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skissane • yesterday at 11:29 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> It's been decades since beating the best computer at chess was possible.

LLMs can do an impressive job of writing code that meets some specification-but they still can’t beat humans at deciding what that specification should be. That’s especially true when it comes to non-functional requirements, e.g. what constitutes good coding style or good architectural choices.

> The major difference being that winning a chess game doesn't yield a permanent artifact that is useful, generally.

Chess has a single clearly defined “win condition”; coding doesn’t.


Replies

black_knight • yesterday at 11:45 PM

This is exactly it. I do not at all feel superfluous in my coding endeavours these days, even when I don’t write any code. If left to its own devices, Opus 5.5 would still fail at the things I want to achieve. It would produce what I would call the toy rocket, when I want the real NASA design. And it requires constant effort in my part to keep it on track to success.