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This all depends on your mental relationship with the LLM. As somebody else pointed out, this is an issue of delegation. If you had one or more junior programme

This all depends on your mental relationship with the LLM. As somebody else pointed out, this is an issue of delegation. If you had one or more junior programmers working for you writing code according to what you specify, would you have the same worry? I treat LLMs as junior programmers. They can make my life easier and occasionally make it harder. With that mindset, you start out knowing that they're going to make stupid mistakes, and that builds your skill of detecting mistakes in other people's code. Also, like with biological junior programmers, nonbiological junior programmers quickly show how bad you are giving direction and force you to improve that skill. I don't write code by hand because my hands are broken, and I can't use the keyboard long enough to write any significant amount of code. I've developed a relationship with nonbiological junior programmers such that I now tell them, via speech recognition, what to write and what information they need to create code that looks like code I used to create by hand. Does this keep me from learning new skills? No. I'm always making new mistakes and how to correct them. One of those corrections was knowing that you don't learn something significant from writing code. Career-sustaining knowledge comes at a much higher level.

JohnFen 2y ago
> If you had one or more junior programmers working for you writing code according to what you specify, would you have the same worry? It's a great question. My answer generally is yes, I would (and do), but I'm willing to sacrifice a bit in order to ensure that the junior developer gets enough practical experience that they can succeed in their career. I'm not willing to make such a sacrifice for a machine.
manuel_w 2y ago
> I don't write code by hand because my hands are broken, and I can't use the keyboard long enough to write any significant amount of code. I've developed a relationship with nonbiological junior programmers such that I now tell them, via speech recognition, what to write and what information they need to create code that looks like code I used to create by hand. Can you please write a blog post on what tools you use for that? My hands are fine, still, I'd love to just verbally explain what I want and have someone else type the code for me.
- rickydroll 2y ago
  sure. I've been meaning to do a comparison of aqua and dragon. I'll do one of co-pilot and gpt-whatever. give me 6 months or so, I've got marketing to do. :-)
finnthehuman 2y ago
> If you had one or more junior programmers working for you writing code according to what you specify, would you have the same worry? I try hard to avoid the scenario where junior programmers write things they don’t understand. That’s actually my biggest frustration and the difference between juniors I enjoy vs loathe working with. There are only so many ways to remain supportive and gently say “no, for real, learn what you’re working on instead of hacking something brittle and incomplete together.”
- rickydroll 2y ago
  Thank you for explaining. I totally agree with you about being supportive and the level of capability. For me, both Copilot and ChatGPT are reasonably skilled junior programmers. They understand about 70% of what I'm looking for. I can correct them with one revised prompt and get them to the 80 to 90% range. At three prompts, I assume GPT/Co-Pilot is an idiot. In both cases of non-bio and bio junior programmers, I always ask myself the question, how am I explaining it wrong? More often with bio junior programmers, I am explaining it wrong. With nonbio junior programs, it's still giving the wrong explanation, but in a different way. The closest analogy to this experience is learning how to use speech recognition. You get to about the 95% recognition level by the system learning how you speak. You get to the 98, 99% recognition level by speaking the way the system hears
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JohnFen 2y ago

> If you had one or more junior programmers working for you writing code according to what you specify, would you have the same worry? It's a great question. My answer generally is yes, I would (and do), but I'm willing to sacrifice a bit in order to ensure that the junior developer gets enough practical experience that they can succeed in their career. I'm not willing to make such a sacrifice for a machine.

manuel_w 2y ago

> I don't write code by hand because my hands are broken, and I can't use the keyboard long enough to write any significant amount of code. I've developed a relationship with nonbiological junior programmers such that I now tell them, via speech recognition, what to write and what information they need to create code that looks like code I used to create by hand. Can you please write a blog post on what tools you use for that? My hands are fine, still, I'd love to just verbally explain what I want and have someone else type the code for me.

rickydroll 2y ago
sure. I've been meaning to do a comparison of aqua and dragon. I'll do one of co-pilot and gpt-whatever. give me 6 months or so, I've got marketing to do. :-)

finnthehuman 2y ago

> If you had one or more junior programmers working for you writing code according to what you specify, would you have the same worry? I try hard to avoid the scenario where junior programmers write things they don’t understand. That’s actually my biggest frustration and the difference between juniors I enjoy vs loathe working with. There are only so many ways to remain supportive and gently say “no, for real, learn what you’re working on instead of hacking something brittle and incomplete together.”

rickydroll 2y ago
Thank you for explaining. I totally agree with you about being supportive and the level of capability. For me, both Copilot and ChatGPT are reasonably skilled junior programmers. They understand about 70% of what I'm looking for. I can correct them with one revised prompt and get them to the 80 to 90% range. At three prompts, I assume GPT/Co-Pilot is an idiot. In both cases of non-bio and bio junior programmers, I always ask myself the question, how am I explaining it wrong? More often with bio junior programmers, I am explaining it wrong. With nonbio junior programs, it's still giving the wrong explanation, but in a different way. The closest analogy to this experience is learning how to use speech recognition. You get to about the 95% recognition level by the system learning how you speak. You get to the 98, 99% recognition level by speaking the way the system hears
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]