[Cthulhu_]

But your comparison is a bit off; you mention CNC machines and the like to build guitars, but those are tools that are still exactly programmed by humans. LLMs on the other hand are probabilistic - you prompt "write me a set of gcode instructions for a CNC to build a guitar body" and wait / hope.

Sure, LLMs as a tool probably have a place in software development, but the danger lies in high volume, low oversight.

But there's people using it large scale to build large applications, time will tell how they work out in the end. Software engineering is programming over time, and the "over time" for LLM based software engineering hasn't been long enough yet.

[ako]

You have a lot of control over what the LLM creates. The way you phrase your requirements, give it guidance over architecture, testing, ux, libraries to use. You can build your own set of skills to outline how you want the LLM to automate your software process. There's a lot of craftmanship in making the LLM do exactly what you think it needs to do. You are not a victim at the mercy of your LLM.

You are a lead architecture, a product manager, a lead UXer, a lead architect. You don't have 100% control over what your LLM devs are doing, but more than you think. Just like normal managers don't micromanage every action of their team.

[NilMostChill]

> You have a lot of control over what the LLM creates.

No, you don't, you have "influence" or "suggestion".

You can absolutely narrow down the probability ranges of what is produced , but there is no guarantee that it will stick to your guidelines.

So far, at least, it's just not how they work.

> You don't have 100% control over what your LLM devs are doing, but more than you think. Just like normal managers don't micromanage every action of their team.

This overlooks the role of actual reasoning/interpretation that is found when dealing with actual people.

While it might seem like directing an LLM is similar in practice to managing a team of people, the underlying mechanisms are not the same.

If you analyse based on comparisons between those two approaches, without understanding the fundamental differences in what's happening beneath the surface, then any conclusions drawn will be flawed.

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I'm not against LLM's, i'm against using them poorly and presenting them as something they are not.

[ako]

I think i have enough control, probably more than when working with developers. Here's something i recently had claude code build: https://github.com/ako/backing-tracks

If you check the commit log, you'll see small increments. The architecture document is what i have it generate to validate the created architecture: https://github.com/ako/backing-tracks/blob/main/docs/ARCHITE...

Other than that most changes start with the ai generating a proposal document that i will review and improve, and then have it built. I think this was the starting proposal: https://github.com/ako/backing-tracks/blob/main/docs/DSL_PRO...

This started as a conversation in Claude Desktop, which it then summarized into this proposal. This i copied into claude code, to have it implemented.

[NilMostChill]

> I think i have enough control.

This is probably just a disagreement about the term "control", so we can agree to disagree on that one i suppose.

The rest of the reply doesn't really relate to any of the points i mentioned.

That it's possible to successfully use the tool to achieve your goals wasn't in dispute.

I'll try to narrow it down:

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> You are not a victim at the mercy of your LLM.

Yes, you absolutely are, it's how they work.

As i said, you can suggest guidelines and directions but it's not guaranteed they'll be adhered to.

To be clear , this also applies to people as well.

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Directing an LLM (or LLM based orchestration system) is not the same as directing a team of people.

The "interface" is similar in that you provide instructions and guidelines and receive an attempt at the wanted outcome.

However, the underlying mechanisms of how they work are so different that the analogy you were trying to use doesn't make sense.

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Again, LLM's can be useful tools, but presenting them as something they aren't only serves to muddy the waters of understanding how best to use them.

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As an aside, IMO, the sketchy salesmen approach to over-promising on features and obscuring the the limitations will do great harm to the adoption of LLM's in the medium to long term.

The misrepresentation of terminology is also contributing to this.

The term AI is intentionally being used to attribute a level of reasoning and problem solving capability beyond what actually exists in these systems.

[ako]

Looks like we just have different expectations: i don't want to micromanage my coding agents any more than i micromanage the developers i work with as a product manager. If the output does what it is supposed to do, and the software is maintainable and extendable by following certain best practices, i'm happy. And i expect that goes for most business people.

And in practice i have more control with a coding agent than with developers as i can iterate over ideas quickly: "build this idea", "no change this", "remove this and replace it with this". Within an hour you can quickly iterate an idea into something that works well. With developers this would have taken days if not more. And they would've complained i need to better prepare my requirements.

[NilMostChill]

TL;DR;

If it's working for you, great, but presenting it like it's a general direct replacement for development teams is disingenuous.

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> Looks like we just have different expectations: i don't want to micromanage my coding agents any more than i micromanage the developers i work with as a product manager. If the output does what it is supposed to do, and the software is maintainable and extendable by following certain best practices, i'm happy. And i expect that goes for most business people.

None of what i said implied any expectations of the process of using the tools, but if you've found something that works for you that's good.

On the subject of maintainability and extension, that is usually bound to the level of complexity of the project and the increase in requirements is not generally linear.

I agree, many business people would love what you've described, very few are getting it.

> And in practice i have more control with a coding agent than with developers as i can iterate over ideas quickly: "build this idea", "no change this", "remove this and replace it with this". Within an hour you can quickly iterate an idea into something that works well. With developers this would have taken days if not more. And they would've complained i need to better prepare my requirements.

Up to a point, yes.

If your application of this methodology works well enough before you hit the limitations of the tooling, that's great.

There is , however, a threshold of complexity where this starts to break down, this threshold can be mitigated somewhat with experience and a better understanding on how to utilise the tooling, but it still exists (currently).

Once you reach this threshold the approaches you are talking about start to work less effectively and even actively hinder progress.

There are techniques and approaches to software development that can further push this threshold out, but then you're getting into the territory of having to know enough to be able to instruct the LLM to use these approaches.

[miningape]

> You have a lot of control over what the LLM creates. The way you phrase your requirements, give it guidance over architecture, testing, ux, libraries to use. You can build your own set of skills to outline how you want the LLM to automate your software process

Except for the other 50% of the time where it goes off the rails and does what you explicitly asked it not to do.