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> Don't you need to write your own fair share of code Do you need to be good at playing football to be a coach? (Andy Reid) Do you need to be good at making f

> Don't you need to write your own fair share of code Do you need to be good at playing football to be a coach? (Andy Reid) Do you need to be good at making films to be a good critic of films? (Roger Ebert) Do you need to be a great chef to be a Michelin reviewer or food critic? Do you need to be a great singer to be a good judge of musical talent? (Simon Cowell) I think you can tell if some output is "good" without being expert at the doing part. You need to understand the domain, the inputs, the outputs, the range, but not necessarily be expert at the doing part. In fact, many, many more of us can tell "this book is good", but relatively few of us could write a very good novel. We have a sense that "this show or movie is entertaining", but few of us could produce one! One of the teams I worked with, our support engineer was extremely adept at reading code. He would trace defect reports to the lines of code and write excellent tickets that deeply understood the root cause of the error because he had a good conceptual model of the design and he was skilled at reading code. However, when it came to fixing the error, he had no clue!

jupiterjones 2y ago
Good point, but maybe a little incomplete. Can you read a contract and tell whether the courts will accept it? No, you need a lawyer for that. Can you look at a bridge or dam and tell how long it will last and under what loads? No, you need an engineer for that. You can, of course, wait for a court to rule on a challenge to a contract and judge how well it was written that way, but by then it's too late, and you've wasted money. Programming can be like that too. You judge a program by throwing it in front of users and accepting the financial (or, worse, human) consequences, but usually it's more economical to hire someone who knows what they're doing.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  > Can you read a contract and tell whether the courts will accept it Of course you can, if you understand the law. It's the same with professional sports; a random guy off the street isn't going to be proficient as a coach, but someone that deeply understands the domain -- as I mentioned -- can create and review code for quality without being able to write the code at that level or proficiency. Erik Spoelstra is a great example. Played basketball and had a short professional stint in lower leagues in Europe. Started off reviewing tape for the Miami Heat and went on to be a very successful coach. He doesn't make the plays, but he knows which players and which plays he needs. He knows when a player makes a good play and when a player makes a bad play. He substitutes players as needed for each situation. He deeply knows the domain, even if he can't himself play at that level. When the LLM can code 100x faster than you, your job isn't to be a better coder, it's to be a better coach.

jupiterjones 2y ago

Good point, but maybe a little incomplete. Can you read a contract and tell whether the courts will accept it? No, you need a lawyer for that. Can you look at a bridge or dam and tell how long it will last and under what loads? No, you need an engineer for that. You can, of course, wait for a court to rule on a challenge to a contract and judge how well it was written that way, but by then it's too late, and you've wasted money. Programming can be like that too. You judge a program by throwing it in front of users and accepting the financial (or, worse, human) consequences, but usually it's more economical to hire someone who knows what they're doing.

CharlieDigital 2y ago
> Can you read a contract and tell whether the courts will accept it Of course you can, if you understand the law. It's the same with professional sports; a random guy off the street isn't going to be proficient as a coach, but someone that deeply understands the domain -- as I mentioned -- can create and review code for quality without being able to write the code at that level or proficiency. Erik Spoelstra is a great example. Played basketball and had a short professional stint in lower leagues in Europe. Started off reviewing tape for the Miami Heat and went on to be a very successful coach. He doesn't make the plays, but he knows which players and which plays he needs. He knows when a player makes a good play and when a player makes a bad play. He substitutes players as needed for each situation. He deeply knows the domain, even if he can't himself play at that level. When the LLM can code 100x faster than you, your job isn't to be a better coder, it's to be a better coach.