Newest at the top
| 2026-06-30 20:36:34 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | (I'm still unsure about the latter, but don't tell them that) |
| 2026-06-30 20:36:18 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | unstated: why they were doing so at an academic institution |
| 2026-06-30 20:36:13 +0000 | polykernel_ | (~polykerne@user/polykernel) polykernel |
| 2026-06-30 20:35:50 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | monochrom: actually, the first time I heard someone describe what they were doing (which turned out to be harness engineering), I made the mistake of asking (because I genuinely didn't understand at first) how it was different from prompt engineering |
| 2026-06-30 20:35:44 +0000 | hc | (~hc@user/hc) hc |
| 2026-06-30 20:34:43 +0000 | hc | (~hc@user/hc) (Remote host closed the connection) |
| 2026-06-30 20:34:37 +0000 | <monochrom> | or rather s/meaningless/unguessable/ |
| 2026-06-30 20:34:22 +0000 | <jaror> | Yeah, I was talking to Ed Kmett at Zurihac and he is spending like 3-4 times my salary on tokens... |
| 2026-06-30 20:34:14 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | (that's why I offered a translation -- I didn't know its definition until a few weeks ago :p) |
| 2026-06-30 20:34:04 +0000 | <monochrom> | after bus factors and test pollution. |
| 2026-06-30 20:33:54 +0000 | <monochrom> | Oh harness engineering is going to be another of those meaningless "meaningful" words coined by programmers. |
| 2026-06-30 20:33:40 +0000 | lisbeths | (uid135845@id-135845.lymington.irccloud.com) (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity) |
| 2026-06-30 20:33:05 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | mind, compared to even the middle-of-the-road programmer these days, my experience using these tools amounts to a rounding error |
| 2026-06-30 20:33:03 +0000 | Lord_of_Life | (~Lord@user/lord-of-life/x-2819915) (Excess Flood) |
| 2026-06-30 20:33:01 +0000 | califax | (~califax@user/califx) califx |
| 2026-06-30 20:32:53 +0000 | merijn | (~merijn@host-cl.cgnat-g.v4.dfn.nl) merijn |
| 2026-06-30 20:32:50 +0000 | <monochrom> | I admit that it does something right, OK? For example, academically it shows that some linguists are right about semantics of a word containing a large factor of correlating with other words, much larger than most people want to believe. |
| 2026-06-30 20:32:24 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | (the precise interpretation of that latter statement is personal, so I'll leave that to the reader) |
| 2026-06-30 20:32:11 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | but if you do use them, you have to make sure you know _why_ you're using them, and if you actually think that's a good idea |
| 2026-06-30 20:31:31 +0000 | califax | (~califax@user/califx) (Remote host closed the connection) |
| 2026-06-30 20:31:07 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | and it's quite impressive how "harness engineering" (translation: writing code that practices the socratic method on the LLM, in addition to providing it a (textual) "API" for calling external tools) can increase their abilities |
| 2026-06-30 20:29:51 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | if it's not too conceptually difficult, I'm not surprised |
| 2026-06-30 20:29:38 +0000 | Katarushisu6 | (~Katarushi@finc-20-b2-v4wan-169598-cust1799.vm7.cable.virginm.net) (Ping timeout: 248 seconds) |
| 2026-06-30 20:29:25 +0000 | <jaror> | Some GHC developers seem to just be able to say "fix this bug" and have Claude churn away at it for them... |
| 2026-06-30 20:29:23 +0000 | <monochrom> | It's advertised as artificial intelligence. |
| 2026-06-30 20:28:49 +0000 | Lord_of_Life | (~Lord@user/lord-of-life/x-2819915) Lord_of_Life |
| 2026-06-30 20:28:48 +0000 | <monochrom> | LLMs will make great politicians and management types. Just needing to mince words. |
| 2026-06-30 20:28:35 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | if you don't write any boilerplate, I'm not surprised you don't find them useful :) |
| 2026-06-30 20:28:33 +0000 | <mauke> | I don't use LLMs, but how are they advertised nowadays? is it just code generation, or do they also offer to explain existing code to you? |
| 2026-06-30 20:27:52 +0000 | <monochrom> | This is what you get when you believe in "express in your own words to show you understand". |
| 2026-06-30 20:27:42 +0000 | Lord_of_Life | (~Lord@user/lord-of-life/x-2819915) (Excess Flood) |
| 2026-06-30 20:27:37 +0000 | <tomsmeding> | monochrom: they generate predictable text, that's all they do. If you ask them to generate boilerplate for you, they'll be mostly successful. The "higher-quality" the model, the more the boundaries of "boilerplate" shift, but fundamentally that's still what's happening |
| 2026-06-30 20:27:35 +0000 | <monochrom> | In one case it said "X is true" where the reference it cited said "X is false". |
| 2026-06-30 20:27:03 +0000 | <jaror> | it always reminds me of the "Great Galactic Grid" from the Zogg from Betelgeuse video on mathematics |
| 2026-06-30 20:26:34 +0000 | ridcully | (~ridcully@p57b52a2d.dip0.t-ipconnect.de) ridcully |
| 2026-06-30 20:26:12 +0000 | <probie> | [Google AI] did you know that the concept of "Supplemental Material" simply didn't exist until digital storage? |
| 2026-06-30 20:25:43 +0000 | <monochrom> | I wanted to give it a chance! Disillusioned. |
| 2026-06-30 20:25:29 +0000 | <monochrom> | And like I said last night, the 3 times I took a look at what Google AI said, it's all wrong. |
| 2026-06-30 20:25:06 +0000 | ridcully | (~ridcully@p57b52a2d.dip0.t-ipconnect.de) (Quit: WeeChat 4.9.2) |
| 2026-06-30 20:25:05 +0000 | <monochrom> | I haven't needed to use LLMs. |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:58 +0000 | <monochrom> | OK! |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:50 +0000 | <EvanR> | see |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:44 +0000 | <EvanR> | so they don't have to |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:40 +0000 | <EvanR> | it's like when elite golfers hire robots to play golf for them |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:32 +0000 | <int-e> | monochrom: I see it: Consider who the people who unironically call themselves "elite" are. |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:19 +0000 | <dcb> | I'd try to minimize the number of tools needed to write code |
| 2026-06-30 20:24:05 +0000 | Lord_of_Life | (~Lord@user/lord-of-life/x-2819915) Lord_of_Life |
| 2026-06-30 20:23:56 +0000 | <monochrom> | I don't see the correlation between elite and vibe coding. |
| 2026-06-30 20:23:12 +0000 | <probie> | My hatred for LLMs doesn't come from their capacity, but the fact that they were trained on copyrighted works without permission |
| 2026-06-30 20:22:22 +0000 | <EvanR> | gotta stir the pot! |