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We are agreeing, I'm arguing against that dichotomy from the other direction—you don’t always need to know everything under-the-hood. You also can’t always igno
by cle 2y ago
We are agreeing, I'm arguing against that dichotomy from the other direction—you don’t always need to know everything under-the-hood. You also can’t always ignore everything under-the-hood.
Sometimes you can get the job done by using a tool like a genie, and that’s awesome (it’s the goal of abstractions IMO). Sometimes you can’t.
You don't always need exhaustive "proof that it works" other than running the thing and looking at the output.
If you can get the job done with an LLM without understanding the code it wrote, then that's awesome. I've seen it multiple times with non-technical people who just want to do some small thing with a Python script. They solve their problem, send their report/email, and move on.
- skydhash 2y ago> If you can get the job done with an LLM without understanding the code it wrote, then that's awesome. I don’t think anyone would find fault with this argument. People who are wary of LLMs, including myself, are in fact wary of lazyness. Getting the (current?) job done is only a small part of building a system. The fact is you have to maintain it or extract the embodied knowledge later, and that’s where no thought have not been given. In the Tidy First? book by Kent Beck, he explains that the value of software is both in its current behavior and the future possibilities that the structure provides. If there’s no future to worry about, LLMs may be a valuable tool.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- namaria 2y agoLet's not conflate running one off scripts with software development. If LLMs can help people do something with Python that would be just a lot of boring clicking around or whatnot, great. The conversation in this thread was about how LLMs will change software engineering as a profession tho...