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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

#131

Post by hodder »

MisterTea wrote: post #126
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…

> but risking being left in the dust productivity-wise? What's the risk here? Left behind by who or what? > Or taking an “agent first” approach and trying to learn and improve more only on the side, as more of an afterthought? This reads like anxiety resulting from FOMO. Here's my take: I don't care about LLMs or AI in the sense that I don't feel any need or want to use them. I've only ever tinkered with the free Cha…

Economically if you are vastly outcompeted by other programmers on productivity, yes that is "no longer of value" from a purely employment perspective. Much like an old person who cant use a computer has little value in the job market beyond being a greeter at Walmart, a programmer who hand codes a loop is next to useless on a productivity basis such that it makes zero sense to employ them. It is unfortunate but true. Why pay someone to accomplish less per dollar pf cost. Feels?

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

#132

Post by deaton »

Izkata wrote: post #67
TonyAlicea10 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is equivalent. The calculator won't occasionally hallucinate a wrong answer. LLMs are a far leakier abstraction which means skill atrophy impacts evaluation and verification ability.

They're not an abstraction at all until we're committing prompts instead of code.

We might as well be committing prompts given how little review happens to much of this code.

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

#133

Post by dieselgate »

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

Your comment makes total sense to me but generally, in regards to productivity gains from AI, I can never understand where these are realized for people. Maybe I'm just a laggard but never found myself 25%-50% behind on anything or that much more work/items/tickets available.

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

#134

Post by eamonnsullivan »

The one thing that had me reading to the end was the mention near the top of the environmental impact of LLMs, but he never got back to it.

I'm currently writing an onboarding doc for my team, encouraging LLM use for some tasks. (OK, well, I'm actually procrastinating by reading HN).

At the same time, I'm in a darkened office with tinfoil on the windows and a fan pointed at me because it's hell outside and it has been for weeks, and every year it seems to get hotter and hotter and we have longer and longer heatwaves.

This seems ... discordant, at a minimum.

Really, _should_ we be using these things to speed up, say, dependency updates if the cost is the planet? I wanted to know what the author thought about that.

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

#135

Post by quantummagic »

cj wrote: post #123
quantummagic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 utopia…

> They're not wrong, they're just not helpful or accomplishing anything. I think what it accomplishes is developing a shared understanding of the pros/cons of the tech, the risks associated, how we should mitigate those risks, where the tech is appropriate vs. not appropriate, etc. It feels very dismissive to say that these conversations aren't worth having. Or that we're thinking about these things too much. I get t…

There are conversations worth having. But it feels very dismissive of the obvious power of the technology to constantly focus, in an unbalanced way, on the challenges. People are biased heavily by irrational emotion, on both sides of the debate. It's all just getting a little tedious. I'm all for rational discourse and debate, but it's hard to find through all the vitriol and contempt.

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

#136

Post by swiftcoder »

nicce wrote: post #130
swiftcoder wrote: post #117

> I am a little bit scared to say this too: last month I spent almost 10k USD on tokens. It sounds so insane. What are people actually doing with all these tokens? I use LLMs pretty heavily for development, and I'm rarely spending all the tokens that come with a $10/month OpenCode Go subscription...

If you are reviewing the changes and keep giving input, it is not that token consuming. But many people go with full yolo with agent mode.

I honestly felt I was going pretty YOLO :)

I write specs and review, but the LLM writes all the code, tests, etc and only gets re-prompted when it screws up badly. That said, I'm not running that many agent loops in parallel, so maybe thats where the cost bites

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

#137

Post by tablarasa »

westurner wrote: post #116
deaton wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real disaster is that once you let the LLM work on a project for a bit, you start to lose understanding of what exactly is even happening under the hood in the project. You can take steps to mitigate this, but agents don't exactly encourage the behavior required to maintain a good understanding of what's going on.

Like becoming a manager? When a person becomes a manager, they do or do not have enough time and expertise to review all of the code that they trust the team to produce. Managers usually get into automated testing; unit tests, integration tests, acceptance tests, and maybe also BDD syntax Managers and developers are responsible for setting a test coverage threshold for merge approval. If there is 100% branch coverage…

> How does the value of LLM-produced 100% branch coverage compare to no-LLM 100% branch coverage?

This is such a salient question. Sometimes (definitely not always) the test suites produced by LLMs are so trivial it's scary. Coverage can be an illusion for sure.

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

#138

Post by dawnerd »

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

That’s what I’ve heard from my dev team too. They’re using it to give themselves free time while still being on the clock, not to produce more output for the company. Roughly thinking about hours spent on projects I think have gone up per task, the opposite that should be happening.

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

#139

Post by deaton »

jmuguy wrote: post #63
adamas wrote: post #36

Do I understand that spend report right ? 10k USD in a month for AI tokens ? After talking about the environmental cost of AI ?

Yeah this is where I stopped. I use AI every day for work but 10k spend to me is a signal that OP is doing something extremely stupid with their AI use.

I use AI every day, and I use it quite a bit, and I use Opus more than I maybe should, and even then I'm not even at $2000 in tokens this year. I don't understand how people are tokenmaxxing as much as they are.

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

#140

Post by GenerocUsername »

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…

If cars did not exist, I would be healthier, able to walk and run many times further due to constant cardio exercise.

I would still travel much less distance.

And just like cars, LLMs will reshape the world to the point that our brains could not even get us to the supermarket because soon it will be 5 miles away and require a car ( or at least a local LLM bike )

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