Posted by domhudson 21 hours ago
I’m basing that idea on custom functions I give Claude where I designate the style in the required parameters. Example:
“””
@pyrepl(code_golf=True, output=CSV)
//END
“””
The “//END” is a special terminator I use for halting the response. Claude runs code between the tags. The difference in code is incredible. No banners, comments, fluff, print(“=“*70), or any other nonsense, and the code is tight and compact. The parameters do nothing, Claude just outputs them as part of required syntax and it dictates the style purely because it output them.
It's bad enough how many false diagnoses and drugs for these conditions are handed out to drug seekers, but potential poisoning of the well on how LLMs handle this information going forward could be extremely disruptive to people who have real daily living issues instead of "10xing productivity."
A: Devs with an online presence stop using Anthropic models
B: Anthropic catches up to OpenAI in terms of per-token efficiency, and average token total for final-output
We will continue to see posts such as this generate lots of interaction. This is not a skill to stop "coding agents" from burying the answer. This is a skill to stop coding agents backed by models which have a tendency to bury answers, from burying the answer. Stop trying to patch the downstream behavior, and look at the root cause.
Longterm, I believe my total output would be higher working with minimal AI when you consider the impact to motivation and how long I anticipate staying with the company.
That makes sense. The increased theoretical output certainly makes it tempting to squeeze the developers for all they are and to keep testing how close deadlines can be made. But of course, to what end? A lot of dev work, probably most of it if we are being honest beyond building the initial product-market fit function, doesn't really impact sales at all, and sometimes too much can even hurt sales. And as you say you hit a point where this burns out your talent and makes them seek greener pastures.
Factory sort of thinking towards a job that is not really analogous to a factory anyhow. I'm not saying dev work is one of those 'bullshit jobs', but lets be honest about the job and its role in the business model. Your customers are probably going to be there all the same if you fix the bug today or next month, and you also won't get more customers fixing the bug today vs next month. Feature shipment might be a little different but even then it would take the right feature and the right customer for that one function to really drive the needle in sales compared to being lost in the changelog, and that isn't what a coding model solves for you after all.
"Tersely, what are today's headlines?"
I admit I don't personally orchestrate agents, but I imagine something like this would work:
"Tersely, write up plans for agents to implement this feature. Begin each of your agent instructions with 'Tersely,'."
I guess in addition to terse wording you'd get terse code? Which ain't such a bad thing.