Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#11

Post by Aurornis » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

The subtitle is:

> I already did.

They repeat multiple times in the article that asking Claude was something they already did. So this isn’t an anti-LLM article.

This seems to be a communication problem. The other party either doesn’t know that they’ve put a lot of effort into researching this already, or their trying to give a gentle let-down instead of saying they don’t have time for this.

For the first case, the solution is to explain what you did to reach this point. People are more interested in helping those who have already tried helping themselves.

The second case is more of a social situation with an infinite number of explanations. Some times you have to read the room and realize that someone may not be interested in having those conversations with you. Some times it’s only in the moment (we all have bad days where we want to be left alone) but other times it’s a signal that they’re not interested in discussing this topic with you or maybe even anyone else.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#12

Post by theorchid » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:53 PM UTC

I once wrote a similar essay on this topic. When I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer: https://orchidfiles.com/im-tired-of-ai-generated-answers/

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#13

Post by bvcp » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

this is just effort equilibrium something that wasnt as effective with “google it”. but ask a low effort question and get “ask claude” as a response is entirely appropriate.

junior developers on my team are often asking questions about our code base without even attempting to explore or self direct. “ask claude to look at and explain how its designed the key files and dependencies so that i can better understand it” is unsurprisingly effective and far cheaper than a couple of hours of opex

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#14

Post by bluefirebrand » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #7

ventana wrote: post #3

One of the ways not to get LMGTFY / Ask Claude as a response is to provide more information and proof of work when asking a question. Compare: — What's the best way of doing X? — Ask Claude. vs: — I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think? I believe a normal senior engineer won't suggest to talk to Claude in this case.

Anyone who recommends to ask an LLM in the first situation will do so in the second because they're a shit engineer. "Ask the LLM" is not at all a valid answer in a professional context where part of your job is to educate the less experienced, no matter how little effort is put in the question.

Sometimes part of the education is teaching people how to ask better questions, and that they need to do their research before asking you

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#15

Post by hoppp » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:03 PM UTC

theorchid wrote: post #5

ventana wrote: post #3

One of the ways not to get LMGTFY / Ask Claude as a response is to provide more information and proof of work when asking a question. Compare: — What's the best way of doing X? — Ask Claude. vs: — I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think? I believe a normal senior engineer won't suggest to talk to Claude in this case.

— I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think? — Ask Claude.

Its a way to say I don't care, don't waste my time

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#16

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #9

turtleyacht wrote: post #2

What was the question?

Ask an LLM.

Your question was: "What was the question?" -- GPT 5.5

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#17

Post by em-bee » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

turtleyacht wrote: post #2

What was the question?

ask supercomputer earth. it will figure it out in ten million years provided the computer doesn't get destroyed before that by that hyperspace bypass the vogons are planning.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#18

Post by XorNot » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

ventana wrote: post #3

One of the ways not to get LMGTFY / Ask Claude as a response is to provide more information and proof of work when asking a question. Compare: — What's the best way of doing X? — Ask Claude. vs: — I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think? I believe a normal senior engineer won't suggest to talk to Claude in this case.

LMGTFY for you was infuriating because it was 100% of the top Google responses to specific searches.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#19

Post by XorNot » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:07 PM UTC

hoppp wrote: post #15

theorchid wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

— I thought about this and found there are options A, B, and C of doing X, I like A more but C is the fastest; what do you think? — Ask Claude.

Its a way to say I don't care, don't waste my time

Which is funny because a huge number of people post this in responses to online asynchronous messages, on public forums, when they could also do literally anything else - like close the browser tab.

Re: Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

#20

Post by linsomniac » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

>I wanted the thing 30 years had taught him

Unpopular answer that the author seems to be dismissing: Maybe the thing that 30 years has taught this guy is that the LLMs can answer the question better than he can. Or that he can't give a substantive answer without doing research into it with an LLM.

>LMGTFY

I mostly saw LMGTFY used when the question was the sort of thing that a person would have to research but that google results had a high chance of getting with "I'm feeling lucky".

If you've already done a bunch of research, and already asked the LLMs, when someone says "Honestly, ask Claude", you should be able to come back with what results you got to your question and what you need clarification on.

I've been doing programming and sys admin for 40 years. When I run a coworkers question through the AI tooling and talk through the answer with them, it's because my 40 years of experience tells me that's the next step.