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| its exhausting to keep up with what I (as a dev) should be doing to stay sharp That for me is the biggest thing I am feeling about LLMs at the moment, things

| its exhausting to keep up with what I (as a dev) should be doing to stay sharp That for me is the biggest thing I am feeling about LLMs at the moment, things are moving so quickly but to what end? I know this industry is constantly evolving and in some ways that is very exciting but I also feel like it is this exponential runaway that requires very deliberate attention focused on the bleeding edge to stay relevant, when a lot of my time in my day job doesn't facilitate this (which I have identified and have made the effort and will be changing company in a month). My own two cents on LLMs (as a junior / low mid level early career software engineer) is that they work best as a better version of Google for any well explored issue, and being able to talk through problems in a conversational manner has been a game changer. But I do fear sometimes that I am not gaining the same amount of knowledge as I would before LLMs became mainstream, it's a shortcut that in the long run I fear is going to reduce the average problem solving ability and original / novel thinking ability of software engineers (whether that is even a requirement in most SWE jobs is up for debate).

ozim 1y ago
I think this staying sharp is FOMO instilled by influencers and people selling guides/courses. Most of the stuff will be implemented by Anthropic, OpenAI etc. You can run local models but it is like playing matchbox cars in your backyard and imagining you will be F1 driver some day. Big guys have APIs you pay for to do serious work that’s all you need to know.
- conartist6 1y ago
  Running models at all is playing with matchbox cars. If you want to play in the big leagues, you have to become the model.
- jackstraw42 1y ago
  A bit unfair to call local models Matchbox cars compared to F1. There are plenty of uses for LLMs locally that don't require the largest models, it's not like it has to be all-or-nothing. For example, as a general browser assistant to help summarize articles, explain context, etc. the gemma-3-4B model does very well and is lightning fast on my old 3060 Ti.
  - ozim 1y ago
    You just wrote exact confirmation. Running 3060 Ti gemma-3-4B to play with as your local assistant is toying around. Make the same as a startup or a company and you most likely will be out of business in 3 to 6 months because big guys will have everything faster and better in no time. GPT-o3 price drop of 80% most likely made running 3060Ti more expensive if you check your energy bill.
    - jackstraw42 1y ago
      > Make the same as a startup or a company Not looking to do that though! You can call it toying around if you want, but I think you're really limiting your perspective by dismissing smaller models.
vaylian 1y ago
> its exhausting to keep up with what I (as a dev) should be doing to stay sharp I have observed the JavaScript ecosystem producing one new framework after another. I decided to wait for the dust to settle. Turns out vanilla.js is still fine for the things I need to do.

ozim 1y ago

I think this staying sharp is FOMO instilled by influencers and people selling guides/courses. Most of the stuff will be implemented by Anthropic, OpenAI etc. You can run local models but it is like playing matchbox cars in your backyard and imagining you will be F1 driver some day. Big guys have APIs you pay for to do serious work that’s all you need to know.

conartist6 1y ago
Running models at all is playing with matchbox cars. If you want to play in the big leagues, you have to become the model.
jackstraw42 1y ago
A bit unfair to call local models Matchbox cars compared to F1. There are plenty of uses for LLMs locally that don't require the largest models, it's not like it has to be all-or-nothing. For example, as a general browser assistant to help summarize articles, explain context, etc. the gemma-3-4B model does very well and is lightning fast on my old 3060 Ti.
- ozim 1y ago
  You just wrote exact confirmation. Running 3060 Ti gemma-3-4B to play with as your local assistant is toying around. Make the same as a startup or a company and you most likely will be out of business in 3 to 6 months because big guys will have everything faster and better in no time. GPT-o3 price drop of 80% most likely made running 3060Ti more expensive if you check your energy bill.
  - jackstraw42 1y ago
    > Make the same as a startup or a company Not looking to do that though! You can call it toying around if you want, but I think you're really limiting your perspective by dismissing smaller models.

vaylian 1y ago

> its exhausting to keep up with what I (as a dev) should be doing to stay sharp I have observed the JavaScript ecosystem producing one new framework after another. I decided to wait for the dust to settle. Turns out vanilla.js is still fine for the things I need to do.