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The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

lewiscampbell.tech

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Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#181

Post by krapp »

hu3 wrote: post #179
krapp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. It starts from the premise that the author finds LLMs are good for limited, simple tasks with small contexts and clearly defined guidelines, and specifically not good for vibe-coding. And the author literally mentions that they aren't making universal claims about LLMs, but just speaking from personal experience.

You're offering a very generous interpretation. To the point of extrapolating what's written. Allow me to exemplify: > I genuinely don't mind if other people vibe code. Go for it! > But that is not enough for the vocal proponents. It's the future! The author is okay for others to voice their positive opinion about LLMs as long as it is limited to vibe coding. It starts defining a gatekeeping threshold of what level o…

Nothing in the text you quoted implies anything of the sort, and you're moving the goalposts.

Good day.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#182

Post by blibble »

jraph wrote: post #14

This doesn't feel completely right. Simon Wilson (known for Django) has been doing a lot of LLM evangelism on his blog these days. Antirez (Redis) wrote a blog post recently with the same vibe. I doubt they are not good programmers. They are probably better than most of us, and I doubt they feel insecure because of the LLMs. Either I'm wrong, or there's something more to this. edit: to clarify, I'm not saying Simon a…

> They are probably better than most of us

most top engineers will have their best work locked up in their employer's private repositories

simonw and antirez have an advantage here, and at least the former is very good at self-promotion

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#183

Post by lijok »

dzonga wrote: post #173

if A.I maximalist gospel was true - we would see a company raising $10M Series A | Seed (these days) spend 60% on A.I, 30% on Humans and 10% on operations but I can bet you my sole penny that's not happening - so we know someone is tryna sell us a polished turd as a diamond

At no point in history has humanity ever cut back on spending after some constraint got alleviated. Exact opposite, we always ramp spending up to chase new possibilities.

If A.I maximalism gospel was true we would see companies raising absurd seed and A rounds in record numbers. Which is exactly what we’re seeing

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#185

Post by shmerl »

> It's projection. Their evangelism is born of insecurity.

It's fear, but of different kind. Those who are most aggressive and pushy about it are those who invested too much [someone else's] money in it and are scared angry investors will come for their hides when reality won't match their expectations.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#186

Post by [deleted] »

casey2 wrote: post #95
lbrito wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mistaking set and members here. The piece's critique is against the set (LLM Evangelists), not against specific members of the set (the ones you mentioned). One can agree with the point of the piece while still acknowledging there are good programmers who are also LLM evangelists.

Look into the Motte-and-bailey fallacy. That set seriously doesn't exist. Even the people on youtube doing "vibe coding" benchmarks mostly say it's crap. (Well they probably exist on twitter/linkedin.) This article just functions as flamebait for people who use LLMs to implement whole features to argue the semantics of "vibe coding". All while everyone is ignoring the writing on the wall. That we will soon have boxes…

[deleted]

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#187

Post by mahaekoh »

accrual wrote: post #6

I see it only as a threat to those who have a deep hook into their role as a SWE. If as a SWE you see the oncoming change and adapt to it, no issue. If as a SWE you see the enablement of LLMs as an existential threat, then you will find many issues, and you will fail to adapt and have all kind of issues related to it.

Read the article. The author wants LLMs to work for them, but they don’t. You’re confusing results and intention.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#188

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

meowface wrote: post #23

I feel no strong need to convince others. I've been seeing major productivity boosts for myself and others since Sonnet 3.5. Maybe for certain kinds of projects and use cases it's less good, maybe they're not using it well; I dunno. I do think a lot of these people probably will be left behind if they don't adopt it within the next 3 years, but that's not really my problem.

> "...these people probably will be left behind if they don't adopt it..."

And there it is, the insecure evangelism.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#189

Post by anonym29 »

falloutx wrote: post #170
anonym29 wrote: post #76

I don't mind weighing in as someone who could fairly be categorized as both an LLM evangelist and "not an experienced dev". It's a lot like why I've been bullish on Tesla's approach to FSD even as someone who owned an AP1 vehicle that objectively was NOT "self-driving" in any sense of the word: it's less about where the technology is right now , or even the speed the technology is currently improving at, and more abo…

5 years? That seems generous. We are being threatened this summer (in some companies its gonna be even earlier)

Yeah, I'm being a little generous/conservative here, but also, that 2030 estimate is more along the lines of the "everyone unambiguously understands AI is better than the experts in their respective domains", not for the much sooner "it becomes more economically viable to have AI devs than human devs".

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#190

Post by WolfeReader »

lijok wrote: post #159
WolfeReader wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no point in making this a numbers game. (Like, I was supposed to say "five" or something?) Let's make it more of a category thing: when AI shows itself responsible for a new category of life-saving technique, like a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's, then I'd have to reconsider. (And even then, it will be balanced against rising sea levels, extinctions, and other energy use effects.)

> when AI shows itself responsible for a new category of life-saving technique, like a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's, then I'd have to reconsider. We’re way past that

Please, go into detail!
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