Comment by skydhash
10 days ago
> If you get the hang of it and start giving your LLMs small, sizable chunks of work, and validating the results, it's just less mentally draining than to do it by hand. You start thinking in much higher-level terms, like interfaces, abstraction layers, and mini-tests, and the AI breeze through the boring work of whether it should be a "for", "while" or "foreach".
Isn’t that the proper programming state of mind? I think about keywords the same amount of time a pianist think about the keys when playing. Especially with vim where I can edit larger units reliably, so I don’t have to follow the cursor with my eyes, and can navigate using my mental map.
Ultimately, yes, programming with LLMs is exactly the sort of programming we've always tried to do. It gets rid of the boring stuff and lets you focus on the algorithm at the level you need to - just like we try to do with functions and LSP and IDE tools. People needn't be scared of LLMs: they aren't going to take our jobs or drain the fun out of programming.
But I'm 90% confident that you will gain something from LLM-based coding. You can do a lot with our code editing tools, but there's almost certainly going to be times when you need to do a sequence of seven things to get the outcome you want, and you can ask the computer to prepare that for you.