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If one person knows how to code, they don't need an LLM. I've tried using all of them on my job, and I will give them a second chance time by time (to see if th

If one person knows how to code, they don't need an LLM. I've tried using all of them on my job, and I will give them a second chance time by time (to see if the claims made by these big tech hold up) and ALL of the time I've didn't noticed any speedup compared to coding manually. If you are an experienced programmer (not someone that did an online course and calls like this) with YEARS of experience in coding in multiple languages really, the only real limitation is the speed at which you can type on the keyboard, that is usually way faster than what the even good LLM is able to emit tokens. This not considering token expense: if we see at the point of view of the company, it's way cheaper an experienced programmer, that in my country costs you 4000 a month tax included, than the tokens that an LLM would use to do the same job. On top of that there is the environmental impact of all of this, and why they are almost making me not use my car because it's euro 5 and now there is euro 6, these AI companies are emitting tons of CO2 to do stuff that human beings can do with 1/1000 the energy that these AI companies use.

aogaili 12d ago
"if one person knows how to code, they don't need an LLM. I've tried using all of them on my job, and I will give them a second chance time by time (to see if the claims made by these big tech hold up) and ALL of the time I've didn't noticed any speedup compared to coding manually." I mean, have truly tried? do others thing this is true? I'm truly astonished if that is majority experience, I think we need to get surveys on this.
- krapp 12d ago
  The entire draw of coding with LLMs is that you can generate programs without knowing how to code. That's literally what "vibe coding" is. Why would it surprise you that people who do know how to code, and don't hate the process the way a lot of AI enthusiasts seem to, might not find them useful? You'll find plenty of people on HN who have this experience,but they just tend to be ridiculed or told they just haven't used AI correctly or enough. Admitting you don't use LLMs for everything, or god forbid at all, is like telling Christians you don't want to be saved.
- n4r9 12d ago
  Imo it depends on the type of change required. If it involves churning out 1000 line of new boilerplate, an LLM will win every time. If it means tracing a subtle edge-case bug and carefully planning a deep one-line change in a 100k codebase that leaves all other behaviour unaffected, I would still expect an experienced dev who's deeply familiar with the code to do it at least as fast and more correctly first time.

aogaili 12d ago

"if one person knows how to code, they don't need an LLM. I've tried using all of them on my job, and I will give them a second chance time by time (to see if the claims made by these big tech hold up) and ALL of the time I've didn't noticed any speedup compared to coding manually." I mean, have truly tried? do others thing this is true? I'm truly astonished if that is majority experience, I think we need to get surveys on this.

krapp 12d ago
The entire draw of coding with LLMs is that you can generate programs without knowing how to code. That's literally what "vibe coding" is. Why would it surprise you that people who do know how to code, and don't hate the process the way a lot of AI enthusiasts seem to, might not find them useful? You'll find plenty of people on HN who have this experience,but they just tend to be ridiculed or told they just haven't used AI correctly or enough. Admitting you don't use LLMs for everything, or god forbid at all, is like telling Christians you don't want to be saved.
n4r9 12d ago
Imo it depends on the type of change required. If it involves churning out 1000 line of new boilerplate, an LLM will win every time. If it means tracing a subtle edge-case bug and carefully planning a deep one-line change in a 100k codebase that leaves all other behaviour unaffected, I would still expect an experienced dev who's deeply familiar with the code to do it at least as fast and more correctly first time.