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Thank you!

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

What limitations were you thinking of?

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

If you’re referring to the direction each boat is facing, this is just because they are anchored and there is wind and current in the water. If you watch a time lapse of boats parked in a bay, you will see they all eerily move synchronously over time.

I am far from an expert in the practical aspects of calculating wealth, but seems doable by the fact that wealth tax exists in countries today.

I too think it would be nice to tax capital gains higher than labour, but I am unsure how it would impact pension savers - both those who save by owning a home and those who invest in equities and bonds. I think I could only accept a very high capital gains tax if state funded retirement would cover full costs of living in cities, and reasonable lower bounds on retirement age. But this seems impossible with large shares of private ownership of homes in cities - they would likely be able to charge exorbitant prices for living if every old person had a comfortable pension. So I guess we shouldn’t have private ownership of homes. But I dunno.

Speaking of a one time wealth tax, would a 100% inheritance tax accomplish what you want? Just curious about how you see the redistribution of wealth happening, as I am myself unsure how it should happen in practice.

When you say we don’t need the rich, do you mean that we don’t need those particular individuals, or that we don’t need them having their wealth? Is getting rid of them achievable by getting rid of their wealth and the means to hoard?

Well put. A nice follow-up to the post, I think. Thanks

After skimming through the Country section of the Wikipedia article on capital gains tax, it seems that the rate of capital gains tax is commonly lower than that of labour. Quite a few places also had capital gains tax removed in favour of a total tax rate on income + capital gains.

Personally, I think it’s important to tax capital gains closer to labour tax rates, to better distribute wealth. But a more efficient way is maybe by wealth tax. I would even consider lowering taxes on businesses for a wealth tax (as to not cause exodus of the rich - the point is not to get rid of them, just their massive wealth and means of hoarding too much).