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> And FWIW, I cannot imagine a programmer, in 2024, that remains dismissive of LLMs or the related tooling. Hi. > While they are grossly oversold by the Linke

> And FWIW, I cannot imagine a programmer, in 2024, that remains dismissive of LLMs or the related tooling. Hi. > While they are grossly oversold by the LinkedIn crowd, That is true. > and are still a far ways from so-called "prompt engineers" replacing devs, Also true. > they're a massive accelerator and "second set of eyes", especially if you're doing varied, novel work. That is not even remotely my experience. Like I can envision a programmer who would get benefits from it, but bluntly put, the code I work on day to day is far, far too interesting to be handled by copilot, simply because there aren't nearly enough stackoverflow pages about it to be scraped. Honestly if you found yourself able to automate most of your job with copilot, if anything, you have my sincerest condolences. I can't imagine how utterly bored you are in your day-to-day. IF copilot could get to a place where it could understand, comprehend, and weigh-in on code, that would be incredibly useful. But that's not what Copilot is because that's not what transformers are. They are fancy word probability calculators. And don't get me wrong, that has uses, but it is nothing I'd be comfortable calling a second set of eyes for for anything, save for maybe writing.

llm_nerd 2y ago
>Hi. I was being dismissively rhetorical. I can actually imagine them because we see them on HN constantly, with a Luddism that somehow actually becomes a rather hilarious attempt at superiority. A "well if you actually get use out of them, I guess you're just not at my superior level of Unique Projects and Unique Code". It's honestly just embarrassing at this point. >but bluntly put, the code I work on day to day is far, far too interesting to be handled by copilot Hilarious. It's a cliche at this point. Let me take it further and turn this on its head: The people who usually think LLMs aren't valuable to coders generally work on the most boring, copy/paste prattle. They stick to the same tiny niche all day every day. They're basically implementing the same thing again and again. It's so rote, and they're so profoundly unchallenged, that tooling has no value.
- Clubber 2y ago
  >with a Luddism that somehow actually becomes a rather hilarious attempt at superiority >The people who usually think LLMs aren't valuable to coders generally work on the most boring, copy/paste prattle. Here you are doing the same thing, aren't you? Instead of calling people names, the biggest tell of a weak argument, why don't you explain the type of work you do and how using an LLM is faster than if you coded it yourself and and/or also faster than any current way of doing the same thing. I'm assuming you are a senior+ level coder.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    But...I'm not doing the same thing. In actuality I'm saying I'm a fairly typical programmer in a common situation: I work across a variety of languages and platforms and toolings and projects, building solutions for problems. The truth is that extraordinarily few programmers are working on anything truly novel. Zero of the readers of this comment are, in all likelihood. The ridiculous notion that someone has so unique of a need that it hasn't been seen is kind of hilarious nonsense. It's the "I'm so random! Other girls aren't like me" bit. >Instead of calling people names Who called anyone a name? Luddism? Yes, many HN participants are reacting to AI in a completely common rejection of change / challenge, and it recurs constantly. >how using an LLM is faster than if you coded it yourself I am coding it myself. Similar to the other guy who talks about putting an LLM in "charge" of his precious, super-novel code, you're setting up a strawman where using an LLM implies some particular scenario that you envision. In reality I spend my day asking questions, getting broad strokes, getting code commented, asking for API or resources, etc.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      > Who called anyone a name? Luddism? Yes, many HN participants are reacting to AI in a completely common rejection of change / challenge, and it recurs constantly. You should read up on what Luddism and Luddists were actually about. They didn't think the machines were evil or satanic, which is the common cultural read. They assumed (correctly) that the managerial class would take full advantage of increased productivity of lower-quality goods to flood the market with cheap shit that would put competitors out of business, and let them fire 4/5 of their workforces while doing so. And considering the state of the textile industry today, I think that was a pretty solid set of projections. Luddites didn't oppose automation on the basis that machines are scary. They were the people who worked the machines that already existed at the time, after all. They opposed them on the basis that the greedy bastards who owned everything would be the only ones actually benefiting from automation, everyone else would get one kind of shaft or another, which again: is exactly what happened. This, actually is incredibly analogous to my opinions about LLM. It's an interesting tech that has applications but is already being situated to be the sole domain of massive hyperscalers and subject to every ounce of enshittification that follows every tech that goes that way, while putting creatives, and yes some coders, out of a job. So yes, it was name calling, but also I don't object to the association. In this case, I'm a Luddite. I am suspicious of the motivations and the beneficiaries of automation being forced into my industry and I'm not going to be quiet about it.