5 ms·

I may sound like a shill, but exponential growth and all. We are going to get near instant software from prompt, multiple ones and then choose the best one. Di

by serpix 3mo ago

I may sound like a shill, but exponential growth and all. We are going to get near instant software from prompt, multiple ones and then choose the best one. Discussions about choosing a library with the best syntactic sugar method naming is just as crazy as suggesting we type in assembly.

9cb14c1ec0 3mo ago
Anyone remember the old days when a new frontend framework came out every 3 months. That has pretty much stopped. No one cares anymore.
- mountainriver 3mo ago
  It’s even discouraged now as LLMs wouldn’t have the documentation built in
  - osti 3mo ago
    But I think the eventual goal is that documentations won't even be needed. LLM should just itself understand the nuances of frameworks by analyzing their codebase.
- LASR 3mo ago
  Oh you wait until LLMs come up with frameworks that allow multiple LLMs to collaborate effectively. Then you’ll have new frameworks every 3 days.
- asveikau 3mo ago
  > when a new frontend framework came out every 3 months. > No one cares anymore. I never cared about this. I think this captures something that I've been searching for the words for. (Maybe I should have gotten an LLM to write the words for me.) Some of the biggest AI boosters are the kind of dev that would have cared about the new frameworks of the last 3 months. They had a "the framework does all the thinking for me" attitude already, so it is easy for AI to slot into that.
- ecshafer 3mo ago
  New front end frameworks came out every 3 months, but realistically no one was using anything that wasn't made by Facebook, Google, or Evan You.
- greenavocado 3mo ago
  That's because I roll my own frontend framework for each project and every week for existing projects /s
lionkor 3mo ago
And they will all suck! I can't wait.
alkyon 3mo ago
Sounds like exponential growth of crappy software. I'm not saying that before we didn't have mass produced crap in SE, but now it will turn into explosive overflow.
- cdata 3mo ago
  We are living in a ZIRP-like era where builders at the fastest pace layer have misattributed their velocity to exponential gains in model capability. In fact, they are surfing on decades of careful effort to build a robust foundation of highly reusable software libraries. This strategy will seem to work really well until the economy that enabled that foundation to form is hollowed out. Then, there will be a reckoning (but we will have no choice but to march forth from there).
  - solenoid0937 3mo ago
    > This strategy will seem to work really well until the economy that enabled that foundation to form is hollowed out. Then, there will be a reckoning (but we will have no choice but to march forth from there). There will only be a reckoning if models don't get much better. If they do get much better you can just have them refactor, fix bugs in, or replace the existing codebase. The concept of tech debt is sort of meaningless if you anticipate intelligence gains in models to continue.
  - patates 3mo ago
    It's not just software libraries. Specs, applications (the browser!), expectations, device integrations, operating systems, etc. So much that starting from scratch seems impossible. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but my brain cannot comprehend how machines can advance such interconnected systems while keeping humans in focus. Perhaps I shouldn't have watched the Animatrix again.
    - justinai6 3mo ago
      Same! Animatrix is just so so so good and 2023 - 2026 I just keep on trying to keep "life" in context. ;)
oulipo2 3mo ago
You won't. Because 80% of the complexity is just "knowing what to build". You will get something that gives you a prototype in 1 min, then you break it, then you get a slightly better prototype one one side, but newly broken in another way, and you're going to repeat over and over.
- unglaublich 3mo ago
  And for any non-trivial application, the space of possibilities grows so quick that you'll never even be able to _touch_ all the moving parts of the application and verify them.
sagarp 3mo ago
The models might be so fast that they can autocomplete your prompt before you even finish it, and generate dozens of possible applications before you're even done asking.
unglaublich 3mo ago
And how are you going to determine which is the best? Going through all the possible combinations of users and usage? So mostly it shifts the work from generation to validation.
unshavedyak 3mo ago
> Discussions about choosing a library with the best syntactic sugar method naming is just as crazy as suggesting we type in assembly. I have a more hopeful take. As AIs improve and get faster we can more quickly and iteratively improve code which we may have historically avoided due to the work involved. I know i've made several refactors that would have otherwise been insane lifts. Not only because the work involved but because sometimes you don't know if it will work, and so you have a sort of double friction; you don't know if it will even succeed. With an AI you can just throw it at the refactor to see if it runs into a problem all while you're having a coffee break or w/e. In general AI is going to enable humanity to be more extreme versions of itself. For good and bad. I suspect more bad than good, though.
tmaly 3mo ago
Our bottleneck is going to be verification.
dakiol 3mo ago
I'm not sure. Engineers could still develop software the old way, you know taking months to deliver something like, let's say, Obsidian? Or Ghostty? Taking care of every single line of code, of dependencies, of good architecture. Truly the old way. And if the product is good it will succeed.
- andriy_koval 3mo ago
  > And if the product is good it will succeed. it needs to win marketing landscape, hyper-overcrowded by thousands of competitors, slop-gened over weekend.
  - kajman 3mo ago
    Could you imagine Obsidian being posted on HN today, if it weren't really popular already? There's no way a tiny team working on a note taking program would make it out of new, no matter how good it was. I wouldn't click the link, myself.
ilaksh 3mo ago
The exponential is leading to full compute-in-memory within a few years which will be 100 times more efficient. Which means at least 10 times larger models that are much smarter in addition to extremely fast. It's going to skip the code entirely for small businesses and just render UIs straight from context data and prompts at interactive speeds. Kind of like Google's Genie does with games but much more accurately.
visarga 3mo ago
> We are going to get near instant software from prompt, multiple ones and then choose the best one. If you extract the spec from first implementation and reimplement from scratch you get a free testing oracle. Where they diverge you send the agent to decide which one had a bug.
andai 3mo ago
See also this recent talk at Microsoft: VibeOS — Fully Hallucinated Operating System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pV6FHvcgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pV6FHvcgM
Paradigma11 3mo ago
How do you get all the build system scripts/tests.... to run instantly?

