8 ms·

I think the ideas worth pursuing still require substantial time and motivation, even with LLMs. Otherwise you just end up with a half-baked sloppy artifact that

by nathell 2mo ago

I think the ideas worth pursuing still require substantial time and motivation, even with LLMs. Otherwise you just end up with a half-baked sloppy artifact that nobody will ever use or study, for a net negative benefit to humanity.

supersour 2mo ago
Yes this is true to some extent. I've been using LLMs to run some computer vision tests, and I've certainly noticed myself running into the trap of "just one more AI experiment", or "just one more change" while neglecting to actually properly integrate the learnings into my mental model. However, without an agent running its own experiments on a cloud GPU, would I realistically have invested my limited work hours and tried evaluating 10 different models, each with 10 different tuned parameters, to solve my specific use case? Or would I have tried 1-2 models and spent my time trying to optimize those models? I think there is some merit to the spray and pray approach when one is in the exploration phase of the solution space. Also, on more than one occasion now, I have had fable halve the inference latency of a model simply because the original implementation from an academic included unnecessary GPU-to-CPU-to-GPU transfers or similarly inefficient operations. Those optimizations came at essentially 0 time cost to me and I can verify that the outputs are byte-identical. Pretty sweet!
arjie 2mo ago
Well, I’m happy just to make half baked slop for myself. Highly personalized software that is poorly implemented and yet yields the result I desire. E.g. software that generates these models that I can print https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-06-30/Modeling_a_Watch_Strap_Print_with_Claude https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-06-30/Modeling_a_W... https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-12-01/Grounding_Your_Agent https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-12-01/Grounding_Yo... Or blog post authoring software https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-25/The_rise_of_personal_software https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-25/The_rise_of_... There were so many things that no one will ever study and won’t give humanity any benefit but I use everyday to make my life better. That’s enough. The value far exceeds $200/mo. I’m getting it for cheap and now that I have my GPUs and my models they can’t even take it from me in the future if they wanted, haha! LLMs allow for human flourishing on a massive scale. One of the best inventions to occur in my life. Up there with the Internet/Web. Truly a marvelous time.
- rayiner 2mo ago
  > There were so many things that no one will ever study and won’t give humanity any benefit but I use everyday to make my life better Agreed. I haven’t been this excited by computers since I got broadband DSL in 1998.
  - coderatlarge 2mo ago
    i consider it as a very specialized subset (subgenre) of video games for a very narrow audience
    - rayiner 2mo ago
      You know how non-coders basically build crazy business apps in Excel? LLMs, even if they don't get any better, seem at least 10x more useful than Excel. Why do you say it's for a narrow audience?
      - coderatlarge 2mo ago
        i meant people who enjoy the idea of software even if they don’t necessarily need or enjoy the resulting software itself. it’s possible that some of the spreadsheet hacking has a similar flavor but lacks the natural language hook.
bloaf 2mo ago
We have entered the era of small software, and no one knows what it will grow to. Here's an example: my office has a few cars for employees to use as rentals. The number is small enough that it would never be worth any serious software dev to build a tool to manage, but large enough that its a moderate amount of work for someone to manage the requests/getting supervisor approvals/schedule changes due to breakdowns. AI one-shot that guy a tool. Its now dead simple, he's got a calendar, automatic emails going to people's supervisors with click-here-to-approve links, rescheduling options, fleet management. It doesn't even look bad. Who cares if its using some un-backed-up sqlite database in the backend, has some placeholder tab for a feature he changed his mind about, or violates the DRY principles a bunch or uses some inferior authentication mechanism. Its an in house tool, isn't mission critical, and it makes his life significantly easier. Basically everyone is now a few prompts away from their own bespoke tools, and only they will be able to judge the benefit thereof. Edit: to tie this more directly to the article, I would argue that this is an example of "infinity-x" coding, because the user was in fact not capable of coding a solution on their own without AI.
- sejje 2mo ago
  I agree. In my business, I haven't found much area to use code. It's a pub, and we've long been low-tech. Cash register, no POS. I have a little code surrounding my own processes, but mostly it's manual. Hand-entering numbers in my spreadsheet, etc. But what's interesting to me is that now I can probably program an esp32, or create a small mobile app for a mounted android tablet. I was a web dev in the past, and programming hardware was outside my skillset without dedicating some serious time to learning. Mobile I just always avoided--mostly the same reason. Anyway, I've got some CYDs on my desk, we'll see what I can make with 'em. I want a kitchen ticketing system instead of the old hand-written ticket stubs, for starters.
jatora 2mo ago
People need to abandon the notion of every tool you build needing to fit the market. This is not the direction of software anymore when developers can all build tools that are bespoke to their own workflows and needs.

