Perhaps not Boring Technology after all
Highlights
- ▸Long context + skills / docs-in-prompt has broken the 'boring tech' advantage — agents can now use brand-new tools if you hand them the --help docs
- ▸Two years ago, Python/JavaScript beat less-common languages in LLM output; today, that gap is closing faster than most expect
- ▸'Choose boring technology' was a good heuristic in the LLM training-data era; in the long-context agent era, new tools can compete on merit again
Original excerpt
Sponsored by: Honeycomb — AI agents behave unpredictably. Get the context you need to debug what actually happened. Read the blog
A recurring concern I’ve seen regarding LLMs for programming is that they will push our technology choices towards the tools that are best represented in their training data, making it harder for new, better tools to break through the noise.
This was certainly the case a couple of years ago, when asking models for help with Python or JavaScript appeared to give much better results than questions about less widely used languages.
With the latest models running in good coding agent harnesses I’m not sure this continues to hold up.
I’m seeing excellent results with my…
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