5 ms·

>> We are 4 years into this ‘revolution’ and the industry has almost nothing to show for it. If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from t

>> We are 4 years into this ‘revolution’ and the industry has almost nothing to show for it. If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. This is the real problem with many of the anti LLM folks - they tell us about LLMs and also tell us they don't use them. "That thing cannot do the stuff you say it can. And there is no way I will ever try it. But I know for sure I am right."

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
wewewedxfgdf 2mo ago
And when you show them evidence of the incredible things that can be done they stick their fingers in their ears and say "I'm not listening. I'm not listening. looping ad infinitum. OR they start saying "Oh yeah, prove it with hard numbers." when nothing about software productivity has ever been able to be proven with hard numbers. It becomes a semantic word game that you cannot win because nothing you say will get them to believe because they don't want to believe. The LLM haters are the most dogmatic of unbelievers. Which I find weird - the greatest fun for me is making a computer do something awesome. I learned to program because I want that outcome. I respect if you love the art and craft of hand programming but it's something else entirely to simply deny that LLM's are what they are - which is to say so amazing it is really beyond belief and they are getting more so every year. If you're a hand programmer forever then fine, just don't make a fool of yourself by saying that everyone is lying about LLMs, to justify your choices.
- glimshe 2mo ago
  > which is to say so amazing it is really beyond belief and they are getting more so every year. We've normalized science fiction. Go back 5-10 years and ask anyone whether we'd soon have something like LLMs. If you step back and try to look at LLMs without emotions and politics, you will be blown away by what this thing can do. We're talking to a machine, folks. I just can't believe that LLM haters really like computers or technology, because we haven't seen anything this interesting in decades.
  - quadrifoliate 2mo ago
    > We're talking to a machine, folks. And? I didn't sign up to talk to a machine. Has it actually made your daily life better? All I see as a result of LLMs is endless slop everywhere, plateauing in the skill levels of coworkers, and badly informed people in management positions pushing the humans to meet impossible deadlines because "otherwise we'll replace you with a cheaper worker and an LLM". I am an LLM optimist, but I'll be honest and say it hasn't made my life better. My optimism relies on the models plateauing, and people finally rebelling against the widespread slop to realize that LLMs are just another (very useful!) tool, but don't meaningfully replace people in any capacity.
    - ilteris 2mo ago
      What did you sign up for and what would make your life better in this context? Give us a north star
    - vidarh 2mo ago
      It has made my daily life better. It has built software for me that I've wanted but previously didn't have time for, for example.
      - fatata123 2mo ago
        [dead]
      - quadrifoliate 2mo ago
        Great! How does this software enhance your daily life? Has it given you more leisure time by leading to less work?
        glimshe 2mo ago
        He literally said it made his life better. Building software with AI can also be a leisure activity.
        vidarh 2mo ago
bigstrat2003 2mo ago
> If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. I have. Which is how I know that such statements are correct.
quadrifoliate 2mo ago
> If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. Unlike the author, I'm an LLM optimist; but this take doesn't make sense to me. The thing you show cannot be "hey look at this LLM-based workflow, that's so much better than last year". Where is the big browser, operating system, or other piece of work that has been able to quickly compete with the existing entries in the market due to LLMs? The only one that I can think of off the top of my head is the rewrite of Bun in Rust. I think the fact that Claude Code runs on millions of devices on top of that rewrite is the sort of impressive demonstration that would prove that LLMs have lasting, systemic effects -- but it is telling that the only one I can think of was made by the extremely well funded lab that also happens to build the LLM.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- arcwhite 2mo ago
  It's worth noting that the bun rewrite of rust is still not actually released to users, and has run to a total cost north of a million dollars now (factoring in tokens and CI costs) It should still be taken with a grain of salt IMO
  - chuckadams 2mo ago
    I thought they'd switched Claude Code over to the rust branch already. Hardly a shining example but there it is.
- luckylion 2mo ago
  > Where is the big browser, operating system, or other piece of work that has been able to quickly compete with the existing entries in the market due to LLMs? Why would it "quickly compete"? What if AI gives you a 100x leverage but not a 100000x leverage? With the 100000x leverage, you could spin up a full browser and compete, but not with the 100x. With 100x, you could use fewer people or do it in less time, but the amount of effort that goes into browsers still doesn't make it "an afternoon for one person". I think it's undeniable that an excavator is ridiculously more powerful than a human at digging holes. Let's say it's 100x more efficient. But if you had 1000 people work on a big hole every day for 5 years, the excavator wouldn't manage to do the same in a day, but it would allow you to do the same with 10 people and 10 excavators in 5 years, or with 50 people and 50 excavators in one year. I don't think it scales linearly the more complexity grows, but "it hasn't been done, therefore it isn't possible" seems wrong. Maybe the big labs could build a browser, but they'd much rather spend the attention of 50 engineers on something else.
m463 2mo ago
I see this pattern in a lot of things. - people who preach against PV solar... while people I actually know broke even 10 or more years ago and have been happily getting "free power" for a lot of their needs - people who preach against electric cars... while people I actually know are driving them with no "range anxiety" or "replaced main batteries", but their non-engineer spouse/kids are driving the cars fine too. - people who preach that tesla self driving isn't viable/etc... while lots of people are using tesla to drive themselves around for > 90% of their driving
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
lunar_mycroft 2mo ago
> If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. What about the people who do have a lot of LLM experience and agree with OP? > That thing cannot do the stuff you say it can. And there is no way I will ever try it. But I know for sure I am right. If someone claims to be able to fly by strapping bird wing shaped pieces of plywood with feathers glued on to their arms, do you need to personally jump off a tower with them to say they don't work, or can you look at the results of others attempting it and draw conclusions based on that? LLM proponents are making claims about their capabilities which can relatively easily be checked without using LLMs yourself. To pick an example where LLM proponents are correct, anyone who says LLMs can't generate syntactically valid code can be proven wrong fairly easily by producing an example of syntactically valid, LLM generated code. Further, if you read the rest of the paragraph you responded to, it's clear that this claim is about the state of the industry as a whole. "Software has not improved in quality, got faster, become cheaper to produce (when you exclude the mountain of poor-quality demoware that no reputable organisation would touch with a barge pole), or become more capable." Whether this is true or not is something that can be evaluated without ever having prompted yourself, or even arguably without being a developer at all.
lproven 2mo ago
> This is the real problem with many of the anti LLM folks (BTW, I am the OP: I posted this, but I didn't write the article.) No, the real problem here is that you do not understand the anti-LLM arguments. I won't touch LLMs for anything except translation. But my anti-LLM stance is nothing whatsoever to do with whether they work or not (and that is even without the extreme torturing of the word "work" that the advocates do.) My objection is based on the terrible crimes committed in building them (from theft), training them (at catastrophic ecological cost), in running them (ditto), in the effects on their individual users (cumulative brain damage), on their corporate users (economic destruction), and so on. If they work is incidental. The believers like what LLMs do. For me, by my definitions, LLMs do not work. They extrude content that I never ever want to see, or read, or here, or want to execute. But for the botlickers, that is enough: they extrude a product. The botlickers want product. I don't care. I don't want the product, but more to the point, I want the machines making the product not to exist... and if the price of that is all the people using the machines to never work again, and all the companies using them to go bankrupt, I would be absolutely delighted.
- jhanschoo 2mo ago
  You are a different anti-LLM person than the article's author. You aren't one of the "many" anti-LLM folks that they are referring to, whereas the author is one of them. Your reasons are quite distinct from the several of the author's reasons.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

