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Also true for deciding whether to write code at all! About 15 years ago I was working with a junior who'd spent 3 hours trying to automate some data editing unt
by scott_w 1y ago
Also true for deciding whether to write code at all! About 15 years ago I was working with a junior who'd spent 3 hours trying to automate some data editing until I said "mate, you can just edit it all by hand in about an hour!"
- VBprogrammer 1y agoFunny enough, with LLMs this trade off may well have flipped. For simple tasks like given a string like X, format it like Y, they work amazingly well.
- scott_w 1y agoAbsolutely. Even back then, trying to script it would sometimes be fine. I've had plenty of situations where I'd try to write a script, give it 30 minutes then say "fuck it, I'm hand-fixing it." The same probably applies to LLMs, you just need to set a cut-off point before it stops being worthwhile.
- lettuceconstant 1y agoSure, but I have to obtain my dopamine somehow.
- taeric 1y agoI had a similar one where a billing mistake had happened in a system and the other devs were trying to find out how to determine all of the bad values. I asked if they had simply looked at the top N that could fit on their screen sorted by value. The incorrect values were the obvious outliers. Only about 4 of them. They had been blocked on identifying them for about an hour.