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The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

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Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#101

Post by dd8601fn »

quantummagic wrote: post #92
cj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't use calculator as an analogy, then. Calculators are a simple machine that implement very basic rules. LLMs are in a different category. The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense.

> The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense. The technology doesn't matter, you can compare to say the power loom from the 1700's. I'm comparing the reaction of humans; human's haven't changed that much. They always react the same when they feel threatened and emotionally challenged by a technology.

And someone else always cries luddite if anyone says, “Hey guys, this isn’t what the salesman said.”

What matters is the reality of the thing… which is exactly what everyone is discussing.

As they should. We need more conversations like this, early. It could have saved us decades of bad practices with impossible expectations (see: agile).

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#102

Post by elicash »

adamas wrote: post #91
elicash wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of us have any idea whether his manufacturing startup is successful. It looks to be a 5 person team. A google search suggests they had a funding round early this year. It might, in fact, be that you are more successful with your approach. I have no idea. Congrats if so.

I mean, he must be pretty successful to be able to burn 10k in tokens. If he is successful because or despite of the AI, I don't know and I don't really care ? That wasn't the question.

It's not the case that someone successful is doing everything right and someone unsuccessful is doing everything wrong, I'd grant.

But I think it's odd for you to now say it doesn't matter whether or not his AI token use is leading to success or not. I personally think it's actually really important to learn whether/when this approach is smart.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#103

Post by quantummagic »

dd8601fn wrote: post #101
quantummagic wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parallels you can draw between LLMs and calculators.. just don't make sense. The technology doesn't matter, you can compare to say the power loom from the 1700's. I'm comparing the reaction of humans; human's haven't changed that much. They always react the same when they feel threatened and emotionally challenged by a technology.

And someone else always cries luddite if anyone says, “Hey guys, this isn’t what the salesman said.” What matters is the reality of the thing… which is exactly what everyone is discussing. As they should. We need more conversations like this, early. It could have saved us decades of bad practices with impossible expectations (see: agile).

But people can't separate their emotions from the "reality". The reality is, this technology has strengths and limitations. It has benefits and it has negative consequences. We can and will discuss all of that. But many people aren't operating from a detached analytical viewpoint. They're operating from an emotional, self-interested, defensive stance. And granted, there are just as many people operating from a utopian, rose tinted, self-serving, evangelical position.

In the end, the technology will get used where appropriate. And more importantly many of its weaknesses will be overcome and replaced by new challenges.

It's just a bit tiring to hear the same denouncements repeated over and over. Everyone knows them all by heart now. They're not wrong, they're just not helpful or accomplishing anything. The technology marches forward and will develop naturally. If you personally don't want to use it, then don't.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#105

Post by customguy »

greggoB wrote: post #44
happytoexplain wrote: post #5

The implication is that LLM critics don't use LLMs at all, or that the author is not an LLM critic, but both of those things are incorrect. We are very good at inventing entire people out of single opinions we read, and the AI arguments are maybe the best example of that I've ever seen in my many years watching internet arguments (not least due to the expansiveness of AI, and the sheer breadth of pros and cons it hol…

> We are very good at inventing entire people out of single opinions we read Can you clarify what this is supposed to mean?

Someone says they like hip hop, and you imagine a young urban male with a baseball cap on backwards, how they view women, that they probably don't like musicals, something like that (not saying you do, but as an example). More than simply the thing they said. You say "I like or do that thing", and instantly get hit with "oh, people like you always complain about X but isn't it weird you never mention Y".

At least that's what I thought of when I read that; because answering in place of other people is another thing I find annoying. So I'm speaking for myself, but with some optimism I may have guessed the intent of OP correctly :)

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#106

Post by nullbio »

msdz wrote: post #2

> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thou…

> I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles.

This will and is 100% happening. I have a friend who hasn't written code by hand in around a year, but uses LLMs every day, and he tells me he can't remember how to write code by hand anymore. He has been a developer for 10 years. But he's not working for anyone at the moment, so I imagine if he was in a workplace the circumstances would be different and they probably wouldn't settle for this.

I think that as a result of this it likely also atrophies the problem solving and architecture building skills that writing the code manually gives you. It just ends up degrading into a loop of tell the agent to do X and assume it knows what it is doing.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#107

Post by rmarshallATD »

Levitz wrote: post #24
msdz wrote: post #2

> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thou…

>Conversely, I also am a user of LLMs (true shocker these days, I know), and am noticing a speedup in areas I was already familiar with, and a quicker introduction to new ones. The obvious benefit cannot be denied, and doing so regardless makes you look uninformed. My largest concern comes from something tangential to this: I'm not sure we're all that good at deciding what should be learned and sticking to it. Silly…

> But then, you just don't learn regex. So where does the intuition for what regex can do come from? The training data is there for regex and it's unlikely that regex will experience massive changes but your concern makes sense. I had to learn before LLMs handled that part, the "when to use this" intuition. My guess would be that the logical conclusion is dependence on LLMs to make that determination increasing over time, both for when and how to use regex, for better or worse.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#108

Post by Rumudiez »

Levitz wrote: post #24
msdz wrote: post #2

> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thou…

>Conversely, I also am a user of LLMs (true shocker these days, I know), and am noticing a speedup in areas I was already familiar with, and a quicker introduction to new ones. The obvious benefit cannot be denied, and doing so regardless makes you look uninformed. My largest concern comes from something tangential to this: I'm not sure we're all that good at deciding what should be learned and sticking to it. Silly…

Knowing what to learn has always been an implicitly vital skill to career growth. Maybe it’s all right fewer people will know regex, just like as each year passes relatively fewer people know about var hoisting in JS

What does the business benefit from you handwriting regex vs a clanker?

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#109

Post by Diogenesian »

breadzeppelin__ wrote: post #100
Diogenesian wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically my claim is "the relatively minor productivity uplift I would personally get out of agentic development is offset by the high cost, along with unresolved questions about long-term code maintainability, so I am not convinced that it is actually beneficial." IMO the bigger problem is that ~1.5x individual dev productivity uplift seems to translate into 1.05x uplift across the team. People have been waaaaay…

I am both a career developer and experienced team manager. from first hand experience the 1.5x im getting from AI is not flowing down to my team / org because why would i output 50% more when the pay environment and leadership are already underwhelming. That additional 50% productivity goes completely to side projects built on my second computer between 9-5 tasks

Actually, the METR report speculates that some of the overreported productivity uplift comes from grabbing unnecessary low-hanging fruit, things like "oh I'll make a web dashboard to keep track of this stuff // wow that would have taken all day without Claude!" But in the olden days they would have just used a notepad. Yet psychologically they built a real thing and saved a lot of time.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#110

Post by nullbio »

jmartrican wrote: post #49
msdz wrote: post #2

> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thou…

> So what’s the ideal “middle ground” in this situation? I use agents to code. But I remember the early days of just AI smart complete in the IDE, where as the programmer I had to be more involved with designing and implementating the solution. This kept me engaged with the implementation as it was being built out. Now with agents, I find myself trying to catch up with what the agent did and spend more time code revi…

I think it's the opposite. Being only the code reviewer devolves into being lazy and cutting corners. The sharpening comes from hands-on practice.
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