Comment by stego-tech

Finally, a proper good take from someone (seemingly) approaching it rationally and objectively, rather than blindly sitting on either side of the hype fence. LLMs are good tools, and even I, a decidedly-not-software-engineer, have been increasingly tinkering with locally-run tools to create applications and tooling that meets my own needs. The one thing that’s held me back from publishing has been the IPR angle, but I quite like this line on that topic:

> But if you’re a software developer playing this card? Cut me a little slack as I ask you to shove this concern up your ass. No profession has demonstrated more contempt for intellectual property.

The OP isn’t wrong. Some of the most brilliant minds in computer science have built tools to shatter DRM, enable widespread piracy, and repeatedly lift code wholesale from public repos if it helps them move a product forward. The modern crop of technologists (myself included) have long had a hypocritical view on IPR: “rights for me, not for thee” to oversimplify things. The entirety of the modern public cloud is built by trodding on the backs of open source projects while wearing lawn-aerating spikes. We steal shit from others so our Founders and Masters can reap billions in profit; to decry plagiarism now feels incredibly dishonest and insincere, at the very least.

Look, I’m an AI skeptic myself. On the whole, these tools are bad. They’re taking jobs, polluting the planet, and dumbing down a society that still can’t try rebooting something when it fails, let alone identify where their WiFi ends and the internet begins. They’re toxic walled gardens that can reauthor reality to the whims of the VCs and Billionaires funding them, locking you into subscriptions forever.

But even I will admit that modern LLMs, when it comes to writing code, are actually really good for the majority of C-tier devs and below. Are they as helpful to bleeding-edge engineers on the cusp of the future? Nah, not really, but if you’re just writing a checklist app for iOS to help you stay on task, or a Packer manifest to lay out some VM templates, they’re kinda awesome.