wewewedxfgdf 2mo ago

And when you show them evidence of the incredible things that can be done they stick their fingers in their ears and say "I'm not listening. I'm not listening. looping ad infinitum. OR they start saying "Oh yeah, prove it with hard numbers." when nothing about software productivity has ever been able to be proven with hard numbers. It becomes a semantic word game that you cannot win because nothing you say will get them to believe because they don't want to believe. The LLM haters are the most dogmatic of unbelievers. Which I find weird - the greatest fun for me is making a computer do something awesome. I learned to program because I want that outcome. I respect if you love the art and craft of hand programming but it's something else entirely to simply deny that LLM's are what they are - which is to say so amazing it is really beyond belief and they are getting more so every year. If you're a hand programmer forever then fine, just don't make a fool of yourself by saying that everyone is lying about LLMs, to justify your choices.

glimshe 2mo ago
> which is to say so amazing it is really beyond belief and they are getting more so every year. We've normalized science fiction. Go back 5-10 years and ask anyone whether we'd soon have something like LLMs. If you step back and try to look at LLMs without emotions and politics, you will be blown away by what this thing can do. We're talking to a machine, folks. I just can't believe that LLM haters really like computers or technology, because we haven't seen anything this interesting in decades.
- quadrifoliate 2mo ago
  > We're talking to a machine, folks. And? I didn't sign up to talk to a machine. Has it actually made your daily life better? All I see as a result of LLMs is endless slop everywhere, plateauing in the skill levels of coworkers, and badly informed people in management positions pushing the humans to meet impossible deadlines because "otherwise we'll replace you with a cheaper worker and an LLM". I am an LLM optimist, but I'll be honest and say it hasn't made my life better. My optimism relies on the models plateauing, and people finally rebelling against the widespread slop to realize that LLMs are just another (very useful!) tool, but don't meaningfully replace people in any capacity.
  - ilteris 2mo ago
    What did you sign up for and what would make your life better in this context? Give us a north star
  - vidarh 2mo ago
    It has made my daily life better. It has built software for me that I've wanted but previously didn't have time for, for example.
    - fatata123 2mo ago
      [dead]
    - quadrifoliate 2mo ago
      Great! How does this software enhance your daily life? Has it given you more leisure time by leading to less work?
      - glimshe 2mo ago
        He literally said it made his life better. Building software with AI can also be a leisure activity.
      - vidarh 2mo ago

bigstrat2003 2mo ago

> If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. I have. Which is how I know that such statements are correct.