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  That was a whole lotta words to say "Nuh uh." and as such I don't really have a response.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
beardedwizard 2y ago
There is a lot to unpack here, but is your code so interesting that it defies understanding by an AST? Code models are trained to semantically represent code, so unless you use semantics that exist outside of software engineering the claim that your code is too unique for llm is false. Maybe you are imagining a case where the entire codebase is generated by a single prompt?
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  The shorter and also "not breaching confidentiality" answer I can give is we're dealing with setting up custom sockets over incredibly long range wireless connections that require clear and verified transmission of packets of data, rolling both our own messaging protocol and security features as we go. When last I tried anyway, Copilot was, frankly, useless.
  - cube2222 2y ago
    Fwiw, copilot is not a particularly powerful LLM. It's at most glorified smarter autocomplete. I personally use LLMs for coding a lot, but Copilot is not really what I'd have in mind saying that. Rather, I'd be using something like the Zed editor with its AI Assistant integration and Claude Sonnet 3.5 as the model, where I first provide it context in the chat window (relevant files, pages, database schema, documents it should reference and know) and possibly discuss the problem with it briefly, and only then (with all of that as context in the prompt) do I ask it to author/edit a piece of code (via the inline assist feature, which "sees" the current chat). But it generally is the most useful for "I know exactly what I want to write or change, but it'll take me 30 minutes to do so, while with the LLM I can do the same in 5 minutes". They're also quite good at "tell me edge-cases I might have not considered in this code" - even if 80% of the suggestions it'll list are likely irrelevant, it'll often come up with something you might've not thought about. There's definitely problems they're worse than useless at, though. Where more complex reasoning is warranted, OpenAI o1 series of models can be quite decent, but it's hit or miss, and with the above prompt sizes you're looking at 1-2$ per query.
- malcolmgreaves 2y ago
gilleain 2y ago
It's interesting that there is this division between programmers who claim LLMs are super helpful, and those saying they are useless. While it's certainly possible that this divide is based on how 'hard' the problems people are using them on, my current theory is that some people use them like the proverbial rubber duck - in other words, a way to explore the code, and generate some stuff to work on, while thinking through the problem. Personally, I have not yet tried it, so I'm curious which side of the discussion I'll fall ...
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  Some people seem to be taking me saying "you must work on boring code" as a judgement against them as developers, and it isn't. I'm speaking directly from my experience: If I asked it beginner-tier questions about how to do X in Y language, it would get those right quite often. I could see Copilot being very useful if you're breaking into a new language, or just knocking the rust off the gears of one in your head. And like, even for those who write a lot of boring code, like... cool man. I don't judge people for that. We need all code written and all code is not exciting, novel, or interesting and there's nothing wrong with doing it. Someone's gotta. I'm just saying that the further up the proverbial complexity chain I went, the less able Copilot was. And once I was quite in the weeds, it seemed utterly perplexed and frankly, not worth the time in asking.
  - aftbit 2y ago
    Yeah, at least 90% of any job is just making license plates. I have worked on both very complex and challenging code and also very simple and easy code in my career, even within one job.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    >as a judgement against them as developers No one takes it as a judgment, and no one is offended. It's just a truth that when people make such claims, they're often exaggerating the uniqueness or novelty of what they're doing. You described your work in another comment, and what you described is the most bog standard programming in the field. It's always the case.

