Comment by hombre_fatal
7 days ago
I think it's a U-shaped utility curve where abstract planning is on one side (your comment) and the chore implementation is on the other.
Your role is between the two: deciding on the architecture, writing the top-level types, deciding on the concrete system design.
And then AI tools help you zoom in and glue things together in an easily verifiable way.
I suspect that people who still haven't figured out how to make use of LLMs, assuming it's not just resentful performative complaining which it probably is, are expecting it to do it all. Which never seemed very engineer-minded.
You don’t empathize with the humane opinion “why bother?” I like to program so it resonates. I’m fortunate to enjoy my work so why would I want to stop doing what I enjoy?
Sure, don't use if you don't want to. I'm referring to versions of the claim I see around here like LLMs are useless. Being so uncurious as to refuse to figure out what a tool might be useful for is an anti-engineering mindset.
Just like you should be able to say something positive about Javascript (async-everything instead of a bolted-on async subecosystem, event loop has its upsides, single-threaded has its upsides, has a first class promise, etc) even if you don't like using it.
As a counter argument, the replies I see that say LLMs are “useless” are saying they’re useless to the person attempting to use them.
This can be a perfectly valid argument for many reasons. Their use case isn’t well documented, can’t be publicly disclosed, involves APIs that aren’t public, or are actual research and not summarizing printed research to name a few I’ve run into myself.
This argument that “engineers are boring and afraid for their jobs” is ignoring the fact that these are usually professionals with years of experience in their fields and probably perfectly able to assess the usefulness of a tool for their purposes.
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> easily verifiable way
willy wonka _oh really_ meme