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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

#231

Post by hexasquid »

Grombobulous wrote: post #220
jdjdkfhbeb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would frame it differently ... Last year I was burning the fuck out hard. This year I am not. My gain is that I produce good work in a normal workday and I am absolutely not writing code to 4 am anymore... Overall for me it is a win for me and my company.

Some unsolicited, probably obvious advice for you for the future: never do that again. Managers will abuse you if you expand your workday to make sure deadlines don't slip. They will see that the work is getting done and see no urgency to hire more help. You have to surface capacity issues to management, learn to say "no" diplomatically, and/or "I have capacity for 2 things out of these 5, prioritize which ones you w…

The LLMs are better at enforcing their boundaries than developers. Run out of tokens? That's it. No more code. It doesn't care how much the company needs this for the customer call tomorrow.

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

#232

Post by bonesss »

hexasquid wrote: post #231
Grombobulous wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some unsolicited, probably obvious advice for you for the future: never do that again. Managers will abuse you if you expand your workday to make sure deadlines don't slip. They will see that the work is getting done and see no urgency to hire more help. You have to surface capacity issues to management, learn to say "no" diplomatically, and/or "I have capacity for 2 things out of these 5, prioritize which ones you w…

The LLMs are better at enforcing their boundaries than developers. Run out of tokens? That's it. No more code. It doesn't care how much the company needs this for the customer call tomorrow.

I feel that’s the opposite of the LLM-business models.

If I run out of tokens I’m encouraged to spend money to buy more tokens, Claude has an overage setup, and Anthropic runs occasional token sales.

So, to that example: the more often customers are hitting token limits under duress the more likely to open up the wallet and pay to finish.

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

#233

Post by JackSlateur »

hodder wrote: post #131
MisterTea wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Last month, there has been a billing-related incident at work: it has been detected that the GCP bill had increased vastly since early 2026

The related team investigated, found nothing; They escalated to other teams, found nothing; Gemini, claude and whatnot were involved, found nothing;

Somebody raised to topic to me, solution has been found

See my point ? Like GP, I do not use AI. If there is only one person thinking left, being that person does not looks like a bad idea;

Mixing code and "productivity" is trying to remake coder as bluecollars, and most of them probably are (not thinking, replaceable cogs that are overpaid and shall be decommissionned), they will not be missing. The only coder's output is its idea, everything else is a mean to that end.

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

#234

Post by threethirtytwo »

Aurornis wrote: post #211
threethirtytwo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. No IQ tests for prehistoric humans. 2. IQ is going down in the US.

> 2. IQ is going down in the US. Flynn effect research says otherwise. If you think prehistoric humans were geniuses because They could survive in the wild, by that measure monkeys and gorillas must be geniuses too.

>Flynn effect research says otherwise.

Flynn effect is just a trend for the past century or so and it's an international measure. For the past decade there's been a trend for the US exclusively that is not aligned with the flynn effect.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/03/americans-iq-s...

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

#235

Post by dannersy »

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…

Your suspicion is already being studied with increased effort, and the starting point has solid bones:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04721

For what it is worth, my colleagues who use these tools more liberally see a much higher regression rate and are left refactoring more as well. While they definitely put out more PRs, I can confidently say that mine are more valuable and better stand the test of time. Whether that matters or not is up to debate as I guess you could argue there may be some point where the productivity overcomes their regression rate.

My position is, if the technology will be so good and progressing so fast to the point that I don't have to write code anymore and I'm just dictating our needs and what I want architecturally, then I don't really feel the need to put in the time to learn the tools as they are now. That seems way easier to learn than anything computer science related that I had to learn to build robust systems.

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

#236

Post by bbeonx »

I think I'd put it this way: if I could flip a switch tomorrow and the AI boom was done, I probably would. The negative effects just super duper outweigh the fact that coders are more efficient. But since it exists, I'm going to use it. Hacking on my own small projects isn't using that many resources. But the benefit simply isn't worth the cost, as much as I personally love using LLMs.

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

#237

Post by threethirtytwo »

jagenabler2 wrote: post #214
threethirtytwo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no force pushes. And probably not an intern. But code that never gets looked at and only tested? Yes. And as AI gets better this will be happening in all companies... more and more.

How do you know your testing is complete if you're not sure what the underlying code does?

Testing will never be complete.

  def plus(a, b):
    return a + b
The above code, if a and b are integers have 2^64 test cases for full coverage. Code being much more complex then that on average will have a magnitude more test cases needed for full coverage... likely more test cases then all of the code humanity has ever wrote since the dawn of programming.

Testing is a statistical sample. You sample a small subset out of the full domain of possible tests and that sample you hope is somewhat representative of the actual population of tests. To put it in a sentence: If my suite of tests is correct then it is more likely that the entire full universe of every single possible test for my program can all be correct.

Realistically though the universe of all possible tests is so large that it's basically impossible for any sample to be a good representation of it. A suite of test does help up confidence that things will be MORE correct, but the sample size is so small it is almost guaranteed that you missed something.

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

#238

Post by threethirtytwo »

pjc50 wrote: post #148
threethirtytwo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a saying that the intelligence of an average prehistoric cave man should be, in general, higher than a modern day human simply because the lack of technology required stone age humans to be far more intelligent then we are today. Now you can survive by working as a clerk in McDs, but in the stone age you needed to be on your toes and smart af. LLMs are just continuing the trend humanity has long been travelin…

"Flynn effect" claimed that intelligence has been increasing over time. At least we can sort of measure things in the modern era, while objectively assessing the intelligence of the long-dead is turning into skull-measuring territory.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/03/americans-iq-s...

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

#239

Post by threethirtytwo »

Aurornis wrote: post #206
threethirtytwo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a saying that the intelligence of an average prehistoric cave man should be, in general, higher than a modern day human simply because the lack of technology required stone age humans to be far more intelligent then we are today. Now you can survive by working as a clerk in McDs, but in the stone age you needed to be on your toes and smart af. LLMs are just continuing the trend humanity has long been travelin…

> There's a saying that the intelligence of an average prehistoric cave man should be, in general, higher than a modern day human simply because the lack of technology required stone age humans to be far more intelligent then we are today. Now you can survive by working as a clerk in McDs, but in the stone age you needed to be on your toes and smart af. This is a funny twist on the glorification of the past. Modern h…

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/03/americans-iq-s...

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

#240

Post by fragmede »

annzabelle wrote: post #221
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen no productivity uplift at all from LLMs. They are at least about neutral these days (they used to be a productivity drain ), but no gains at all. By the time I get done reviewing the code to make sure it hasn't done anything crazy, I've spent the same amount of time I would've taken to write the code myself. The only people I personally know who claim productivity gains are getting those gains by complete…

I find Claude is shockingly slow. If it were genuinely instantaneous, it would be worth it, but I often find myself twiddling my thumbs while waiting for it to cook.

Yeah that's why you do multiple tasks and projects simultaneously.
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