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Comment by j_m_b

17 hours ago

That's what is nice about LLMs. You CAN do these things now!

I'd be pretty careful with this kind of thing. My friend vibe coded something similar and it had some very unexpected real world bugs like instantly locking the engine, cranking the engine to 100 in a second and burning the motor out, etc. So something like an escooter that you might ride across a busy road may not be the best use of vibe coding.

  • You can use an LLM but you have the provide the spec of the motor and the surrounding hardware apparatus. Not every motor is the same.

Maybe I'm out of touch with the times, but I wouldn't feel safe riding an e-scooter with custom vibe coded firmware.

  • What make you think it is vibe coded? There is no mention of genAI being used, and the methodology looks more consistent with hand-written code he actually understands.

  • You don't have to fully vibe code it. Most of this stuff doesn't take massive brains, it is just super tedious - especially the reverse engineering. I've never really had the patience for that (except one USB devices that I did reverse engineer when I was younger). AI really helps with the tedium.

  • If it is coded in safe Rust, why not ?

    • Safe rust does not mean correct logic; best not conflate the two.

      You could have perfectly safe rust that disables brakes above a certain speed, inverts steering by wire, or adjusts the charging parameters, for example (depending on addressable capabilities).

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No, you can’t. Just because you can pull the lever on an LLM enough times and get something that works doesn’t mean you’ve done the work. Doing the work implies learning and transferable skills, none of which you get by prompting an LLM.

  • Yes they can. At the end of the day, whether the food was made in a microwave oven or by a Michelin starred chef, the user is fed. Doing the work means that the work happened. Anything else is secondary.

    • A large part of this project was my personal learning. Ultimately I didn't improve the functionality of the device by a large margin; instead I learned a lot about how these devices are built. If I'd let Claude write replacent firmware it would've all been for naught.

    • A microwave just cooks your input ingredients and if you use non microwave safe containers or food that is not suitable for it, you get edible but hazardous food.

      Garbage in, Garbage out. There are minimum expectations on user like ability to source proper materials, use them correctly and an ability to verify/check the result for problems. More important if it's something you want to eat or ride!

    • You wouldn't call someone who puts food in a microwave a chef, would you? And you wouldn't say that putting food in the microwave is the same thing as cooking a Michelin star meal. These are different things.

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So you're still not brainy enough to do it, but the LLM can.

I mean. Sort of? The LLM won't go into checking random USB-C connections with an oscilloscope - it doesn't have hands, for one.