My view, as someone who was flat out "AI is a hype scam" up until around Jan this year. It was hype for a while, and forms of it are still very much hype, but the reality is catching up with the hype.

I.e the reality has so far been ~2 years behind the hype.

I'm not saying I like these companies, or that I think the economics of any of them is sane. Just saying LLM's are capable.

edit. For some context, I only use open weight models these days and rather hope that big closed firms go bust.

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torginus a day ago | parent | next [-]

I was out for 2 weeks, and the resident meat proxies on my team managed to half-destroy the project by doing everything the way AI wanted to, instead of how the company systems work, introduced like half a dozen cross-connections across barriers that should never be crossed, introduced a parallel artifact repo, permissions system, and different build tooling to what the rest use (including what the current project was built with), and managed to create a lot of drama with external teams who refused to work with these new systems.

AI still needs lots of guidance, and might seem like a genius that does everything on its own, until you give it to people who can't guide it and things begin spiraling out of control.

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8by3 a day ago | parent | next [-]

The same could easily have happened pre LLMs (just slower). Its why things like ArchUnit existed, or style guides, or annoying architects who stopped engineers from using latest JS framework pre LLMs, to define high level requirements for software.

I try to avoid justifying my own existence, but its a reason why I think skilled engineers are way more productive using LLM's than person off the street. Because they can confine them. Though there is no technical reason that ability can't be codified.

	▲	torginus a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't think it'd have been likely. First, pre-LLM, people read code 90% of the time and wrote it 10% of the time - so the flow would've been to first understand the exsiting code and figure out how to interact with it, and/or asking others when stuck, rather than just plowing ahead with the favorite set of tools that particular LLM has
	▲	the_af a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> The same could easily have happened pre LLMs (just slower). "Slower" is doing a lot of work there. It's the difference between an engineer or two wrecking havoc doing a major refactor and convincing a manager that it's ok while you're away on vacation, and the same engineers failing to convince the manager because it will take forever, and quietly dropping the project after hitting the first roadblock. "How long is this going to take?": "a week" vs "a quarter" makes a huge difference. Extreme speed is a form of quality; the fear is that it enables bad things to happen.

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8by3 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I've actually been thinking about this issues for a while, that agents are way more successful if they have a decent architect guiding them vs. full vibe.

I've been solo prenuering for the last year so didn't have a lot of data from others but your comment convinced me its a problem worth solving, so I put this together https://vitruvius.8by3.com/

Its hard wip, pushed seconds ago, paint still wet. But the idea is to "enforce" good architectural practices for your agents. Can store constrains and ADRs in git so everyone in a team (everyones agents) can read from the same page.

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hypfer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure, but these are still astroturfing bots, and treating the messages as anything else but that helps them achieve their goals.

They weaponize the HN rules here. Which is frustrating, because one has to break the letter to defend the spirit.

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lavendermon a day ago | parent | next [-]

Interesting that you think I'm a bot

	▲	hypfer a day ago \| parent [-]
		Well that's one option. It could also be someone that is paid. It could be someone who drank the Kool aid. It could be someone financially invested Or it could be a kid that watched too many tech YouTubers. But, fundamentally, that doesn't matter, because functionally it's as described.

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lookimanewacc a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	hypfer a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		We're now at three fresh accounts and one additional greybearded anti AI strawman. ___ Huh, actually, if I look back on my extensive conversations with LLMs and compare those with human conversations, the whole idea of a greybeard memorizing manpages is something they liked to come up with much more than humans do (if at all). The idea of a greybeard kinda died out in normal conversation a while ago. Mostly, at least. Good job on the abliteration I suppose.
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