I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
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Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#2LLM == WGCM = Wild Goose Chase Model
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#3I ask this question without a hint of tone or sarcasm. You said: "*it’s a junior dev faking competence. Trust it at your own risk.*" My question is simply: "wouldn't you expect to personally be able to tell that a human junior dev was faking competence?" Why should it be different with the LLM?
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#4I have used LLMs as a tool and I start to "give up" working with it after a few tries. It excels at simple tasks, boilerplate, or scripts but larger programs you really have to know what exactly you want to do.
I do see the LLMs ingesting more and more documentation and content and they are improving at giving me right answers. Almost two years ago I don't believe they had every python package indexed and now they appear to have at least the documentation or source code of it.
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#5I've found them tobe quite a time saver, within limits. The blog post seemed scattered and disorganized to me, and the author admits having no experience with using LLMs to this end, so perhaps the problem lies behind their eyes.
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#6There's not much actual LLM-generated text in this post to go by, but it seems like each of the tokens generated by the LLM would be reasonable to have high probability. It sounds like the developer here thought that the sequence of tokens then carried meaning, where instead any possible meaning came from the reading. I wonder if this developer would be as irritated by the inaccuracies if they had cast sticks onto the ground to manage their stock portfolio and found the prophecy's "meaning" to be plausible but inaccurate.
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#7> AI isn’t a co-pilot; it’s a junior dev faking competence. Trust it at your own risk.
This is a good take that tracks with my (heavy) usage of LLMs for coding. Leveraging productive-but-often-misguided junior devs is a skill every dev should actively cultivate!
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#8The junior dev faking competence is useful but needs a lot of supervision (unlike a real junior dev we don't know if this one will get better).
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#9the "AI lies" takeaway is way off for those actually using these tools. Calling it a "junior dev faking competence" is catchy, but misses the point. We're not expecting a co-pilot, it's a tool, a super-powered intern that needs direction. The spaghetti code mess wasn't AI "lying", it was a lack of control and proper prompting.
Experienced folks aren't surprised by this. LLMs are fast for boilerplate, research, and exploring ideas, but they're not autonomous coders. The key is you staying in charge: detailed prompts, critical code review, iterative refinement. Going back to web interfaces and manual pasting because editor integration felt "too easy" is a massive overcorrection. It's like ditching cars for walking after one fender bender.
Ultimately, this wasn't an AI failure, it was an inexperienced user expecting too much, too fast. The "lessons learned" are valid, but not AI-specific. For those who use LLMs effectively, they're force multipliers, not replacements. Don't blame the tool for user error. Learn to drive it properly.
Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project
#10Counterexample: Ive been able to complete more side projects in the last month leveraging llms than i have ever in my life. One of which I believe to have potential as a viable product, and another which involved complicated rust `no_std` and linker setup for compiling rust code onto bare metal RISCV from scratch.
I think the key to being successful here is to realize that you're still at the wheel as an engineer. The llm is there to rapidly synthesize the universe of information.
You still need to 1) have solid fundamentals in order to have an intuition against that synthesis, and 2) be experienced enough to translate that synthesis into actionable outcomes.
If youre lacking in either, youre at the same whims of copypasta that have always existed.