Comment by gerdesj
17 hours ago
LLMs are an additional tool to add to your arsenal. They are not omnipotent and need care, just like any other tool.
My best effort, so far, at an analogy is a modern drill driver compared to a screw driver/brace and bit/etc:
You can get some remarkable results in a very short time compared to the "old school" gear.
You can get some "amazing" anecdotes eg "I screwed down an entire floor at 16" x 1" c/c within an hour instead of an entire day and I took loads of fag breaks" (I could have used a nail gun instead in half the time but I'll never raise that floor easily in the future, and probably done at twice the cost)
I have several on prem LLMs and access to the rest and I'm pretty sure I'll be extending my analogy to ... brand, eventually.
What I do not expect to be doing is looking for a new job. A drill driver is not a carpenter/site labourer/useful without a person!
But a modern drill absolutely 100% removes the need for a brace and bit. An LLM doesn't replace any existing tools.
From what I've heard for many devs it replaced an IDE... I still use one myself, but I've a lot of people don't anymore.
Basically IDE free since May 2025. I actually reinstalled vscode when setting up a new machine and I think I've launched it twice?
cc -> local automated testing -> github -> PR -> heavy integration tests -> review (github ui, +/-) -> manual test locally -> merge -> deploy -> manual test remotely -> synthetic user testing -> repeat
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I think we will see very limited human displacement - it'll be in narrow places where it makes sense. Much of it will just be augmentation.