Comment by JackC
3 hours ago
"They may speed up the good programmers a little, but those people were able to program anyway without LLMs."
I don't think this is realistic. I'm a good programmer, and it speeds up my work a lot, from "make sense of this 10 repo project I haven't worked on recently" to "for this next step I need a vpn multiplexer written in a language I don't use" to, yeah, "this 10k line patch lets me see parts of design space we never could have explored before." I think it's all about understanding the blast radius. Sonetimes a lot of code is helpful, sometimes more like a lot of help proving a fact about one line of code.
Like Simon says, if I'm driving by someone else's project, I don't send the generated pull request, I just file the bug report / repro that would generate it.
I use LLM as a tutor. It tailor their answers exactly to the situation I am in, even if it hallucinate. I can correct them on the fly and that also serves as training. I try not copy and paste and type every line of code by hand. That doesn't always happen, but I usually understand the code I am writing.
> I'm a good programmer, and it speeds up my work a lot
The problem with this line of thinking is the same with "I so good as C developer, my code is so-safe!".
And we see what reality instead tell: Yes, exist people where this claims are true, not, is not even a decently sized minority.
> to "for this next step I need a vpn multiplexer written in a language I don't use"
but that acceleration is exactly because you're not good at that language
Can't we reach a compromise where proven track record of good use of LLM by a contributor or a company (eg. Bun) be pre-approved or entertained? Blanket ban on a new technology shouldn't be the default option.
No.
yep. as an expert programmer there are things i did not have access to. for example, i have an embedded-lite hardware project that required a one line patch to a linux kernel Module.
i know what a kernel module is and im reasonably certain that the patch is safe, but there is no way in hell i would have found that solution (i would have given up). in a world without llms, the project would have died.
It's great when I know how the code should look. Sometimes I just can't bring myself to write yet another http handler.