LLMs can be exhausting • Hacker News Board

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#191

Post by nathan_compton » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

Tenemo wrote: post #188

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #176

Reminds me of the best saying I ever got from my CS professor. She would make us first write out our code and answer the question, "What will the output be?" before we were allowed to run it. "If you don't know what you want your code to do, the computer sure as heck won't know either." I keep this with me today. Before I run my code for the first time or turn on my hardware for the first time, I ask myself, "What _e…

I'm not 100% convinced, while iterating fast on an early prototype, what's wrong with legitimately not knowing what e.g. the data structure will end up looking? Just let it run, check debugger/stdout/localhost page and adjust: "Oh, right, the entries are missing canonical IDs, but at the same time there are already all the comments in them, forgot they would be there – neat". What's wrong with that? Especially at uni…

The point of university isn't to get things done - it is to imprint knowledge into your brain. If you are approaching school with the attitude of "how do I get this over with as fast as possible," you are wasting your time and the time of the teacher.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#192

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

Tenemo wrote: post #188

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #176

Reminds me of the best saying I ever got from my CS professor. She would make us first write out our code and answer the question, "What will the output be?" before we were allowed to run it. "If you don't know what you want your code to do, the computer sure as heck won't know either." I keep this with me today. Before I run my code for the first time or turn on my hardware for the first time, I ask myself, "What _e…

I'm not 100% convinced, while iterating fast on an early prototype, what's wrong with legitimately not knowing what e.g. the data structure will end up looking? Just let it run, check debugger/stdout/localhost page and adjust: "Oh, right, the entries are missing canonical IDs, but at the same time there are already all the comments in them, forgot they would be there – neat". What's wrong with that? Especially at uni…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#193

Post by civvv » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

rednafi wrote: post #11

I have always enjoyed the feeling of aporia during coding. Learning to embrace the confusion and the eventual frustration is part of the job. So I don’t mind running in a loop alongside an agent. But I absolutely loathe reviewing these generated PRs - more so when I know the submitter themselves has barely looked at the code. Now corporate has mandated AI usage and is asking people to do 10k LOC PRs every day. Review…

10k LoC per day? Wow, my condolences to you.

On a different note: something I just discovered is that if you google "my condolences", the AI summary will thank you for the kindness before defining its meaning, fun.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#194

Post by gregoriol » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #189

It's helped me to adapt to a more traditional schedule. I worked 6-7 day weeks, 10+ hours a day on average for about a decade. Thanks to LLMs, I just took off the weekend to build garden beds with my wife and rest. I shut down around 6pm now when I used to frequently go from ~10a to ~10p most days. And to be clear: this isn't because of some magical property of LLMs, but rather, because it satiates my nervous system'…

Here you are describing any job, nothing related to LLMs.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#195

Post by fuzzzerd » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

somewhereoutth wrote: post #24

Of course. Any scenario where you are expected to deliver results using non-deterministic tooling is going to be painful and exhausting. Imagine driving a car that might dive one way or the other of its own accord, with controls that frequently changed how they worked. At the end of any decently sized journey you would be an emotional wreck - perhaps even an actual wreck.

That's an interesting metaphor. Maybe it's because it does match my own experience, but I definitely agree and see it playing out in my own usage.

Obviously the stakes are lower, I still review code before making a PR, but the exhaustion from getting there is similar.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#196

Post by swat535 » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #176

Reminds me of the best saying I ever got from my CS professor. She would make us first write out our code and answer the question, "What will the output be?" before we were allowed to run it. "If you don't know what you want your code to do, the computer sure as heck won't know either." I keep this with me today. Before I run my code for the first time or turn on my hardware for the first time, I ask myself, "What _e…

Isn't this the whole idea of TDD? Write your assertions, then write the code the fulfill it.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#197

Post by gregoriol » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

LLMs can be exhausting because you are processing more information per hour than you used to do: first because LLMs know much more than you did and they provide that to you at a quick pace, second because you have to think about more difficult stuff like decisions/architecture/edge-cases than you did before when you managed on average more smaller details and less big picture.

Working with an LLM is kind of like working with one (or more) junior developer(s): try that first, then you'll really see how LLMs can be (less) exhausting.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#198

Post by pindab0ter » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

I've noticed the same thing. I would have three, sometimes four sessions run at the same time. It would be great, but mentally exhausting. To help this, I've set a self-imposed limit of two active chat sessions at a time.

Another thing I found is that it is too easy to keep going. I would work for too long and get even more exhausted. It feels rude to just stop a conversation. LLMs don't really care about social norms like that, but it still felt awkward to me and I would worry about losing the context I had.

To help with that, I wrote my own little plugin that reminds me to start winding down at the end of the work day and starts prompting me (pardon my phrasing) to take the off-ramp; to relay any thoughts and todos I still have in mind and put them down to pick up the next day.

This is in no way production ready, but it might be an inspiration: https://github.com/pindab0ter/wind-down

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#199

Post by jplusequalt » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #5

cglan wrote: post #3

I 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 think the upper limit is your ability to decide what to build among infinite possibilities. How should it work, what should it be like to use it, what makes the most sense, etc. The code part is trivial and a waste of time in some ways compared to time spent making decisions about what to build. And sometimes even a procrastination to avoid thinking about what to build, like how people who polish their game engine…

>how people who polish their game engine (easy)

This is such a weird statement. Game engines are among the most complicated pieces of software in existence. Furthermore, a game that doesn't run smoothly increases the chances that your player base doesn't stick around to see what you've built.

Re: LLMs can be exhausting

#200

Post by bigfishrunning » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

iainctduncan wrote: post #88

Everytime I read articles here describing the LLM prompt engineering workflow, all I can think is, "This sounds like such a fucking awful job". I imagine I will greatly reduce my job prospects as a hold out, but honestly, from what I've read I think I'd rather take a hefty pay hit and not go there. It sounds like a mental heath disaster and fast track to serious burnout. YMMV, I realize I'm in the minority, this is u…

It'll be a pay hit initially, but eventually the bottom will fall out and those of us who actually know how to write a computer program will be like COBOL programmers, with salaries to match. Stay strong and keep your powder dry!