The most honest, logical, and practical take I've seen on this. People consistently underestimate the skill and effort it takes to write precisely and think critically both about their problem, and their processes. The closer you are to knowing what to ask for in the way knowledgeable people ask for it with respect to the process you are using to complete work, the closer the output will be to what you want.
LLMs can be exhausting
161–170 of 232 posts
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#162I find LLMs so much more exhausting than manual coding. It’s interesting. I think you quickly bump into how much a single human can feasibly keep track of pretty fast with modern LLMs. I assume until LLMs are 100% better than humans in all cases, as long as I have to be in the loop there will be a pretty hard upper bound on what I can do and it seems like we’ve roughly hit that limit. Funny enough, I get this feeling…
I suspect it's because you need to keep more things in your head yourself; after a while of coding by hand, it becomes more labor and doesn't cost as much brain power anymore. But when offloading the majority of that coding to an LLM, you're left with the higher level tasks of software engineering, you don't get the "breaks" while writing code anymore.
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#163I find LLMs so much more exhausting than manual coding. It’s interesting. I think you quickly bump into how much a single human can feasibly keep track of pretty fast with modern LLMs. I assume until LLMs are 100% better than humans in all cases, as long as I have to be in the loop there will be a pretty hard upper bound on what I can do and it seems like we’ve roughly hit that limit. Funny enough, I get this feeling…
I suspect it's because you need to keep more things in your head yourself; after a while of coding by hand, it becomes more labor and doesn't cost as much brain power anymore. But when offloading the majority of that coding to an LLM, you're left with the higher level tasks of software engineering, you don't get the "breaks" while writing code anymore.
The tactical process of writing the code is also when you discover the errors in your design.
Like, did we think waterfall suddenly works now just because typing can be automated? No.
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#164Does anyone else see this as dystopian? Someone is unironically writing about how exhausted they are and up at night thinking about how they can be a better good-boy at prompting the LLM and reminding us how we shouldn't cope by blaming the AI or its supposed limitations (context size, etc). This is not a dig at the author. It just seems crazy that this is an unironic post. It's like we are gleefully running to the "…
Is it not LLM-generated? Or at this point are they just mimicking LLM writing if they ever do it manually?
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#165Exhausting in a GOOD way! I've been using Codex to review my existing Godot components framework at [0] and the project's modularity suits AI well: It can focus on one file/subsystem at a time. I don't use it to generate or edit any code but it has helped me catch a lot of bugs that would have taken me a long time on my own. I've been more productive than ever but boy it never seems to run out of flaws to point out in everything! I often have to ask it to overlook some issues/limitations as intentional so I can catch a break.
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#166I find LLMs so much more exhausting than manual coding. It’s interesting. I think you quickly bump into how much a single human can feasibly keep track of pretty fast with modern LLMs. I assume until LLMs are 100% better than humans in all cases, as long as I have to be in the loop there will be a pretty hard upper bound on what I can do and it seems like we’ve roughly hit that limit. Funny enough, I get this feeling…
I suspect it's because you need to keep more things in your head yourself; after a while of coding by hand, it becomes more labor and doesn't cost as much brain power anymore. But when offloading the majority of that coding to an LLM, you're left with the higher level tasks of software engineering, you don't get the "breaks" while writing code anymore.
How often, in your life, did you write code without stopping, in the middle of writing, to go back and review assumptions that turned out to be wrong?
I'm not talking about "oh, this function is deprecated, have to use this other one, but more "this approach is wrong, maybe delete it all and try a different approach"?
Because IME an AI never discards an approach, they just continue adding band aids and conditional to make the wrong approach work.
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#167I find LLMs so much more exhausting than manual coding. It’s interesting. I think you quickly bump into how much a single human can feasibly keep track of pretty fast with modern LLMs. I assume until LLMs are 100% better than humans in all cases, as long as I have to be in the loop there will be a pretty hard upper bound on what I can do and it seems like we’ve roughly hit that limit. Funny enough, I get this feeling…
> I find LLMs so much more exhausting than manual coding I do as well, so totally know what you're talking about. There's part of me that thinks it will become less exhausting with time and practice. In high school and college I worked at this Italian place that did dine in, togo, and delivery orders. I got hired as a delivery driver and loved it. A couple years in there was a spell where they had really high turnove…
I think what will eventually help is something I call AI-discipline. LLMs are a tool, not more, no less. Just like we now recognize unbridled use of mobile phones to be a mental health issue, causing some to strictly limit their use, I think we will eventually recognize that the best use of LLMs is found by being judicious and intentional.
When I first started dabbling in the use of LLMs for coding, I almost went overboard trying to build all kinds of tools to maximize their use: parallel autonomous worktree-based agents, secure sandboxing for agents to do as they like, etc.
I now find it much more effective to use LLMs in a target and minimalist manner. I still architecturally important and tricky code by hand, using LLMs to do several review passes. When I do write code with LLMs, I almost never allow them to do it without me in the loop, approving every single edit. I limit the number of simultaneous sessions I manage to at most 3 or 4. Sometimes, I take a break of a few days from using LLMs (and ofter from writing any code at all), and just think and update the specs of the project(s) I'm working on at a high level, to ensure I not doing busy-work in the wrong direction.
I don't think I'm missing anything by this approach. If anything, I think I am more productive.
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
No to be fair I do see what he's saying. I see a major difference between the more expensive models and the cheaper ones. The cheaper (usually default) ones make mistakes all the damn time. You can be as clear as day with them and they simply don't have the context window or specs to make accurate, well reasoned desicions and it is a bit like having a terrible junior work alongside you, fresh out of university.
Emphasis on the "terrible" part of the junior. The cheaper models can't be taught or improved due to their inherit limitations, which makes it a huge pain to even try with even the simplest of tasks. Perpetually, no matter your instruction file(s).
I agree. The more expensive models I must admit have impressed me, but sometimes they take so long and are so expensive you might as well do it yourself. That being said if you're feeling particularly lazy there is now a "do it for me" button built into code editors, but until perhaps 2035 this technology is still somewhat pedestrian compared to what it could be in the future.
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#169[dead]
Re: LLMs can be exhausting
#170> If I reach the point where I am not getting joy out of writing a great prompt...
Man, I envy you. For me, the joy comes from writing good code that I can be proud of. I never got ANY joy from writing a prompt.
I mean, it is a means to an end (getting the LLMs to do the boring stuff) and so it is a necessary evil. Also, the LLMs are at times amazing and at times dumb as rocks even for very similar prompts. That drives me crazy because it feels I have no control over those things.