Comment by lelanthran
7 hours ago
>> Writing the code hasn’t been the bottle neck to developing software for a long time. It’s usually the thinking that takes most of the time
> I used an LLM to research the code paths and ensure that my understanding of the break was correct and what the potential side effects of my proposed fix would be.
Using the LLM for understanding is very different to using the LLM for codegen.
You are not really disagreeing with the author here; it's just that for the specific project he is talking about, he already understands it just fine so the advantages of LLM help in understanding is tiny.
My point is that these are not separate activities. They are drawing a false distinction between thinking and coding and then asserting that code speed doesn’t matter and implying that AI only helps with the coding bit.
None of this is actually true, though. Coding and thinking are often tightly intertwined, as rarely is the coding piece so straightforward that it requires no interesting thought. Coding speed does matter, even if it’s not the primary bottleneck for many things. And AI can be very helpful outside the context of pure coding.
> My point is that these are not separate activities. They are drawing a false distinction between thinking and coding
I agree.
> and implying that AI only helps with the coding bit.
They did imply that. Do you think that AI only helps with the coding bit, helps with the thinking bits, or helps with neither?
> Coding and thinking are often tightly intertwined, as rarely is the coding piece so straightforward that it requires no interesting thought.
I agree with this too.
> Coding speed does matter, even if it’s not the primary bottleneck for many things.
Up to a point, sure. But without AI, we read code once while writing it, we read it again while testing it/finding errors during tests, we read it again during review.
With AI code we read it during review. Maybe.
If AI generates code faster than the time it takes to read it more than once, then it isn't "helping" in terms of sustainability. Churning out code is easy; maintaining that code is not.
> And AI can be very helpful outside the context of pure coding.
Isn't this how the author is using it? Outside the context of pure coding? I admit this is how I use it - to understand some new thing that I have to implement before I implement it.