Comment by lazide
7 hours ago
I don’t have to do boilerplate, generally.
And with all the stacking LLMs against each other, that just sounds like more work than just… writing the damn tests.
7 hours ago
I don’t have to do boilerplate, generally.
And with all the stacking LLMs against each other, that just sounds like more work than just… writing the damn tests.
> I don’t have to do boilerplate, generally.
I meant this more in the sense of there is nothing new under the sun, and that LLMs have been trained on essentially everything that's available online "under the sun". Sure, there are new SaaS ideas every so often, but the software to produce the idea is rarely that novel (in that you can squint and figure out roughly how it works without thinking too hard), and is in that sense boilerplate.
hahaha, oh boy. that is roughly as useful or accurate as saying that all machines are just combinations of other machines, and hence there is nothing unique about any machine.
Vertical CNC mills and CNC lathes are, obviously, different machines with different use cases. But if you compare within the categories, the designs are almost all conceptually the same.
So, what about outside of some set of categories? Well, generally, no such thing exists: new ideas are extremely rare.
Anyone who truly enjoys entering code character for character, refusing to use refactoring tools (e.g. rename symbol), and/or not using AI assistance should feel free to do so.
I, on the other hand, want to concern myself with the end product, which is a matter of knowing what to build and how to build it. There’s nothing about AI assistance that entails that one isn’t in the driver’s seat wrt algorithm design/choices, database schema design, using SIMD where possible, understanding and implementing protocols (whether HTTP or CMSIS-DAP for debugging microcontrollers over USB JTAG probe), etc, etc.
AI helps me write exactly what I would write without it, but in a fraction of the time. Of course, when the rare novel thing comes up, I either need to coach the LLM, or step in and write that part myself.
But, as a Staff Engineer, this is no different than what I already do with my human peers: I describe what needs doing and how it should be done, delegate that work to N other less senior people, provide coaching when something doesn’t meet my expectations, and I personally solve the problems that no one else has a chance of beginning to solve if they spent the next year or two solely focused on it.
Could I solve any one of those individual, delegated tasks faster if I did it myself? Absolutely. But could I achieve the same progress, in aggregate, as a legion of less experienced developers working in parallel? No.
LLM usage is like having an army of Juniors. If the result is crap, that’s on the user for their poor management and/or lack of good judgement in assessing the results, much like how it is my failing if a project I lead as a Staff Engineer is a flop.
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