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Yes, this is how I feel as well. I'm not going to use an LLM to create my architecture for me (though I may use it for advice), because I think of that as the c

Yes, this is how I feel as well. I'm not going to use an LLM to create my architecture for me (though I may use it for advice), because I think of that as the core creative thing that I bring into the project, and the thing I need to fully understand in order to steer it in the right direction. The AI is great at doing all the implementation grunt work ("how do I format that timestamp again?" "What's a faster vectorized way to do this weird polars transformation?" "Can you write tests to catch regressions for these 5 edge cases which I will then verify?").

skydhash 2y ago
Almost everytime I read about someone finding LLMs useful for a programming task, the description of how the LLMs are used sounds like either the person is missing domain knowledge, don't use a capable editor, or are not familiar with reading docs. When I find myself missing domain knowledge, my first action is to seek it. Not to try random things that may have hidden edge cases that I can't foresee. The semantics of every line and every symbol should be clear to me. And I should be able to go in details about its significance and usage. Editing code shouldn't be a bottleneck. In The Pragmatic Programmer, one of the advice is to achieve editor fluency. And even Bram has written about this[0]. Code is very repetitive, and your editor should assist you in reducing the amount of boilerplate you write and navigating around the codebase. Why? Because that will help you prune the code and get it in better shape as code is a liability. Generating code is a step in the wrong direction. There can be bad docs, or the information you're seeking is not easily retrievable. But most is actually quite decent, and in the worst case, you have the source code (or should). But there are different kind of docs and when someone is complaining about them, it's usually because they need a tutorial or a guide to learn the concepts and usage. Most systems assume you have the prerequisites and will only have the reference. [0]: https://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html https://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html

skydhash 2y ago

Almost everytime I read about someone finding LLMs useful for a programming task, the description of how the LLMs are used sounds like either the person is missing domain knowledge, don't use a capable editor, or are not familiar with reading docs. When I find myself missing domain knowledge, my first action is to seek it. Not to try random things that may have hidden edge cases that I can't foresee. The semantics of every line and every symbol should be clear to me. And I should be able to go in details about its significance and usage. Editing code shouldn't be a bottleneck. In The Pragmatic Programmer, one of the advice is to achieve editor fluency. And even Bram has written about this[0]. Code is very repetitive, and your editor should assist you in reducing the amount of boilerplate you write and navigating around the codebase. Why? Because that will help you prune the code and get it in better shape as code is a liability. Generating code is a step in the wrong direction. There can be bad docs, or the information you're seeking is not easily retrievable. But most is actually quite decent, and in the worst case, you have the source code (or should). But there are different kind of docs and when someone is complaining about them, it's usually because they need a tutorial or a guide to learn the concepts and usage. Most systems assume you have the prerequisites and will only have the reference. [0]: https://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html https://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html