@jschuster@hachyderm.io

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Jul 30, 2026

Yes, I've been thinking this for a while. There's some real value in LLMs (ignoring actual costs and externalities for the moment), but I believe a large part of the hype and business spend on AI right now is because many business leaders don't fully appreciate the gap between a flashy demo and an actual product.

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Jul 24, 2026

Yesterday: "It's such a beautiful day, and summer is going by so fast. I wish I didn't have work today."

Today: Take the day off. Go for a couple of bike rides around town. Read in the hammock. Get a good sandwich at a local cafe and eat outside. Swim, relax, and read some more at the public pool.

Yeah. That's the way to do it. 😌

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Jul 24, 2026

RE: @skade@hachyderm.io

I love Rust for what it is, but this is spot on. Don't reach for the hair shirt of borrow checking unless you're confident you really need that low level control.

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Jun 22, 2026

A reflection on LLMs and understanding:

Maybe you've been in this situation before: you ask someone about their work, and they go on a long technical ramble about the intricate details of what they do. Then at the end you respond "Wow, I didn't understand any of that. You must be really smart".

I used to think like that as well. But then in grad school, I learned that such a ramble signals a lack of skill rather than an abundance of intelligence. Anyone can ramble at length about whatever is on their mind in whatever form they think about it. But when someone really, deeply *understands* an idea, they can communicate it in a way that other people can understand, too.

So when I hear people at work say things like "I don't really understand this, but I fed it to the LLM and I was really impressed by the response", you can understand my concern.

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Apr 01, 2026

Replying to @oxidecomputer@hachyderm.io

@oxidecomputer@hachyderm.io Finally answering the important questions! 😆

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 10, 2026

Replying to @pence@scholar.social

@pence Sounds like crystalized intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 10, 2026

RE: @cwebber@social.coop

EDIT: He may not have passed away, see quoted post.

Farewell to a legend of the computer science community. I've known his name since some of my earliest days in CS, and I remember being starstruck when he was the first (and I think still only) Turing award winner I saw in person. Thank you for everything. Rest in Peace.

0

2

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @shriramk@mastodon.social

@shriramk @jfdm @cross @lindsey @krismicinski @csgordon @jeremysiek ah, I see. I was thinking more like expressing structural constraints in UML and passing those as extra constraints to the LLM, along with the rest of the prompt/spec. 100% idle speculation for me, I haven't dived too deep into this yet.

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @jfdm@discuss.systems

@jfdm @shriramk @cross @lindsey @krismicinski @csgordon @jeremysiek Fair! I like those types also (Mailbox Types is what I wish my dissertation had been). My experience has been that source code->UML diagram works well in some cases, but not the other way around. But happy to be proven wrong.

0

5

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @shriramk@mastodon.social

@shriramk @cross @lindsey @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek Yeah, particularly the parts of UML about structure. The more behavioral parts always seemed like a clumsy PL to me, but the parts that constrain the architecture seem like a good starting point if we want to (semi) formalize the requirements we give to LLMs.

0

8

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @shriramk@mastodon.social

@shriramk @cross @lindsey @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek yeah I would have sworn I saw him make a diagram like that too, but I don't see it now in the World and the Machine paper. Thinking back to that era: maybe we'll see the resurgence of parts of UML? Perhaps this new loop is the right feedback loop to make some of those ideas work

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 06, 2026

Replying to @cross@discuss.systems

@cross @shriramk @lindsey @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek My understanding is that Waterfall in the most extreme sense means you can't go back to a previous phase (hence the name waterfall: it only goes in one direction). So in a technical sense, that feedback cycle isn't taking us back to waterfall. But will LLMs encourage a doc/spec-heavy style of development? Most people I know seem to think yes. In particular, the software architecture folks I know are excited about having a space to talk about architecture again. But what exactly those "specs" look like and how similar they will be to our current docs and specs is very much up for debate.

1

16

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 06, 2026

Replying to @jschuster@hachyderm.io

@shriramk @lindsey @cross @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek To be fair: The LLM tooling is certainly more capable overall than the Bret Victor stuff. But I'm not yet convinced coding is 100% solved.

1

23

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 06, 2026

Replying to @jschuster@hachyderm.io

@shriramk @lindsey @cross @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek LLM-based code generation reminds me of some of Bret Victor's talks: there are some cool ideas and convincing demos, but also a lot more work to do before one can say "we've solved all of the problems; everyone should be doing this all the time now".

2

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Mar 06, 2026

Replying to @shriramk@mastodon.social

@shriramk @lindsey @cross @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek Do you think that the "no one will look at the generated code anymore" future is inevitable? Given how often the industry has tried to generate programs directly from English-like specs before and failed, I'm quite skeptical, even if we have notably different tech this time around. Internally at Google many folks (including high-level ones) are making this claim without evidence, as if it's obvious from its face, and I'm surprised how few people push back on it or at least ask for more proof.

1

25

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Feb 27, 2026

Replying to @simon_jf@mastodon.scot

@simon_jf Ooh, neat! Just printed it out for my long train ride tonight.

0

1

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Feb 26, 2026

RE: @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io

Jennifer mentions anchoring and (exhaustion of our) vigilance as two risks of LLM-based tools, at least for software development. I've definitely seen both of those from some coworkers. Definitely on my list of concerns with these tools.

hachyderm.io

Jenniferplusplus: "I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now…" - Hachyderm.io

4

0

3

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Feb 13, 2026

Replying to @Lana__dup_1453@beige.party

@Lana@beige.party "Correlation is not causation" is the best because most fallacious reasoning mentions a correlation.

7

0

Jonathan Schuster @jschuster@hachyderm.io · Nov 22, 2025

Replying to @shanselman@hachyderm.io

@shanselman@hachyderm.io You figured it out in only 2 hours? That still sounds like a win, compared to some other personal equipment debugging sessions I've had.

26

0

Jonathan Schuster

Posts

Jenniferplusplus: "I wrote about AI again. On some level I don't now…" - Hachyderm.io

Remote instance