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LLMs reward expertise

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Re: LLMs reward expertise

#101

Post by petcat »

hvs wrote: post #87
petcat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be hung up on the part about "learning". Do you know how x86 registers work? Or atomic instructions available on ARM, SPARC, or POWER architectures? No, of course not. Because all of that got abstracted to higher-level instructions decades ago.

Yes, I do. And it wouldn't take you that long to learn, either.

Well that's great for you. That's some knowledge that you will possess for the rest of your life.

I want a green lawn and big bushy shrubs in front of my house. Do I need to know the intricate biology of my soil and habitat? No, of course not. I just do the surface-level things that make the lawn and shrubs thrive.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#102

Post by limitedmage »

petcat wrote: post #74
bumblehean wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hours + Hours of reading and a lot of trial-and-error. The loop was so long and sooo slow. But that's how you learn...

We don't need to learn CSS anymore. Just like we don't need to learn ASM since GCC does a great job generating it from higher-level code.

I am a frontend engineer and I see so many bugs from vibe-coded CSS from people who think just like you. CSS is very powerful and easy to get wrong if you don't understand it. Since most CSS code on the internet is not good, LLMs do not generate good CSS code and create a lot of bugs ranging from bad performance to completely broken reflow.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#103

Post by jselysianeagle »

kwakubiney wrote: post #81
lucb1e wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand the question. What would prevent you from doing what these people did now that LLMs are here?

Those people had no choice. In my opinion, it’s harder to grind through problems knowing very well an answer is a prompt away.

But getting an answer is not the same thing as understanding why that is the correct answer, or going deeper and learning more about the subject.

IMHO, the people who genuinely desire to learn will trudge through whatever they need to in order to grow their understanding - be it through reading books, original research papers or what have you.

If, OTOH, all you seek is the answers and that alone is satisfying to you, then of course you simply will not be motivated to do it the old school way anyway. But that's hardly different now in the age of AI.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#104

Post by nonethewiser »

hvs wrote: post #87
petcat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be hung up on the part about "learning". Do you know how x86 registers work? Or atomic instructions available on ARM, SPARC, or POWER architectures? No, of course not. Because all of that got abstracted to higher-level instructions decades ago.

Yes, I do. And it wouldn't take you that long to learn, either.

Who is more productive? A python dev who learns about x86 registers in his free time or one that uses AI at work?

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#105

Post by vouaobrasil »

petcat wrote: post #80
lionkor wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "instant" loop is so fast because it doesn't involve the part where you learn

You seem to be hung up on the part about "learning". Do you know how x86 registers work? Or atomic instructions available on ARM, SPARC, or POWER architectures? No, of course not. Because all of that got abstracted to higher-level instructions decades ago.

But maybe there's a limit to the usefulness of this abstraction. Perhaps forgetting too many basic skills lower down isn't always as useful as going from Assembly to C. I'd argue that there's a law of diminishing returns there, and it's not an endless series of benefits.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#106

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

petcat wrote: post #74
bumblehean wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hours + Hours of reading and a lot of trial-and-error. The loop was so long and sooo slow. But that's how you learn...

We don't need to learn CSS anymore. Just like we don't need to learn ASM since GCC does a great job generating it from higher-level code.

Honestly, we don't really need to learn any more. These days, I mostly copy and paste from tickets to the LLM, and then rubber stamp the output. I have people in my team that try to care about what they're making, but they're generating less code, and filling tickets more slowly, than I am. Even when it comes to system design and architecture, the LLMs aren't great at it, but honestly, they're better than my coworkers (I'd say system architecture is probably at the same readiness level that coding was last year). Expertise wouldn't really help you get things done faster.

You could probably replace me with a minimum wage worker to do some manual testing and copy-paste errors from the console into the LLM, and still be fine.

Let's see how long it is before the next round of layoffs, I guess. For now, the money's fine and the work's boring but ok.

But, no, the LLMs rewarding expertise line is pure cope. Software is not really skilled labor any more.

(obviously, throwaway -- I'm not interested in potentially advertising this to my employer)

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#107

Post by Johnny555 »

petcat wrote: post #101
hvs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. And it wouldn't take you that long to learn, either.

Well that's great for you. That's some knowledge that you will possess for the rest of your life. I want a green lawn and big bushy shrubs in front of my house. Do I need to know the intricate biology of my soil and habitat? No, of course not. I just do the surface-level things that make the lawn and shrubs thrive.

>No, of course not. I just do the surface-level things that make the lawn and shrubs thrive.

And others want the green lawn and big bushy shrubs, but don't want to learn all of the surface level things to make their lawn thrive so they hire a service to do it for them. And there's nothing wrong with that - not everyone enjoys the yard work, but they still want the thriving lawn and shrubs... and they are happy to write a check to OpenAI... err...Lawn Doctor every month to get that result since the time they save by not dealing with their lawn, they can pursue things they do want to do.

Not everyone wants to (or needs to) learn every detail along the way of getting the results they want.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#108

Post by petcat »

__d wrote: post #100
petcat wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not sarcasm. We've all accepted that code-generation has been required and accepted for decades.

Code generation (by compiler) has one major difference: it's deterministic.

Here are the reported miscompilation bugs in GCC so far in 2026. The ones labeled "wrong-code".

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BBug%20cr

I count 500+ of them.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#109

Post by jkhdigital »

postalcoder wrote: post #4

Not sure I agree with this. The math guy at anthropic's prompts are essentially: "suppose you’ve gotta resolve the $CONJECTURE, like absolutely have to, everything depends on it. think really hard, and try to come up with a bunch of ideas to try. but remember to trust yourself and not necessarily in conventional wisdom!!" https://claude.ai/share/25740bd5-aa97-4bd7-bf58-c4df3793fda7 https://xcancel.com/__alpoge__/stat…

But the guy who writes the “just do it” prompt can neither formulate the conjecture in the first place, nor come up with any follow-up questions to build on the result.

Re: LLMs reward expertise

#110

Post by ericd »

limitedmage wrote: post #102
petcat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to learn CSS anymore. Just like we don't need to learn ASM since GCC does a great job generating it from higher-level code.

I am a frontend engineer and I see so many bugs from vibe-coded CSS from people who think just like you. CSS is very powerful and easy to get wrong if you don't understand it. Since most CSS code on the internet is not good, LLMs do not generate good CSS code and create a lot of bugs ranging from bad performance to completely broken reflow.

Funnily enough, I seem to remember some people saying that compiler generated assembly wasn’t as good as handmade assembly.
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