4 ms·
It could be. Or it could be 1x, or 0.2x. You don’t have enough information to make that judgment.
by dullcrisp 2mo ago
It could be. Or it could be 1x, or 0.2x. You don’t have enough information to make that judgment.
- danggggg 2mo ago[dead]
- slopinthebag 2mo agoIt’s worthwhile to me under specific conditions, mainly that the codebase has existing patterns and abstractions that the LLM utilizes, and they’re actually good. It’s not a common case but I’m lucky that one of the codebases I’m in is one I built myself mostly by hand, and LLMs are really effective in it at the moment. My main concern is making sure the generated code maintains the high standard, but it’s definitely saving me time. I’ve kind of changed my mind on prompting, it’s definitely a skill. It’s a skill based on your own skills in the domain. I’m at the point where I can get the LLM to generate the same code (roughly speaking) that I would have written. So it’s basically generating the same thing I would write, just faster. So it’s like reading your own code. Using it as a crutch to do things you aren’t capable of is where people run into trouble. That’s where the massive amounts of code review come into play. For me, I’m only ever reviewing 100-300 loc changes at a time. Often less. Because I know what I’m doing and can break things down into manageable diffs. Can’t see myself going back, but also can’t see myself doing it without the experience I have without LLMs. Which is a bit of an issue for new developers. Not sure what the solution is for that.
- dullcrisp 2mo agoThat plus if you’ve ever stared at your code and then searched StackOverflow to see if you could find a better way of doing it, it’s like having that running continuously.
- slopinthebag 2mo agoYeah it’s great for prompting for improvements, granted you can actually judge the suggestions for yourself. They’re often slightly or majorly bad.
- danggggg 2mo ago[dead]
- deimos_28 2mo agoI’ve reached a similar conclusion, but there’s a part that worries me: the expertise that allows us to judge AI’s output was itself built by doing the work we’re now delegating. So there’s a risk that our judgement will decay over time. I’ve been thinking about the problem as choosing where we can afford to “borrow” comprehension, versus where we need to keep exercising it, and how to “claim back” the critical comprehension we lost.
- hypfer 2mo agoA possible heuristic: Everywhere the LLM made a design decision is probably a place to revisit later. You can ship it now, but to stay in the game you need to stay in the loop. If you need the LLM to explain to you the concept behind something - or even if you figure out yourself what it did - that's likely wrong and will lead to the undesirable outcomes you've mentioned. As long as it just types and doesn't think otoh, you should be good. There is - I'd argue - little to no value in manually typing if (foo) {}. And it's also great for bouncing ideas around.
- danggggg 2mo ago[dead]
- dullcrisp 2mo agoWell you got me. I’d agree about that workflow, but something more rapid like a few seconds generating code and then a couple minutes reading it can be more engaging to me than writing it out yourself. I think it’s near time we all stop having such strong opinions about the matter either way personally.
- danggggg 2mo ago[dead]
- dullcrisp 2mo agoI’m entitled to my opinion about your opinion just like you’re entitled to your opinion about my opinion about your opinion.
- slopinthebag 2mo agoYeah I kinda agree. The AI boosters have been super annoying for a while. I’m not anywhere close to an AI booster but I find value in it. I think we should think of it less like some intelligent being or “agent” and more as a code generation tool. It would both be more productive and healthier.
- danggggg 2mo ago[dead]