Comment by simonw

Comment by simonw 5 days ago

Except if you spend quality time with coding agents you realize that's not actually true.

They're equally useful for novel tasks because they don't work by copying large scale patterns from their training data - the recent models can break down virtually any programming task to a bunch of functions and components and cobble together working code.

If you can clearly define the task, they can work towards a solution with you.

The main benefit of concepts already in the training data is that it lets you slack off on clearly defining the task. At that point it's not the model "cheating", it's you.

deadbabe 4 days ago

Good long lived software is not a bunch of functions and components cobbled together.

You need to see the big picture and visions of the future state in order to ensure what is being built will be able to grow and breathe into that. This requires an engineer. An agent doesn’t think much about the future, they think about right now.

This browser toy built by the agent, it has NO future. Once it has written the code, the story is over.

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aix1 5 days ago

Simon, do you happen to have some concrete examples of a model doing a great job at a clearly novel, clearly non-trivial coding task?

I'd find it very interesting to see some compelling examples along those line.

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simonw 5 days ago

I think datasette-transactions https://github.com/datasette/datasette-transactions is pretty novel. Here's the transcript where Claude Code built it: https://gisthost.github.io/?a41ce6304367e2ced59cd237c576b817...
That transcript viewer itself is a pretty fun novel piece of software, see https://github.com/simonw/claude-code-transcripts
Denobox https://github.com/simonw/denobox is another recent agent project which I consider novel: https://orphanhost.github.io/?simonw/denobox/transcripts/ses...

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keybored 5 days ago

> Except if you spend quality time with coding agents you realize that's not actually true.

Agent engineering seems to be (from the outside!) converging on quality lived experience. Compared to Stone Age manual coding it’s less about technical arguments and more about intuition.

Vibes in short.

You can’t explain sex to someone who has not had sex.

Any interaction with tools is partly about intuition. It’s a difference of degree.

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