2 ms·
> When you use an LLM, you don’t get the tool magic: (almost) nobody will claim that Claude or Cursor feel like an extension of their body - they are not consis
by kstenerud 4mo ago
> When you use an LLM, you don’t get the tool magic: (almost) nobody will claim that Claude or Cursor feel like an extension of their body - they are not consistent or fast enough to trick the brain like a keyboard or a car can.
These all seem the same to me? None of them are an "extension of my body"; they're tools I use.
> With LLMs, you mostly just get more of the same: more code, more tests, more excuses.
You get more specs, more plans, more code, more tests. If you're getting excuses, something's wrong.
> Is it worth the social brainwork?
There isn't any social brainwork. I'm using natural language to build things, not engaging in social discourse.
> LLMs ask us to talk to them, but rarely reward that effort in kind.
Nor should they! They're not people, but they're designed to reach goals. If you set a goal (explicitly or implicitly) that you want a social conversation, they'll try to satisfy (and do poorly).
- hatthew 4mo agoWith a car, when I turn the steering wheel a quarter turn, the car immediately starts to turn at a known rate (I can't quantify it, but my muscle memory knows it). With an LLM, if I ask it to "turn the car", my "steering wheel" is natural language. I have to spend effort to figure out how to convey the rate at which I want the car to turn, and because the LLM has a noticeable delay, I also need to preemptively include some language anticipating how the expected rate should feel and what to do if it doesn't seem to feel right. And then the next time I say the same thing, the LLM decides to steer the car a bit differently anyways.
- d0gsg0w00f 4mo agoI'm sure the first farmers said that when they drove a tractor. "I can't feel the land", but the ones that got over that could do 10x yield. The "feel" just moves up the stack.
- kstenerud 4mo agoWhy would you use an LLM to steer a car? That doesn't make any more sense than heating a water pressure chamber to drive a piston to steer a car. Wrong tool.