[smilindave26]

> For almost all software I write, I do care about the process. I’m typically designing software as part of research, and me doing the design and implementation work creates knowledge that I will then share.

Similar here. For a lot of software I write, I don't really know what the essential "abstraction" I need is until I'm actively writing it. The answers, when I get them right, look obvious in retrospect. Sometimes, starting with Claude Code, I can get there, but my mindset is that I'm using this tool to generate software that helps me immerse myself in the problem space. It's a different pace to the process - sometimes it speeds me up, sometimes I end up taking bad concepts a lot further than I normally would before getting to the better path

[neonstatic]

I agree it's a different process. Personally, I do not enjoy it. If I get code wrong or the solution I came up with is clunky, I am okay to start over. At least I learned something valuable. With Claude, I get irritated, frustrated, and frankly just really tired. I feel like I've been burning hour after hour of my precious time trying to explain something to a machine, which just doesn't understand, cannot understand, and what comes out as output from that process is just disappointing. I feel that I don't trust the code it produces and I don't have it in me to even read that code. I never felt that way about code written by me or another person.

I will admit, that Claude has been helpful as an assistant (especially helping me with syntax I am not familiar with), but as a programmer that does things for me, it's been awful. YMMV.

Btw. a week of doing that (treating Claude as a programmer who does things for me) did help me in a way. I now have an intuitive understanding of what it means these things are not intelligence. I am now certain, that an LLM doesn't understand anything. It seems to be able to map text to some representations and then see if these representations match or compose. I know this might sound like intelligence, but in practice it's just not enough. Pattern recognition, sure. Not intelligence. Not even close.

[lukan]

" Pattern recognition, sure. Not intelligence. Not even close."

To me it is a form of intelligence, just not general intelligence.

And yes, the trick is not treat them as intelligent, but like an idiot. Explain every single detail. Document everything in detail. Remove anything distracting. And then it might work like a charm at times.

[neonstatic]

No to be nitpicky or difficult, but I find it strange that we don't really have a solid, agreed upon definition of intelligence, but suddenly we have variants of the non-definition - general, super, etc. I think it's just marketing fluff.

If the model understood what it sees, it wouldn't need to be treated like someone who doesn't? And if it doesn't understand, how can it be intelligent?

[lukan]

I don't have the answer here.

I just know, that if I would point a average human to a messy old codebase, he or she would just shrug helplessly. Even most programmers.

But if I tell claude to start digging in, refactor, update outdated tools .. it produces results. So there is some "understanding" I don't know how else to call it. So surely it is not a general intelligence, but it is certainly useful.

[neonstatic]

I think what you are describing is the actual usefulness of the tech. It can do some things and, contrary to humans, it doesn't get demotivated or uninterested, it's a machine.

I will stick to my earlier statement (I hope I made it in this thread) - it seems to be treating blocks of texts as concepts and tries to compose those concepts like lego blocks. It is quite amazing that it can transform characters into meanings, even if it doesn't really understand these meanings, then compose them. I just don't think that's enough to call it intelligent (but certainly it's enough to find it useful for some tasks, as you point out).