Comment by paulpauper

> (assuming it actually follows the C standard and your compiler's documented extensions, which almost no real C code does - C was a horrible example) it will work just as well in a year as it does today.

> See how well it works to regenerate the same application next week, let alone next year. Prompts are fundamentally a different sort of thing from code

I mean... yes, but also no. C is actually a great example. So much of the code we wrote is about manipulating the specifics of that specific computer system we happen to be using at that exact moment. Everything from cpu specific instructions to how the ram behaves or how much of it there is all the way up to how library functions operate at any given point in time.

And in relatively short amounts of time, it can all change out from underneath you.

Being a programmer has always meant dealing with abstraction layers and climbing up the abstraction ladder.

You are simply learning a new language, whose syntax happens to look like English (or whatever language you speak), but with new, undiscovered, and constantly changing design patterns and best practices.

It depends how much you outsource to the llm.

If you outsource everything to a llm, I just don’t think you get very good results right now. Language models aren’t great at remembering all the little design decisions that are needed in medium to large projects. The code ends up riddled with semi-conflicting design choices, which have been slammed together and maintained by context inertia. For a lot of projects this is more than fine - sometimes higher quality work simply isn’t worth my time. But for a lot of projects, you will pay for that slop later.

But I think there is a useful middle ground. If you carefully review all the decisions an llm makes, I think you can often be more productive than just programming everything by hand. But it’s a very different way to do engineering. I think I learn more this way than if I program by hand - if only because I’m touching more code. My mind roves around the design space a lot more. I don’t lock in as much as when I’m programming each piece individually.

If you work with an llm like this, your engineering skill matters more than ever.

Typing the code was never the interesting part.

That is why I am very thankful for my job. We are not really allowed to use LLMs for much of anything.