notnullorvoid (u/notnullorvoid)

notnullorvoid commented on Experts Have World Models. LLMs Have Word Models latent.space/p/adversaria... · Posted by u/aaronng91

ankit219 · 21 hours ago

(Author here)

I address that in part right there itself. Programming has parts like chess (ie bounded) which is what people assume to be actual work. Understanding future requiremnts / stakeholder incentives is part of the work which LLMs dont do well.

> many domains are chess-like in their technical core but become poker-like in their operational context.

This applies to programming too.

notnullorvoid · 20 hours ago

My bad, re-read that part and it's definitely clear. Probably was skimming by the time I got to the section and didn't parse it.

notnullorvoid commented on Experts Have World Models. LLMs Have Word Models latent.space/p/adversaria... · Posted by u/aaronng91

notnullorvoid · a day ago

Great article, nice to see some actual critical thoughts on the shortcomings of LLMs. They are wrong about programming being a "chess-like domain" though. Even at a basic level hidden state is future requirements, and the adversary is self or any other entity that has to modify the code in the future.

AI is good at producing code for scenarios where the stakes are low, there's no expectation about future requirements, or if the thing is so well defined there is a clear best path of implementation.

notnullorvoid commented on We mourn our craft nolanlawson.com/2026/02/0... · Posted by u/ColinWright

karmasimida · 2 days ago

> If you would like to grieve, I invite you to grieve with me.

I think we should move past this quickly. Coding itself is fun but is also labour , building something is the what is rewarding.

notnullorvoid · 2 days ago

By that logic prompting an AI is also labour.

It's not even always a more efficient form of labour. I've experienced many scenarios with AI where prompting it to do the right thing takes longer and requires writing/reading more text compared to writing the code myself.

notnullorvoid commented on We mourn our craft nolanlawson.com/2026/02/0... · Posted by u/ColinWright

Nextgrid · 2 days ago

LLMs are only a threat if you see your job as a code monkey. In that case you're likely already obsoleted by outsourced staff who can do your job much cheaper.

If you see your job as a "thinking about what code to write (or not)" monkey, then you're safe. I expect most seniors and above to be in this position, and LLMs are absolutely not replacing you here - they can augment you in certain situations.

The perks of a senior is also knowing when not to use an LLM and how they can fail; at this point I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what is safe to outsource to an LLM and what to keep for a human. Offloading the LLM-safe stuff frees up your time to focus on the LLM-unsafe stuff (or just chill and enjoy the free time).

notnullorvoid · 2 days ago

Agreed. Programming languages are not ambiguous. Human language is very ambiguous, so if I'm writing something with a moderate level of complexity, it's going to take longer to describe what I want to the AI vs writing it myself. Reviewing what an AI writes also takes much longer than reviewing my own code.

AI is getting better at picking up some important context from other code or documentation in a project, but it's still miles away from what it needs to be, and the needed context isn't always present.

notnullorvoid commented on We mourn our craft nolanlawson.com/2026/02/0... · Posted by u/ColinWright

eranation · 2 days ago

I like coding, I really do. But like you, I like building things more than I like the way I build them. I do not find myself miss writing code by hand as much.

I do find it that the developers that focused on "build the right things" mourn less than those who focused on "build things right".

But I do worry. The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build" and have the "agency" (or illusion of) to do it better than an AI+human (assuming AI will get faster to the "build things right" phase, which is not there yet)

My main hope is this - AI can beat a human in chess for a while now, we still play chess, people earn money from playing chess, teaching chess, chess players are still celebrated, youtube influencers still get monetized for analyzing games of celebrity chess players, even though the top human chess player will likely lose to a stockfish engine running on my iPhone. So maybe there is hope.

notnullorvoid · 2 days ago

> The main question is this - will there be a day that AI will know what are "the right things to build"

What makes you think AI already isn't at the same level of quality or higher for "build the right things" as it is for "building things right"?

notnullorvoid commented on We mourn our craft nolanlawson.com/2026/02/0... · Posted by u/ColinWright

notnullorvoid · 2 days ago

> They can write code better than you or I can, and if you don’t believe me, wait six months.

You can use AI to write all your code, but if you want to be a programmer and can't see that the code is pretty mid then you should work on improving your own programming skills.

People have been saying the 6 month thing for years now, and while I do see it improving in breadth, quality/depth still appears to be plateauing.

It's okay if you don't want to be a programmer though, you can be a manager and let AI do an okay job at being your programmer. You better be driven to be a good at manager though. If you're not... then AI can do an okay job of replacing you there too.

notnullorvoid commented on We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler anthropic.com/engineering... · Posted by u/modeless

small_model · 4 days ago

Claude is only a few years old so we should compare it to a 3 year old human's C compiler

notnullorvoid · 4 days ago

Claude requires many lifetimes worth of data to "learn". Evolution aside humans don't require much data to learn, and our learning happens in real-time in response to our environment.

Train Claude without the programming dataset and give it a dozen of the best programming books, it'll have no chance of writing a compiler. Do the same for a human with an interest in learning to program and there's a good chance.

notnullorvoid commented on We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler anthropic.com/engineering... · Posted by u/modeless

ben_w · 4 days ago

Why's that the issue?

"This AI can do 99.99%* of all human endeavours, but without that last 0.01% we'd still be in the trees", doesn't stop that 99.99% getting made redundant by the AI.

* vary as desired for your preference of argument, regarding how competent the AI actually is vs. how few people really show "true intelligence". Personally I think there's a big gap between them: paradigm-shifting inventiveness is necessarily rare, and AI can't fill in all the gaps under it yet. But I am very uncomfortable with how much AI can fill in for.

notnullorvoid · 4 days ago

Here's a potentially more uncomfortable thought, if all people through history with potential for "true intelligence" had a tool that did 99% of everything do you think they would've had motivation to learn enough of that 99% to give insight into the yet discovered.

notnullorvoid commented on We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler anthropic.com/engineering... · Posted by u/modeless

RobMurray · 4 days ago

How often do you need to invent novel algorithms or data structures? Most human written code is just rehashing existing ideas as well.

notnullorvoid · 4 days ago

I wouldn't say I need to invent much that is strictly novel, though I often iterate on what exists and delve into novel-ish territory. That being said I'm definitely in a minority where I have the luxury/opportunity to work outside the monotony of average programming.

The part I find concerning is that I wouldn't be in the place I am today without spending a fair amount of time in that monotony and really delving in to understand it and slowly push outside it's boundary. If I was starting programming today I can confidently say I would've given up.

notnullorvoid commented on XHTML Club xhtml.club/... · Posted by u/bradley_taunt

jraph · 16 days ago

> It will leave you yearning for the return of XHTML.

…or be grateful you can just use an existing HTML5 parser that hides all this stuff to your innocent eyes :-)

notnullorvoid · 16 days ago

Grateful in part, but I can't help to think that if there was refusal to build parsers for an outlandish spec in the first place then we'd have fixed the problem by now.

Using existing parsers only hides the poor design up to a point.