[causalmodels]

Ok but this entire idea is very new. Its not an honest criticism to say no one has tried the new idea when they are actively doing it.

Honestly I don't get the hostility. Yegge is running an experiment. I don't think it will work, but it will be interesting and informative to watch.

[anonymous908213]

The 'experiment' isn't the issue. The problem is the entire culture around it. LLM tools are being shoved into everything, LLMs are soaking up trillions in investment, engineers are being told over and over that everything has changed and this garbage is making us obsolete, software quality is decreasing where wide LLM usage is being mandated (eg. Microsoft). Gas Town does not give the vibe of a neutral experiment but rather looks be a full-on delve into AI psychosis with the way Yegge describes it.

To be clear, I think LLMs are useful technology. But the degree of increasing insanity surrounding it is putting people off for obvious reasons.

[causalmodels]

I share the frustration with the hype machine. I just don't think a guy with a blog is an appropriate target for our frustration with corporate hype culture.

[WesolyKubeczek]

> Ok but this entire idea is very new. Its not an honest criticism to say no one has tried the new idea when they are actively doing it.

Not really new. Back in the day companies used to outsource their stuff to the lowest bidder agencies in proverbial Elbonia, never looked at the code, and then panickedly hired another agency when the things visibly were not what was ordered. Case studies are abound on TheDailyWTF for the last two decades.

Doing the same with agents will give you the same disastrous results for comparably the same money, just faster. Oh and you can't sue them, really.

Maybe it's better, who knows.

[causalmodels]

Fair point on the Elbonia comparison. But we can't sue the SQLite maintainers either, and yet we trust them with basically everything. The reason is that open source developed its own trust mechanisms over decades. We don't have anything close to that with LLMs today. What those mechanisms might look like is an open question that is getting more important as AI generated code becomes more common.

[WesolyKubeczek]

> But we can't sue the SQLite maintainers either, and yet we trust them with basically everything.

But you don’t pay them any money and don’t enter into contractual relationship with them either. Thus you can’t sue them. Well, you can try, of course, but.

You could sue an Elbonian company, though, for contract breach. LLMs are like usual Elbonian quality with two middlemen but quicker, and you only have yourself to blame when they inevitably produce a disaster.

[direwolf20]

The experiment is fine if you treat it as an experiment. The problem is the state of the industry where it's treated as serious rather than silly — possibly even by Steve himself.