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> I can't run 80 mph but I can drive a car that fast If you drive a car 80mph you don't get to claim you are a good runner Similarly if you use an LLM to gene

> I can't run 80 mph but I can drive a car that fast If you drive a car 80mph you don't get to claim you are a good runner Similarly if you use an LLM to generate 10k lines of code, you don't get to claim you are a good programmer Regardless of the outcome being the "same"

elliotbnvl 2y ago
You do get to claim that you’re a good getting-places-er, though, which is the only point of commercial programming.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Project Managers will tell you that "getting to a place" is the goal Then you get to the place and they say "now load all of the things in the garage into the truck" But oops. You didn't bring a truck, because all they told you was "please be at this address at this time", with no mention of needing a truck My point is that the purpose of commercial programming is not usually just to get to the goal Often the purpose of commercial programming is to create a foundation that can be extended to meet other goals later, that you may not even be remotely aware of right now If your foundation is a vibe coded mess that no one understands, you are going to wind up screwed And yes, part of being a good programmer includes being aware of this
  - pixl97 2y ago
    I work with quite a few F100 companies. The actual amount of software most of them create is staggering. Tens of thousands of different applications. Most of it is low throughput and used by a small number of employees for a specific purpose with otherwise low impact to the business. This kind of stuff has been vibe coded long before there was AI around to do it for you. At the same time human ran 'feature' applications like you're talking about often suffer from "let the programmer figure it out" problems where different teams start doing their own things.
baranul 2y ago
LLMs aren't that productive. 10k lines from it, is a lot of troubleshooting, from all kinds of errors. Enough so, that one would still do better without it. Not saying LLMs don't have their place or can't be helpful, but they aren't where many imagine them to be, when it comes to programming.

elliotbnvl 2y ago

You do get to claim that you’re a good getting-places-er, though, which is the only point of commercial programming.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
Project Managers will tell you that "getting to a place" is the goal Then you get to the place and they say "now load all of the things in the garage into the truck" But oops. You didn't bring a truck, because all they told you was "please be at this address at this time", with no mention of needing a truck My point is that the purpose of commercial programming is not usually just to get to the goal Often the purpose of commercial programming is to create a foundation that can be extended to meet other goals later, that you may not even be remotely aware of right now If your foundation is a vibe coded mess that no one understands, you are going to wind up screwed And yes, part of being a good programmer includes being aware of this
- pixl97 2y ago
  I work with quite a few F100 companies. The actual amount of software most of them create is staggering. Tens of thousands of different applications. Most of it is low throughput and used by a small number of employees for a specific purpose with otherwise low impact to the business. This kind of stuff has been vibe coded long before there was AI around to do it for you. At the same time human ran 'feature' applications like you're talking about often suffer from "let the programmer figure it out" problems where different teams start doing their own things.

baranul 2y ago

LLMs aren't that productive. 10k lines from it, is a lot of troubleshooting, from all kinds of errors. Enough so, that one would still do better without it. Not saying LLMs don't have their place or can't be helpful, but they aren't where many imagine them to be, when it comes to programming.