Comment by lxe

9 months ago

This article reads like "I'm not like other LLM users" tech writing. There are good points about when LLMs are actually useful vs. overhyped, but the contrarian framing undermines what could have been straightforward practical advice. The whole "I'm more discerning than everyone else" positioning gets tiresome in tech discussions, especially when the actual content is useful.

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lxe

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minimaxir  9 months ago

I was not explicitly intending to be contrarian, but unfortunately the contrarian framing is inevitable when the practical advice is counterintuitive and against modern norms. I was second-guessing publishing this article at all because "I don't use ChatGPT.com" and "I don't see a use for Agents/MCP/Vibe coding" are both statements that are potentially damaging to my career as an engineer, but there's no point in writing if I can't be honest.

Part of the reason I've been blogging about LLMs for so long is that a lot of it is counterintuitive (which I find interesting!) and there's a lot of misinformation and suboptimal workflows that results from it.

  • mattgreenrocks  9 months ago

    > "I don't use ChatGPT.com" and "I don't see a use for Agents/MCP/Vibe coding" are both statements that are potentially damaging to my career as an engineer

    This is unfortunate, though I don't blame you. Tech shouldn't be about blind faith in any particular orthodoxy.

  • kayodelycaon  9 months ago

    Tone and word choice is actually the problem here. :)

    One example: “normal-person frontends” immediately makes the statement a judgement about people. You could have said regular, typical, or normal instead of “normal-person”.

    Saying your coworkers often come to you to fix problems and your solutions almost always work can come off as saying you’re more intelligent than your coworkers.

    The only context your readers have are the words you write. This makes communication a damned nuisance because nobody knows who you are and they only know about you from what they read.

    • minimaxir  9 months ago

      That descriptor was more intended to be a self-deprecation joke at my expense but your interpretation is fair.

  • lxe  9 months ago

    Your defense of the contrarian framing feels like it's missing the point. What you're describing as "counterintuitive" is actually pretty standard for anyone who's been working deeply with LLMs for a while.

    Most experienced LLM users already know about temperature controls and API access - that's not some secret knowledge. Many use both the public vanilla frontends and specialized interfaces (various HF workflows, custom setups, sillytavern, oobabooga (̵r̵i̵p̵)̵, ollama, lmstudio, etc) depending on the task.

    Your dismissal of LLMs for writing comes across as someone who scratched the surface and gave up. There's an entire ecosystem of techniques for effectively using LLMs to assist writing without replacing it - from ideation to restructuring to getting unstuck on specific sections.

    Throughout the article, you seem to dismiss tools and approaches after only minimal exploration. The depth and nuance that would be evident to anyone who's been integrating these tools into their workflow for the past couple years is missing.

    Being honest about your experiences is valuable, but framing basic observations as contrarian insights isn't counterintuitive - it's just incomplete.

    • philipwhiuk  9 months ago

      > Most experienced LLM users already know about temperature controls and API access - that's not some secret knowledge. Many use both the public vanilla frontends and specialized interfaces (various HF workflows, custom setups, sillytavern, oobabooga (̵r̵i̵p̵)̵, ollama, lmstudio, etc) depending on the task.

      What is your actual population size here.