4 ms·
> And pretty much everyone, no matter how good, cannot get there with code-reading alone. With software at least, we need to develop a mental model of the thing
by thunky 9mo ago
> And pretty much everyone, no matter how good, cannot get there with code-reading alone. With software at least, we need to develop a mental model of the thing by futzing about with the thing in deeply meaningful ways
LLMs help with that part too. As Antirez says:
Writing code is no longer needed for the most part. It is now a lot more interesting to understand what to do, and how to do it (and, about this second part, LLMs are great partners, too).
- adityaathalye 9mo agoHow to "understand" what to do? How to know the "how to do it" is sensible? (sensible = the product will produce the expected outcome within the expected (or tolerable) error bars?)
- thunky 9mo ago> How to "understand" what to do? How did you ever know? It's not like everyone always wrote perfect code up until now. Nothing has changed, except now you have a "partner" to help you along with your understanding.
- adityaathalye 9mo agoWell, I have a whole blog post of an answer for you: https://www.evalapply.org/posts/tools-for-thought/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/tools-for-thought/ Who "knows"? It's who has a world-model. It's who can evaluate input signal against said world-model. Which requires an ability to generate questions, probe the nature of reality, and do experiments to figure out what's what. And it's who can alter their world-model using experiences collected from the back-and-forth.