Comment by Q6T46nT668w6i3m
7 days ago
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?
7 days ago
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.
“Their purposes” are not necessarily perfectly aligned with “their employer’s purposes”.
I have met more than a few engineers who seem to practice “mortgage-driven development”.