by serpix 3mo ago

9cb14c1ec0 3mo ago

Anyone remember the old days when a new frontend framework came out every 3 months. That has pretty much stopped. No one cares anymore.

mountainriver 3mo ago
It’s even discouraged now as LLMs wouldn’t have the documentation built in
- osti 3mo ago
  But I think the eventual goal is that documentations won't even be needed. LLM should just itself understand the nuances of frameworks by analyzing their codebase.
LASR 3mo ago
Oh you wait until LLMs come up with frameworks that allow multiple LLMs to collaborate effectively. Then you’ll have new frameworks every 3 days.
asveikau 3mo ago
> when a new frontend framework came out every 3 months. > No one cares anymore. I never cared about this. I think this captures something that I've been searching for the words for. (Maybe I should have gotten an LLM to write the words for me.) Some of the biggest AI boosters are the kind of dev that would have cared about the new frameworks of the last 3 months. They had a "the framework does all the thinking for me" attitude already, so it is easy for AI to slot into that.
ecshafer 3mo ago
New front end frameworks came out every 3 months, but realistically no one was using anything that wasn't made by Facebook, Google, or Evan You.
greenavocado 3mo ago
That's because I roll my own frontend framework for each project and every week for existing projects /s

lionkor 3mo ago

And they will all suck! I can't wait.

alkyon 3mo ago

Sounds like exponential growth of crappy software. I'm not saying that before we didn't have mass produced crap in SE, but now it will turn into explosive overflow.

cdata 3mo ago
We are living in a ZIRP-like era where builders at the fastest pace layer have misattributed their velocity to exponential gains in model capability. In fact, they are surfing on decades of careful effort to build a robust foundation of highly reusable software libraries. This strategy will seem to work really well until the economy that enabled that foundation to form is hollowed out. Then, there will be a reckoning (but we will have no choice but to march forth from there).
- solenoid0937 3mo ago
  > This strategy will seem to work really well until the economy that enabled that foundation to form is hollowed out. Then, there will be a reckoning (but we will have no choice but to march forth from there). There will only be a reckoning if models don't get much better. If they do get much better you can just have them refactor, fix bugs in, or replace the existing codebase. The concept of tech debt is sort of meaningless if you anticipate intelligence gains in models to continue.
- patates 3mo ago
  It's not just software libraries. Specs, applications (the browser!), expectations, device integrations, operating systems, etc. So much that starting from scratch seems impossible. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but my brain cannot comprehend how machines can advance such interconnected systems while keeping humans in focus. Perhaps I shouldn't have watched the Animatrix again.
  - justinai6 3mo ago
    Same! Animatrix is just so so so good and 2023 - 2026 I just keep on trying to keep "life" in context. ;)

oulipo2 3mo ago

You won't. Because 80% of the complexity is just "knowing what to build". You will get something that gives you a prototype in 1 min, then you break it, then you get a slightly better prototype one one side, but newly broken in another way, and you're going to repeat over and over.

unglaublich 3mo ago
And for any non-trivial application, the space of possibilities grows so quick that you'll never even be able to _touch_ all the moving parts of the application and verify them.

sagarp 3mo ago

The models might be so fast that they can autocomplete your prompt before you even finish it, and generate dozens of possible applications before you're even done asking.

unglaublich 3mo ago

And how are you going to determine which is the best? Going through all the possible combinations of users and usage? So mostly it shifts the work from generation to validation.

unshavedyak 3mo ago

> Discussions about choosing a library with the best syntactic sugar method naming is just as crazy as suggesting we type in assembly. I have a more hopeful take. As AIs improve and get faster we can more quickly and iteratively improve code which we may have historically avoided due to the work involved. I know i've made several refactors that would have otherwise been insane lifts. Not only because the work involved but because sometimes you don't know if it will work, and so you have a sort of double friction; you don't know if it will even succeed. With an AI you can just throw it at the refactor to see if it runs into a problem all while you're having a coffee break or w/e. In general AI is going to enable humanity to be more extreme versions of itself. For good and bad. I suspect more bad than good, though.

tmaly 3mo ago

Our bottleneck is going to be verification.

dakiol 3mo ago

I'm not sure. Engineers could still develop software the old way, you know taking months to deliver something like, let's say, Obsidian? Or Ghostty? Taking care of every single line of code, of dependencies, of good architecture. Truly the old way. And if the product is good it will succeed.

andriy_koval 3mo ago
> And if the product is good it will succeed. it needs to win marketing landscape, hyper-overcrowded by thousands of competitors, slop-gened over weekend.
- kajman 3mo ago
  Could you imagine Obsidian being posted on HN today, if it weren't really popular already? There's no way a tiny team working on a note taking program would make it out of new, no matter how good it was. I wouldn't click the link, myself.

ilaksh 3mo ago

The exponential is leading to full compute-in-memory within a few years which will be 100 times more efficient. Which means at least 10 times larger models that are much smarter in addition to extremely fast. It's going to skip the code entirely for small businesses and just render UIs straight from context data and prompts at interactive speeds. Kind of like Google's Genie does with games but much more accurately.

visarga 3mo ago

> We are going to get near instant software from prompt, multiple ones and then choose the best one. If you extract the spec from first implementation and reimplement from scratch you get a free testing oracle. Where they diverge you send the agent to decide which one had a bug.

andai 3mo ago

See also this recent talk at Microsoft: VibeOS — Fully Hallucinated Operating System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pV6FHvcgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pV6FHvcgM

Paradigma11 3mo ago

How do you get all the build system scripts/tests.... to run instantly?