I'm sorry, but you still have to think

Posted by drogus 8 hours ago

I'm sorry, but you still have to think(itsallaboutthebit.com)

282 points | 119 commentspage 2

nicfio 2 hours ago|

LLMs produce code faster than humans are able to check it. Today's systems are able to generate thousands of lines of code per day, no human team would be able to keep up with them. The problem, in my opinion, is the way LLMs are used. An LLM reasons and makes mistakes according to the logic it was created with, but different LLMs reason and make mistakes in different ways. I'll give an example: take 2 black boxes, each one with 2 inputs and 1 output. Inside, the boxes work in a different way: with the same inputs the outputs are different. The real key is to use the method of adversarial development: this reduces to a minimum (even if it doesn't eliminate completely) the possibility of errors. So to humans the task of checking the output, and to have quality output you need to spend, and a lot, at least 2 frontier LLMs. But the question is: is quality as a goal an expense or an investment?

sublinear 2 hours ago|

"Quality", as you're referring to it, is often a strict requirement expected and enforced by regulation and contracts.

In the past, I could have just easily said that there's more code out there online than I could ever hope to write. There's simply no value in gluing that code together mindlessly or even probabilistically. All the value of code is in gluing it together intentionally as an organization. The value is in knowing the precise results including all side effects.

Let's call this type of AI development what it really is. It's an attempt to jiggle the wrong key in the door. You're trying to circumvent existing standards for profit and then launder blame for it.

stephbook 4 hours ago||

With all these ports, I always wonder: Who implements new features, and in which code base?

It's easy to port a codebase (at least, if you have automated tests), but once you've done that, do you

- Implement features in the old code and port again?

- Implement them in the new, unfamiliar codebase?

- Just write a Jira ticket and let the agent YOLO it?

bocklund 3 hours ago|

I'm struggling with this with an open source project I work on (that has users). I have a port that passes all the tests, but there's enough code that it's hard to review that the LLM didn't change implicit design decisions or implement things in an unmaintainble way. It not clear to me how to build confidence to switch over and implement new stuff and leave the old one behind.

tomrod 5 hours ago||

Informative thought process here. Pre-committing benchmarks to measure real efficiency gains might have helped, but hands-off complex rewrites are still not shovel ready.

rob74 4 hours ago|

> hands-off complex rewrites are still not shovel ready

...which is a bit disappointing, actually. I mean, if you give an AI agent the complete code for a working application (ideally including tests), it should be able to translate it into an equivalent application in another language. I can understand if it makes mistakes because of ambiguous or incomplete prompts etc., but for this task you shouldn't even need a prompt, any information it might need is right there in the code?

CoolestBeans 4 hours ago||

Agreed. You would expect this to be a task that AI has a massive advantage over humans as it has both the testing suite to keep it on track and has the source implementation to reference. The classic failure case for agents is that as the task increases in complexity, it requires more steps to complete. With each step there's a chance for error. As errors accumulate, they become more likely. With verification functions, like test suites or comparison to some source, the agent is more likely to catch errors and recover.

So porting should be perfect conditions for an AI agent. It has the testing suite. It has the original implementation. Hell, it can A/B the original with its working copy and attach the original to a debugger.

So yeah I dunno. I guess despite some people's rhetoric on this site we shouldn't underestimate how difficult these tasks are "in the real world" (as opposed to like a game port which doesn't have real money on the line so far). And it is kind of a miracle these tools can even get in the ballpark and fool a lot of people.

softwaredoug 3 hours ago||

These articles IMO suffer from good data. It seems we could probably at this point study open source projects longitudinally and see what we learn depending on their AI policies. Are there patterns in stability? Bugginess? Performance? Readability? Etc.

tiemster 3 hours ago||

Or as someone in 2025 said..."it's better to be competent".

tediousgraffit1 2 hours ago|

came here looking for someone to point this out. the flip from "it's more fun to be competent" to "just let the machine do it for you" has told me everything I ever need to know about DHH. The man has no principles.

duncangh 3 hours ago||

My preference is to not think, then act and then perpetually think about what I should have done instead

Waterluvian 3 hours ago|

It’s easier to beg for forgiveness than figure out the right thing to do first. Unless you’re going to the moon.

Tractor8626 2 hours ago||

I agree what you have to think. But example is kind bad.

We got strictly better version of application for cheap. What is there even to complain about?

dsjoerg 2 hours ago|

When you read the article you’ll see it gives numerous examples. Eg “The Rust version doesn't maintain 100% backwards compatibility, for example it drops the CSRF token so that caching is easier”

wuhhh 4 hours ago||

Really appreciate the time taken to dig into this with solid improvements to boot, great work

royal__ 3 hours ago||

"If you looked at the code, and yeah, I know, we should not be reading code anymore"

I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm, but it's also a major factor in what differentiated slop from non-slop AI work: did a developer actually take the time to review and clean up generated code. Which is, itself, an extremely time consuming process

tripleee 4 hours ago|

My suspicion is DHH is intentionally creating controversy to drive interest to Omarchy

If he truly believed in the idea of never reading the code, he'd fire all his developers and have the designers do it all - create very high level feature descriptions and iterate on them. Put your money where your mouth is

ricardobeat 22 minutes ago||

"Not reading the code" does not mean not knowing what the code should do, or how to probe it for correctness. Getting good outcomes from AI-generated code requires knowing exactly what to do.

xyzsparetimexyz 55 minutes ago|||

You're giving him too much credit. He's just a llm psychosis idiot.

easton 1 hour ago|||

I think he said the agents couldn’t make features in their existing codebases as well as in new ones, so he needed devs to still work on Basecamp. Maybe that has changed.

tripleee 1 hour ago||

That would be very odd. Agents work better in codebases with established conventions

baobabKoodaa 2 hours ago||

Don't give him any ideas

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