Elhaam

I'm not very happy with the code quality and I think agents bloat abstractions, have poor code aesthetics, are very prone to copy pasting code blocks and it's a mess, but at this point I stopped fighting it too hard and just moved on. The agents do not listen to my instructions in the AGENTS.md files. E.g. just as one example, no matter how many times I say something like: "Every line of code should do exactly one thing and use intermediate variables as a form of documentation" They will still "multitask" and create complex constructs where one line of code calls 2 functions and then indexes an array with the result. I think in principle I could use hooks or slash commands to clean this up but at some point just a shrug is easier. Yes I think LLM as a judge for soft rewards is in principle and long term slightly problematic (due to goodharting concerns), but in practice and for now I don't think we've picked the low hanging fruit yet here.

It is crazy that soon there will be an entire generation of people who's only understanding of source control will be the series of agent changes accepted. Git will be dead to the next gen of "software developers" and things like GitHub are only safe as long as all the opensource continues to use it as the main distribution. But even with that, most of the next gen wont even know what GitHub's actual purpose is, other than a place you go to give out stars. Wild how something that I could never imagine changing is now pretty high on the top of my list of things that will change in the relatively near future. I foresee a new style of GitHub, AgentHub. It will automatically track every changeset and allow easy backing off. My guess is something like JJ will be very good for this.

I had an idea for a metaphor to this sort of thing last night. It’s kind of like gaming. You spend hours grinding away at a game, an rpg, FPS, whatever it may be. And you are rewarded with either increased skill, amazingly powerful items, or both. But the act of playing the game, and putting in the work is what leads to a great deal of satisfaction and accomplishment at the end. LLMs feel, to me, like playing a game with cheat codes on. All of that hard work feels meaningless because your reward is just handed to you. Eventually you lose interest and you stop playing the game. I love programming. I never want to stop playing. But LLM usage makes everything feel very hollow and unsatisfying.

I have been thinking about this a lot. I think for a great many of engineers, the ones who did it because they loved it only to discover that money was in fact at the end of the rainbow found both the journey and the destination satisfying. In fact, I think I can argue with authority that the destination was only satisfying as the journey was difficult. The hard-fought evenings spent toiling away on an idea and codebase that slowly gives way to your vision was an incredible experience. The group of people that fell into this category of hard-fought journey and destination we will call them tinkerers. One thing tinkerers have always hated is the already known problems. The journey is clear as day. The obstacles minor inconveniences. Its purely a matter of typing the solution into the terminal. This is also why I think so many of this group goes out and does open source, or starts companies. Work largely falls into this category with few exceptions. From this reason is why I largely find UI work soul sucking. I know the solution, its a matter of just looking up the details and putting it into my editor. yawn. CSS, flex box this, grid that, put the tailwind classes in the bag. To me, the LLM software world is with little to no journey and discovery. Its more of simply taking my high level idea and just formulating it into testable, atomic chunks that can be verified. I have traded my favorite part, discovery and raw creation, with itemized list of TODOs and patience and "No Mistakes." To this, every morning from 6 to 9 I simply just hand code every thin. even UI things. It is because I want journey and discovery and raw creation. Maybe one day comes and its just so futile that I stop this. But for now, I still see such great value in this. I see such better thought through products. Because slowing down and truly thinking through everything. The architecture, the design, everything is an expression of discovery and creation. And I love it. I am sure there will come a day, maybe even in the next 6 months where I change my mind. For now, I pursue the love of the game intentionally. I do also believe that there exists people who get the same joy I got from building with tears and sweat by prompting LLMs. I am positive of it. I just don't understand how. But people love UI work. I also don't understand that.