by nathell 2mo ago

supersour 2mo ago

Yes this is true to some extent. I've been using LLMs to run some computer vision tests, and I've certainly noticed myself running into the trap of "just one more AI experiment", or "just one more change" while neglecting to actually properly integrate the learnings into my mental model. However, without an agent running its own experiments on a cloud GPU, would I realistically have invested my limited work hours and tried evaluating 10 different models, each with 10 different tuned parameters, to solve my specific use case? Or would I have tried 1-2 models and spent my time trying to optimize those models? I think there is some merit to the spray and pray approach when one is in the exploration phase of the solution space. Also, on more than one occasion now, I have had fable halve the inference latency of a model simply because the original implementation from an academic included unnecessary GPU-to-CPU-to-GPU transfers or similarly inefficient operations. Those optimizations came at essentially 0 time cost to me and I can verify that the outputs are byte-identical. Pretty sweet!

arjie 2mo ago

Well, I’m happy just to make half baked slop for myself. Highly personalized software that is poorly implemented and yet yields the result I desire. E.g. software that generates these models that I can print https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-06-30/Modeling_a_Watch_Strap_Print_with_Claude https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-06-30/Modeling_a_W... https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-12-01/Grounding_Your_Agent https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-12-01/Grounding_Yo... Or blog post authoring software https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-25/The_rise_of_personal_software https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-04-25/The_rise_of_... There were so many things that no one will ever study and won’t give humanity any benefit but I use everyday to make my life better. That’s enough. The value far exceeds $200/mo. I’m getting it for cheap and now that I have my GPUs and my models they can’t even take it from me in the future if they wanted, haha! LLMs allow for human flourishing on a massive scale. One of the best inventions to occur in my life. Up there with the Internet/Web. Truly a marvelous time.

rayiner 2mo ago
> There were so many things that no one will ever study and won’t give humanity any benefit but I use everyday to make my life better Agreed. I haven’t been this excited by computers since I got broadband DSL in 1998.
- coderatlarge 2mo ago
  i consider it as a very specialized subset (subgenre) of video games for a very narrow audience
  - rayiner 2mo ago
    You know how non-coders basically build crazy business apps in Excel? LLMs, even if they don't get any better, seem at least 10x more useful than Excel. Why do you say it's for a narrow audience?
    - coderatlarge 2mo ago
      i meant people who enjoy the idea of software even if they don’t necessarily need or enjoy the resulting software itself. it’s possible that some of the spreadsheet hacking has a similar flavor but lacks the natural language hook.

bloaf 2mo ago

We have entered the era of small software, and no one knows what it will grow to. Here's an example: my office has a few cars for employees to use as rentals. The number is small enough that it would never be worth any serious software dev to build a tool to manage, but large enough that its a moderate amount of work for someone to manage the requests/getting supervisor approvals/schedule changes due to breakdowns. AI one-shot that guy a tool. Its now dead simple, he's got a calendar, automatic emails going to people's supervisors with click-here-to-approve links, rescheduling options, fleet management. It doesn't even look bad. Who cares if its using some un-backed-up sqlite database in the backend, has some placeholder tab for a feature he changed his mind about, or violates the DRY principles a bunch or uses some inferior authentication mechanism. Its an in house tool, isn't mission critical, and it makes his life significantly easier. Basically everyone is now a few prompts away from their own bespoke tools, and only they will be able to judge the benefit thereof. Edit: to tie this more directly to the article, I would argue that this is an example of "infinity-x" coding, because the user was in fact not capable of coding a solution on their own without AI.

sejje 2mo ago
I agree. In my business, I haven't found much area to use code. It's a pub, and we've long been low-tech. Cash register, no POS. I have a little code surrounding my own processes, but mostly it's manual. Hand-entering numbers in my spreadsheet, etc. But what's interesting to me is that now I can probably program an esp32, or create a small mobile app for a mounted android tablet. I was a web dev in the past, and programming hardware was outside my skillset without dedicating some serious time to learning. Mobile I just always avoided--mostly the same reason. Anyway, I've got some CYDs on my desk, we'll see what I can make with 'em. I want a kitchen ticketing system instead of the old hand-written ticket stubs, for starters.

jatora 2mo ago

People need to abandon the notion of every tool you build needing to fit the market. This is not the direction of software anymore when developers can all build tools that are bespoke to their own workflows and needs.