llm_nerd 2y ago

>Hi. I was being dismissively rhetorical. I can actually imagine them because we see them on HN constantly, with a Luddism that somehow actually becomes a rather hilarious attempt at superiority. A "well if you actually get use out of them, I guess you're just not at my superior level of Unique Projects and Unique Code". It's honestly just embarrassing at this point. >but bluntly put, the code I work on day to day is far, far too interesting to be handled by copilot Hilarious. It's a cliche at this point. Let me take it further and turn this on its head: The people who usually think LLMs aren't valuable to coders generally work on the most boring, copy/paste prattle. They stick to the same tiny niche all day every day. They're basically implementing the same thing again and again. It's so rote, and they're so profoundly unchallenged, that tooling has no value.

Clubber 2y ago
>with a Luddism that somehow actually becomes a rather hilarious attempt at superiority >The people who usually think LLMs aren't valuable to coders generally work on the most boring, copy/paste prattle. Here you are doing the same thing, aren't you? Instead of calling people names, the biggest tell of a weak argument, why don't you explain the type of work you do and how using an LLM is faster than if you coded it yourself and and/or also faster than any current way of doing the same thing. I'm assuming you are a senior+ level coder.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  But...I'm not doing the same thing. In actuality I'm saying I'm a fairly typical programmer in a common situation: I work across a variety of languages and platforms and toolings and projects, building solutions for problems. The truth is that extraordinarily few programmers are working on anything truly novel. Zero of the readers of this comment are, in all likelihood. The ridiculous notion that someone has so unique of a need that it hasn't been seen is kind of hilarious nonsense. It's the "I'm so random! Other girls aren't like me" bit. >Instead of calling people names Who called anyone a name? Luddism? Yes, many HN participants are reacting to AI in a completely common rejection of change / challenge, and it recurs constantly. >how using an LLM is faster than if you coded it yourself I am coding it myself. Similar to the other guy who talks about putting an LLM in "charge" of his precious, super-novel code, you're setting up a strawman where using an LLM implies some particular scenario that you envision. In reality I spend my day asking questions, getting broad strokes, getting code commented, asking for API or resources, etc.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    > Who called anyone a name? Luddism? Yes, many HN participants are reacting to AI in a completely common rejection of change / challenge, and it recurs constantly. You should read up on what Luddism and Luddists were actually about. They didn't think the machines were evil or satanic, which is the common cultural read. They assumed (correctly) that the managerial class would take full advantage of increased productivity of lower-quality goods to flood the market with cheap shit that would put competitors out of business, and let them fire 4/5 of their workforces while doing so. And considering the state of the textile industry today, I think that was a pretty solid set of projections. Luddites didn't oppose automation on the basis that machines are scary. They were the people who worked the machines that already existed at the time, after all. They opposed them on the basis that the greedy bastards who owned everything would be the only ones actually benefiting from automation, everyone else would get one kind of shaft or another, which again: is exactly what happened. This, actually is incredibly analogous to my opinions about LLM. It's an interesting tech that has applications but is already being situated to be the sole domain of massive hyperscalers and subject to every ounce of enshittification that follows every tech that goes that way, while putting creatives, and yes some coders, out of a job. So yes, it was name calling, but also I don't object to the association. In this case, I'm a Luddite. I am suspicious of the motivations and the beneficiaries of automation being forced into my industry and I'm not going to be quiet about it.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
That was a whole lotta words to say "Nuh uh." and as such I don't really have a response.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

beardedwizard 2y ago

There is a lot to unpack here, but is your code so interesting that it defies understanding by an AST? Code models are trained to semantically represent code, so unless you use semantics that exist outside of software engineering the claim that your code is too unique for llm is false. Maybe you are imagining a case where the entire codebase is generated by a single prompt?

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
The shorter and also "not breaching confidentiality" answer I can give is we're dealing with setting up custom sockets over incredibly long range wireless connections that require clear and verified transmission of packets of data, rolling both our own messaging protocol and security features as we go. When last I tried anyway, Copilot was, frankly, useless.
- cube2222 2y ago
  Fwiw, copilot is not a particularly powerful LLM. It's at most glorified smarter autocomplete. I personally use LLMs for coding a lot, but Copilot is not really what I'd have in mind saying that. Rather, I'd be using something like the Zed editor with its AI Assistant integration and Claude Sonnet 3.5 as the model, where I first provide it context in the chat window (relevant files, pages, database schema, documents it should reference and know) and possibly discuss the problem with it briefly, and only then (with all of that as context in the prompt) do I ask it to author/edit a piece of code (via the inline assist feature, which "sees" the current chat). But it generally is the most useful for "I know exactly what I want to write or change, but it'll take me 30 minutes to do so, while with the LLM I can do the same in 5 minutes". They're also quite good at "tell me edge-cases I might have not considered in this code" - even if 80% of the suggestions it'll list are likely irrelevant, it'll often come up with something you might've not thought about. There's definitely problems they're worse than useless at, though. Where more complex reasoning is warranted, OpenAI o1 series of models can be quite decent, but it's hit or miss, and with the above prompt sizes you're looking at 1-2$ per query.
malcolmgreaves 2y ago

gilleain 2y ago

It's interesting that there is this division between programmers who claim LLMs are super helpful, and those saying they are useless. While it's certainly possible that this divide is based on how 'hard' the problems people are using them on, my current theory is that some people use them like the proverbial rubber duck - in other words, a way to explore the code, and generate some stuff to work on, while thinking through the problem. Personally, I have not yet tried it, so I'm curious which side of the discussion I'll fall ...

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Some people seem to be taking me saying "you must work on boring code" as a judgement against them as developers, and it isn't. I'm speaking directly from my experience: If I asked it beginner-tier questions about how to do X in Y language, it would get those right quite often. I could see Copilot being very useful if you're breaking into a new language, or just knocking the rust off the gears of one in your head. And like, even for those who write a lot of boring code, like... cool man. I don't judge people for that. We need all code written and all code is not exciting, novel, or interesting and there's nothing wrong with doing it. Someone's gotta. I'm just saying that the further up the proverbial complexity chain I went, the less able Copilot was. And once I was quite in the weeds, it seemed utterly perplexed and frankly, not worth the time in asking.
- aftbit 2y ago
  Yeah, at least 90% of any job is just making license plates. I have worked on both very complex and challenging code and also very simple and easy code in my career, even within one job.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  >as a judgement against them as developers No one takes it as a judgment, and no one is offended. It's just a truth that when people make such claims, they're often exaggerating the uniqueness or novelty of what they're doing. You described your work in another comment, and what you described is the most bog standard programming in the field. It's always the case.