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Comment by ta12653421 | Hacker News Reader

For all tech people, LLM are an absolute boon: it brings productivity by 10x (at least!) onto the next level, esp. for develops.

I developed an financial servic application with 1MB+ source of code (not including 3rd party libs) within 3 month - thats more than 1 million keystrokes that created a system that works perfectly fine and produces exactly the results as specified. (for comparison: my masterthesis had around 110.000 letters, and i wrote it over a couple of weeks, while the app is slightly more complicated: its a complex system where each part relies on each another, while the masterthesis is just a dumb document in which i could write in theory everything and nobody would care/check if the descript is just bs)

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> I developed an financial servic application with 1MB+ source of code (not including 3rd party libs) within 3 month - thats more than 1 million keystrokes that created a system that works perfectly fine and produces exactly the results as specified

How do you know it "works fine"? How do you know there aren't tons of caveats as soon as some boundary conditions are exceeded? Certainly not because you actually understand it all.

Just yesterday we had "Engineers do not get to make startup mistakes when they build ledgers".[1]

I sure hope it's just for your personal use because it would be completely irresponsible otherwise, to the point of criminal neglect. This is a Knightmare[2] waiting to happen and I can only hope it will only your own money that's effected and that you won't ruin anyone's lives with this.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42269227

[2]: https://dougseven.com/2014/04/17/knightmare-a-devops-caution...

Interesting why i get downvoted for appraising LLM and clapping-up that it grows my productivity? Very interesting...

Good one: I read the article about this Fintech yesterday as well :) To your questions: It works because it can see it? (For sure, every software has some bugs which may be never enconutered, but in this case its a fairly simple application, doint exactly 4 functions for me)

The link to the Knight story, thanks for pointing out on that, interesting read! Well, they are some magnitudes above what we are doing here with our own trading infrastructure, apart from that: we are using our own money on our own risk.

You are almost certainly downvoted primarly for the tone, not content. "For all the tech people" is very likely to bring downvotes. If you wrote it as a personal data point it would be fine.

Also, advocating for a general availability fintech app with 1MB of llm-generated code makes me shudder. I want my finances (x-rays, car software, etc.) to not be done that way.

If you had been clear that you made your own trading infra for your own money -- good luck! I have zero problems with this. My 2c.

Well, with "all tech people" i actually meant ">everyone working in tech (or like the HN community<", and i was serious about that: I havent met one person in the business on the tech side who didnt profit from it?

Hm, because of which wording do you imply "general availability"? Interesting take! :)

> I developed an financial servic application with 1MB+ source of code (not including 3rd party libs) within 3 month

The timeframe + loc + financial sector seems .... Off (I'm not touching that).

Wanna join me for a code/QA flight, i'm open for external audits :)

But actually you are somehow right: Without LLM this wouldnt have been possible, e.g. The platform uses Hibernate - for this, you need to create your entity class, a mapping class and a SQL script, and these things have to be somehow in line to each another to make it work; before LLM, you had to type those files.

Its just about automating those things which you had to type earlier & timecostly on your own.

> The platform uses Hibernate - for this, you need to create your entity class, a mapping class and a SQL script, and these things have to be somehow in line to each another to make it work; before LLM, you had to type those files.

Do you really need an LLM for that? Sure LLMs can do that but they're overkill, no?

My internship and first proper job (2011-2012) was at a consulting firm that used Hibernate. They managed to auto-generate all these things with an Excel macro. I'm willing to bet some JetBrains plugin can do that too without LLMs.

This was just a very simple example which came to my mind: you could also use active mapping etc. (though i prefer the XML files), its just one example out of many: i see LLM not as a "problem solver" but as a helper/sparringpartner

I’d be sweating furiously if told I was to inherit a new app to maintain and reading the text above

I'd be looking for a new job.

People like OP are the reason why there is so much skepticism about the new generation of AI.

>I just copy pasted all the answers I found on stack overflow into our live trading database at it works like a charm.

-- OP from a previous wave of computing.

No, actually not:

The thing is - i have 20+ years of IT & SWdev experience, i'm an old guy in your eyes: If you can check and QA, what the LLM gives you, you are very-pretty save.

Also, just sharing some of your current thoughts usually leads to new ideas when applying LLM; its very inspiring because they usually point you out to new contexts & ideas.

Again, that's also true for copy/pasting anything from stack overflow.

by far not! :-D

on stack overflow, i do not get "context-adjacent" ideas & inspirations - thats the difference.

Hahah, i heard that sub-tone :)

Well, the thing is, the application does only a few things and it is very well structured, i'd say - i could line out the architecture with a few sentences. For sure: To understand how the internal mechanics are working, you need to have some background knowhow on several layers.

Do you mind revealing the name of your "financial servic application" so we can stay clear of it?

Its a proprietary trading app which is used for our own activities only:

For a "standard user" its too complicated, its not made for the retail world. Would be tricky to sell this, esp. as it works only with one specific broker currently.

But if i make a retail version, i will post it here :)

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