quadrifoliate 2mo ago

> If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. Unlike the author, I'm an LLM optimist; but this take doesn't make sense to me. The thing you show cannot be "hey look at this LLM-based workflow, that's so much better than last year". Where is the big browser, operating system, or other piece of work that has been able to quickly compete with the existing entries in the market due to LLMs? The only one that I can think of off the top of my head is the rewrite of Bun in Rust. I think the fact that Claude Code runs on millions of devices on top of that rewrite is the sort of impressive demonstration that would prove that LLMs have lasting, systemic effects -- but it is telling that the only one I can think of was made by the extremely well funded lab that also happens to build the LLM.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
arcwhite 2mo ago
It's worth noting that the bun rewrite of rust is still not actually released to users, and has run to a total cost north of a million dollars now (factoring in tokens and CI costs) It should still be taken with a grain of salt IMO
- chuckadams 2mo ago
  I thought they'd switched Claude Code over to the rust branch already. Hardly a shining example but there it is.
luckylion 2mo ago
> Where is the big browser, operating system, or other piece of work that has been able to quickly compete with the existing entries in the market due to LLMs? Why would it "quickly compete"? What if AI gives you a 100x leverage but not a 100000x leverage? With the 100000x leverage, you could spin up a full browser and compete, but not with the 100x. With 100x, you could use fewer people or do it in less time, but the amount of effort that goes into browsers still doesn't make it "an afternoon for one person". I think it's undeniable that an excavator is ridiculously more powerful than a human at digging holes. Let's say it's 100x more efficient. But if you had 1000 people work on a big hole every day for 5 years, the excavator wouldn't manage to do the same in a day, but it would allow you to do the same with 10 people and 10 excavators in 5 years, or with 50 people and 50 excavators in one year. I don't think it scales linearly the more complexity grows, but "it hasn't been done, therefore it isn't possible" seems wrong. Maybe the big labs could build a browser, but they'd much rather spend the attention of 50 engineers on something else.

m463 2mo ago

I see this pattern in a lot of things. - people who preach against PV solar... while people I actually know broke even 10 or more years ago and have been happily getting "free power" for a lot of their needs - people who preach against electric cars... while people I actually know are driving them with no "range anxiety" or "replaced main batteries", but their non-engineer spouse/kids are driving the cars fine too. - people who preach that tesla self driving isn't viable/etc... while lots of people are using tesla to drive themselves around for > 90% of their driving

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

lunar_mycroft 2mo ago

> If you actually used LLMs instead of preaching against them from the sidelines with no real experience, you'd know such statements are wrong. What about the people who do have a lot of LLM experience and agree with OP? > That thing cannot do the stuff you say it can. And there is no way I will ever try it. But I know for sure I am right. If someone claims to be able to fly by strapping bird wing shaped pieces of plywood with feathers glued on to their arms, do you need to personally jump off a tower with them to say they don't work, or can you look at the results of others attempting it and draw conclusions based on that? LLM proponents are making claims about their capabilities which can relatively easily be checked without using LLMs yourself. To pick an example where LLM proponents are correct, anyone who says LLMs can't generate syntactically valid code can be proven wrong fairly easily by producing an example of syntactically valid, LLM generated code. Further, if you read the rest of the paragraph you responded to, it's clear that this claim is about the state of the industry as a whole. "Software has not improved in quality, got faster, become cheaper to produce (when you exclude the mountain of poor-quality demoware that no reputable organisation would touch with a barge pole), or become more capable." Whether this is true or not is something that can be evaluated without ever having prompted yourself, or even arguably without being a developer at all.

lproven 2mo ago

> This is the real problem with many of the anti LLM folks (BTW, I am the OP: I posted this, but I didn't write the article.) No, the real problem here is that you do not understand the anti-LLM arguments. I won't touch LLMs for anything except translation. But my anti-LLM stance is nothing whatsoever to do with whether they work or not (and that is even without the extreme torturing of the word "work" that the advocates do.) My objection is based on the terrible crimes committed in building them (from theft), training them (at catastrophic ecological cost), in running them (ditto), in the effects on their individual users (cumulative brain damage), on their corporate users (economic destruction), and so on. If they work is incidental. The believers like what LLMs do. For me, by my definitions, LLMs do not work. They extrude content that I never ever want to see, or read, or here, or want to execute. But for the botlickers, that is enough: they extrude a product. The botlickers want product. I don't care. I don't want the product, but more to the point, I want the machines making the product not to exist... and if the price of that is all the people using the machines to never work again, and all the companies using them to go bankrupt, I would be absolutely delighted.

jhanschoo 2mo ago
You are a different anti-LLM person than the article's author. You aren't one of the "many" anti-LLM folks that they are referring to, whereas the author is one of them. Your reasons are quite distinct from the several of the author's reasons.