What is “better” and what is “100% better”?

I feel like most other European languages I have heard do not either. (Well, what is “proper” anyways?) Care to share a language that does?

Do most countries’ education systems include a lot of propaganda? I have a hard time discerning between a general claim or US defaultism

I think we disagree on the nature of a tool. Or maybe I am thinking about more than a “tool”, but not using the appropriate word for it.

Image riding a very fast horse. There is no perfect repeatability, it might veer off, or react to something you didn’t see, but a good rider would probably manage to arrive at the intended destination. I think I view it the same with agentic coding.

Now, I agree a horse is not a tool, and that’s why I mentioned that my language is perhaps a bit imprecise. (I guess you could even call it an agent.) But maybe an “instrument” or an “implement” fits, although that’s a bit cold wording for a horse in general, as they have other qualities, as being cute etc… But I think you get my point.

I very much think LLMs can fall under the description of “useful implement for coding” today. But I do think it is a very poor knowledge retrieval implement. In fact I sucks for all these one-off questions, I my opinion.

I think the more interesting discussion is about how these AI companies consolidate power even more, how they steal data, how they pollute like crazy. But I think people who dismiss their use in coding perhaps view LLMs more like a flashlight and less like a very fast horse moving you from A to B.

Following my analogy with the archer, promting the right way is like accounting for wind. And again, no matter how much the best archers in the world account for wind, they do sometimes miss. Still very impressive how high their skill is, even with randomness involved. And with agentic coding, one can always shoot twice.

I both agree and disagree.

As for having little control, I feel like that happens in other disciplines too. The best archers need to account for the stochastic nature of wind patterns, and thus they do not always hit their intended target. But still, their accuracy is far greater than a novice. There is both skill and “luck” - if you will - involved in the process. You definitely can hone a skill you have little control over in the beginning, I believe. Maybe this is the analogy that should’ve been made.

I will say, “knowing how to prompt” feels like a weird skill, and I think the way we interface with these tools is kinda wacky. Regular text feels to fuzzy.

But it does help immensely, I find, to take every wrong agentic coding output as a learning experience. When I know the answer, and the agent failed, I ask myself why it didn’t fint it. Taking these opportunities has led me to be more proficient in the use of skill files, agent files, subagents, context window management, etc., all which have improved the agents output massively. I feel like a year ago, it was just prompting and copy-pasting (at least for me), but now, with tools like OpenCode, I can get a better looping effect with fewer errors.

I am curious about your findings

Take it easy. And don’t just take my one comment as anecdotal evidence of reading comprehension. I will say, first off, I wrote the above shortly after waking up - perhaps not my most analytical piece ever. Furthermore, English is not my first language (kinda not even second). And finally, I have dyslexia, so I literally have worse than average reading comprehension skills.

Also, from my device, it seems only the first 2 paragraphs are in quotation, and everything after “yes” has regular formatting, which gave me the impression of that being the commenters own words, and with the weird line breaks. (I’ll add I know people who have typed like that but have switched, hence I made the remark.)

All I want to say is you shouldn’t use my misunderstanding of the comment I replied to as any evidence of general reading comprehension. It shouldn’t be. And you seem overly affected by this.

Yeah I think you’re right, when it comes to AI as a coding tool. I heard someone ask something like “where on the scale from flashlight to violin would you put LLM tools for coding”. By that, they meant, if you use a flashlight, and it doesn’t work, you’re pretty sure it’s not your lack of experience with the tool - the tool is just broken. But if you play a violin and it sounds like shit, it’s probably because you’re not versed enough to play it (or at the very least you don’t know if it’s you or the violin who’s at fault), assuming you don’t play the violin.

If one finds LLMs unhelpful for coding, is it them not knowing how to play it, or is the tool inherently broken? It’s very arrogant to believe one is so knowledgeable about a tool, one which is in constant development too, that it is not them who is using it wrong, but rather the tool that is wrong.

There’s a plethora of other areas of just criticism of the technology, but I think how useful it is for coding is not one of them.

Aside: your “manmade” line breaks make your comment harder to read on a phone. I guess it’s a hard habit to break, but I would suggest you try. Most places people type text to be read by other these days, one should account for vastly different resolutions and aspect ratios (e.g. vertical & horisontal monitors). Adding in line breaks where it looks good on your screen is like writing text for yourself to read. That’s my personal opinion at least

I agree with you, but just wanted to point out maybe they were calculating with the halftime break, so 45+15+45=105 and added some average extra time to get to their number

In the region of the world I’m from, waiter unions themselves are against tipping. The reasons I have heard are that

1. wage negotiations should not happen between customers and employees
2. the principle of everyone’s salary being enough to cover all costs of living
3. neither customer nor employee will benefit from service staff having too low wages
4. worker’s rights cannot practically be built using funds from tipping
5. normalising tipping will be used by the employer as an argument to pay below liveable wages

That being said, waiters are given a liveable wage here. And locals also sometimes tip for great service. But that’s just a bonus for the waiter, not the expectation.

I would personally suggest you reevaluate your pro-tipping stance given the above, but I don’t know where in the world you’re from, nor how waiters are treated or paid there

This is amazing! Thank you so much:) will look into these!

Yeah what you’re explaining is what I want to experience. If I want to know where to go, it would help to know where I came from.

Any books you recommend from the non-west?

Thanks for the thoughtful response!

I am an avid but slow reader. I think the main appeal for me to read many of the classic (western) books is so that I can get a better understanding of each author’s inspirations, which would hopefully finally help explain how we got to where we are today. But I think your answer is pulling me in the direction of starting with the books I want, and moving backwards in time for each book I want to delve further into, and then moving forwards when questions can’t be answered by the past.

I read more about HTRB today and it seems totally fine to just skim a full book briefly, and decide it’s not for me. So I think I’ll use that as well.

Thanks for mentioning HTRB!

But why is it this way? Why wouldn’t they want to charge both groups more for a higher profit margin?

Have you tried reading the books from the list recommended by Adler? I am just starting to get (deeper) into classic literature, and have looked for recommendations regarding book chronology.

I mostly see 2 camps:

1. read what you enjoy, which I find hard to determine beforehand; and
2. read some specified list in some order, which seems doable - there’s just so many different lists one could start with…

Any insight is appreciated!