a Waymo?
Waymo uses a bespoke 3D data representation of the SF roads, does it not? The self-driving car equivalent of an AGENTS.md file.
The limited self-driving cars, with a remote human operator? no, I never have.
This rather underplays the experience of riding a Waymo. Where it works, it works: you get in and it takes you to the place, no human intervention required at any point.
By analogy, the first hands-off coding agents may be like that: they may not work for everything, but where they do, they could work without human intervention.
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This is a rather dismissive response considering the progress they’ve made over the past few years. The other commenter is correct that they use highly detailed maps but you are incorrect as they do not have a remote human operator.
I find them more enjoyable than Uber. They’ve already surpassed Lyft in SF ridership and soon they will take the crown from Uber.
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> Just like we will never have fully self-driving cars, we likely won't have fully human quality coders.
“Never is a long time...and none of us lives to see its length.” Elizabeth Yates, A Place for Peter (Mountain Born, #3)
“Never is an awfully long time.” J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan