undefined | Better HN

0 pointsUncleEntity11mo ago0 comments

Yeah, I'm starting to see a pattern to these "LLM's aren't the bee's knees" articles.

First, it's always some 'telegram bot' type project where it all starts to break down when they try to add too many features on the existing (buggy) features without understanding what the stupid robot is up to.

Second, they all come to the conclusion they don't want to be 'unpaid project managers' and it's better for the entire world for people to get paid the $100k+ salaries to write crappy javascript.

During the heart of Covid, when the scientific archives were opened for everyone, I downloaded a bunch of stuff and have been working through some of it with the help of Claude. Perhaps surprising to the vibe coders, if you constrain the robots and work through their lack of 'intelligence' they're pretty good at taking the theoretical concepts from paper A, B and C and combining them into a cohesive system which can be implemented as individual modules that work together. I believe there used to be a term of art for this, dunno?

You can also stumble on things which nobody really realized before as the theoreticians from Paper A don't go to the same parties as the theoreticians from Paper B so they don't realize they're working on the same problem using a different 'language' and only when you try to mash them together does the relationship become obvious. Having a semi-useful robot to think through something like this is indispensable as they can search through the vast databanks of human knowledge and be like "no, you're an idiot, everyone knows this" or "yeah, that seems like something new and useful".

So, yeah, horses for courses...

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

florianherrengt11mo ago

This feels like a comment shot from the hip. You fundamentally misread my argument while proving my core point.

You crystallised the disconnect yourself: "with the help of Claude."

The article’s first line states: "LLMs are helpful." My stance is clear. I’m not anti-AI. When I wrote "I use Claude on a VERY short leash with a specific purpose" ... that is "with the help of Claude."

My experiment tested the opposite: "let Claude build it".

The 'telegram bot' is a fullstack app with non-trivial db schema, state management and 3rd party integration. Instead of dismissing it, show me a better alternative and explain why it’s superior.

You defend expertise in your domain (research synthesis), describing how you "constrained the robots" using your expertise to guide Claude. Yet you dismiss equivalent expertise in software engineering, reducing it to "$100k+ to write crappy JavaScript."

How did you "constrain" Claude without knowing what needed constraining, why it mattered and how to evaluate if the output was valid?

That is expertise. The salary is a symptom of it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse