> One of the most useful things about AI is also one of the most humbling: it reveals how clear your own judgment actually is. If your critique stays vague, your taste is still underdeveloped. If your critique becomes precise, your judgment is stronger than the model output. You can then use the model well instead of being led by it.
Something I find that teams get wrong with agentic coding: they start by reverse engineering docs from an existing codebase.
This is a mistake.
Instead, the right train of thought is: "what would perfect code look like?" and then meticulously describe to the LLM what "perfect" is to shape every line that gets generated.
This exercise is hard for some folks to grasp because they've never thought much about what well-constructed code or architectures looks like; they have no "taste" and thus no ability to precisely dictate the framework for "perfect" (yes, there is some subjectivity that reflects taste).
sodapopcan 5 minutes ago [-]
> Instead, the right train of thought is: "what would perfect code look like?" and then meticulously describe to the LLM what "perfect" is to shape every line that gets generated.
I think this goes against what a lot of developers want AI to be (not me, to be clear).
If you're properly bitter-lesson-pilled then why wouldn't better models continue to develop and improve taste and discernment when it comes to design, development, and just better thinking overall?
wavemode 10 minutes ago [-]
I think that would imply the creation of AGI (i.e. something as intelligent or more intelligent than mankind), which many consider to be science fiction at this point.
> bitter-lesson-pilled
The "bitter lesson" doesn't imply that AGI is coming, all it says is that letting AIs learn on their own yields better results than directly teaching them things.
pa7ch 8 minutes ago [-]
I think the author addresses this in saying that since AI output is statistically plausible by design its unlikely to improve in this area. Why do you think AI will get better in this way?
sparker72678 11 minutes ago [-]
At least in part because some of Taste is fashion.
This reads like cope. If taste were a real moat, designers and art directors would be the highest paid people in tech. They arent. Execution speed, distribution, and capital are moats. Taste is a tiebreaker at best. The market consistently rewards "good enough, shipped fast" over "exquisite, shipped late".
Well, nope. There are three real moats left in software:
Distribution, Data (Proprietary) and Iteration Speed.
Very successful companies have all three: Stripe, Meta, Google, Amazon.
furyofantares 16 minutes ago [-]
Extremely ironic piece of slop.
dinkleberg 2 minutes ago [-]
Yeah I feel like we’re getting pranked here
echelon 12 minutes ago [-]
No - at face value, our work has diminished value. The entire supply and demand economics of our careers is changing in the blink of an eye.
There are people trying to figure out what this means and where to create value. "Taste is the only moat" is one such hypothesis. "Senior engineers will be fine" is another.
Everything is super frothy right now and we're in for a wild 2026.
allears 12 minutes ago [-]
And if anybody knows about good taste, it's techies, right?
echelon 7 minutes ago [-]
Some of the worst taste and worst opinions.
Lots of techies hate things that are popular with the rest of humanity. You see lots of nagging, complaining, and disconnected from reality takes. Hate for Instagram, "Dropbox will never work", "pop culture sucks", etc.
I'll make a mean joke: a lot of y'all better learn a trade. Plumbing, perhaps. I kid, of course, but I also wonder if it might turn out to be the eventual reality.
dk970 28 minutes ago [-]
So true guys - nice post
dk970
Rendered at 16:24:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
This is a mistake.
Instead, the right train of thought is: "what would perfect code look like?" and then meticulously describe to the LLM what "perfect" is to shape every line that gets generated.
This exercise is hard for some folks to grasp because they've never thought much about what well-constructed code or architectures looks like; they have no "taste" and thus no ability to precisely dictate the framework for "perfect" (yes, there is some subjectivity that reflects taste).
I think this goes against what a lot of developers want AI to be (not me, to be clear).
evergreen.
> bitter-lesson-pilled
The "bitter lesson" doesn't imply that AGI is coming, all it says is that letting AIs learn on their own yields better results than directly teaching them things.
https://youtu.be/jg1WUOxY6Cg?si=0ajVvgKnyuSz0e2Y
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47089907
Distribution, Data (Proprietary) and Iteration Speed.
Very successful companies have all three: Stripe, Meta, Google, Amazon.
There are people trying to figure out what this means and where to create value. "Taste is the only moat" is one such hypothesis. "Senior engineers will be fine" is another.
Everything is super frothy right now and we're in for a wild 2026.
Lots of techies hate things that are popular with the rest of humanity. You see lots of nagging, complaining, and disconnected from reality takes. Hate for Instagram, "Dropbox will never work", "pop culture sucks", etc.
I'll make a mean joke: a lot of y'all better learn a trade. Plumbing, perhaps. I kid, of course, but I also wonder if it might turn out to be the eventual reality.
dk970