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> The value of knowing syntax, APIs, and framework conventions approaches zero. An LLM can look these up faster than you can remember them. The irony here is t
by politelemon 9mo ago
> The value of knowing syntax, APIs, and framework conventions approaches zero. An LLM can look these up faster than you can remember them.
The irony here is that although pointing out quite well how people may have made incorrect judgment calls due to what comes down to personal experience at various times, this aspect is also down to personal experience.
An LLM can look these up and is still getting them wrong, or it can get them right but still pick the wrong conventions to use. More importantly though, LLM code assistants will not always be performing lookups, you cannot assume the same IDE and tool configuration profile for everyone. You cannot even assume that everyone's using an IDE with an embedded chatbot.
- armchairhacker 9mo agoUsing an LLM to lookup syntax, common APIs, and conventions, seems to me like using a calculator to do basic arithmetic. It’s useful to memorize these things because it’s faster. Moreover, if I know a key term or phrase (which is most cases) I can lookup those things in Google or IDE search, which is also faster than an LLM. EDIT: to be clear, I’m still writing code. I can do many small tasks and fixes by hand faster than I can describe them to an LLM and check or fix its output. I also figure out how to structure a project partly by writing code. Many small fixes and structure by experimentation probably aren’t ideal software development, and maybe soon I’ll figure out LLMs (or they’ll improve) such that I end up writing better code faster with them. But right now I believe LLMs struggle with good APIs and especially modularity; because the only largely-LLM projects I’ve seen are small, and get abandoned and/or fall apart when the developer tries to extend them.