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jiggawatts • yesterday at 10:11 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

People keep forgetting that programming is not just about knowing the target programming language, but also an enormous volume of tacit knowledge:

    - Understanding of protocols like HTTP.
    - HTML, JS, CSS, SVG, and everything "web".
    - Understanding of databases, SQL, etc.
    - Abstract code architecture patterns.
    - Understanding the users' requests in English.
    - Responding in English.
    - Command line tool usage (agents/harnesses)
    - Industry-specific knowledge that can be applied.
    - Frameworks, SDKs, applicable libraries.
    - Relevant legal requirements.
    - Etc...
I.e.: If I tell a frontier AI that this project is for a "local council in XYZ location" it can immediately figure out that a scalable, globally distributed architecture is not required. It can also figure out that using local time instead of UTC is not only "fine", but even desired. Or that globalization/localization is not required... or.... required if the council is in some place like Belgium or Canada where multiple languages are officially recognised and supported by the government.

Replies

kennywinker • yesterday at 10:21 PM

Those assumptions are just that - assumptions. "Local council in XYZ location" implies a bunch of things, and each one might be wrong for my specific circumstances. What better way to guide expectations than importing specific knowledge? I.e. if I import the english and catalan modules, then I probably want to localize my site in english and catalan.

It would be trivial to have a pre-flight convo with an llm to guide the user thru module choices. "Build a site" -> "ok, describe the purpose" -> "local council in XYZ location" -> "that implies you won't need localization since XYZ has a monolingual government" -> "english and catalan localization please".

Right now, you prompt and it builds using assumptions, and we prompt to adjust. I think it would be great to be able to pre-load a set of assumptions.

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fennecbutt • yesterday at 10:49 PM

Tbf the majority of harnesses for frontier models do not allow the agent to do this (gut instinct) and instead get it to search, and for good reason.