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I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

nemo.foo

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Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#21

Post by latexr »

tanseydavid wrote: post #3

I 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?

Obviously, it depends on context. When talking to someone live you can pick up on subtle hints such as tone of voice, or where they look, or how they gesticulate, or a myriad other signals which give you a hint to their knowledge gaps. If you're communicating via text, the signals change. Furthermore, as you interact with people more often you understand them better and refine your understanding of them. LLMs always forget and “reset” and are in flux. They aren’t as consistent. Plus, they don’t grow with you and pick up on your signals and wants.

It’s incredibly worrying that it needs to be explained again and again that LLMs are different from people, do not behave like people, and should not be compared to people or interacted like people, because they are not people.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#22

Post by mythrwy »

potsandpans wrote: post #10

Counterexample: 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. Th…

I've had both experiences strangely enough.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#23

Post by mythrwy »

williamcotton wrote: post #14
powerset wrote: post #13

I've had a similar experience, shipping new features at incredible speed, then waste a ton of time going down the wrong track trying to debug something because the LLM gave me a confidently wrong solution.

Well that's kind of on you for not noticing that it was the wrong solution, isn't it?

Ya but you kind of get painted in corner sometimes. And sunken cost fallacy kicks in.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#24

Post by XorNot »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #4

I 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 ap…

The trouble is the only reliable use-case LLMs actually seem good at is "augmented search engine". Any attempts at coding with them just end up feeling like trying to code via a worse interface.

So it's handy to get a quick list of "all packages which do X", but it's worse then useless to have it speculate as to which one to use or why, because of the hallucination problem.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#25

Post by piva00 »

codr7 wrote: post #12
pieix wrote: post #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!

What you're doing is sacrificing learning for speed. Which is fine, if it's a conscious choice for yourself.

I don't think GP was talking about themselves being a junior using LLMs, at least my interpretation was that devs should learn how to leverage misguided junior, and LLMs are more-or-less on the level of a misguided junior.

Which I completely agree, I use LLMs for the cases where I do know what I'm trying to do, I just can't remember some exact detail that would require reading documentation. It's much quicker to leverage a LLM rather than going on a wild goose chase of the piece of information I know exists.

Also it's a pretty good tool to scaffold the boring stuff, asking a LLM "generate test code for X asserting A, B, and C" and editing it to be a proper test frees up mental space for more important stuff.

I wouldn't trust a LLM to generate any kind of business logic-heavy code, instead I use it as a quite smart template/scaffold generator.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#26

Post by latexr »

tacoooooooo wrote: post #9

the "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 ex…

> We're not expecting a co-pilot

Microsoft’s offering is literally called “copilot”. That is exactly what they’re marketing it as.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#27

Post by layer8 »

tanseydavid wrote: post #3

I 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?

Not instantly. You’d give the human junior dev the benefit of the doubt at first. But when it becomes clear that the junior dev is faking competence all the time (that might take longer than the four days in TFA — yes I know it’s not exactly comparable, just saying) and won’t stop with that and start being honest instead, you’d eventually let them go, because that’s no way to work with someone.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#28

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

williamcotton wrote: post #14
powerset wrote: post #13

I've had a similar experience, shipping new features at incredible speed, then waste a ton of time going down the wrong track trying to debug something because the LLM gave me a confidently wrong solution.

Well that's kind of on you for not noticing that it was the wrong solution, isn't it?

often it's something you casually overlook, some minor implementation detail that you didn't give much thought to that ends up being a huge mess later on, IME

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#29

Post by winocm »

KronisLV wrote: post #16

In my experience LLMs will help you with things that have been solved thousands of times before and are just a matter of finding some easily researched solution. The very moment when you try to go off the beaten path and do something unconventional or stuff that most people won't have written a lot about, it gets more tricky. Just consider how many people will know how to configure some middleware in a Node.js projec…

In my experience, a LLM decided to not know type alignment rules in C and confidently trotted out the wrong answer. It left a horrible taste in my mouth for the one time I decided to look at using a LLM for anything and it keeps leaving me wondering if I'd end up more time bashing the LLM into working than just working out the answer myself and learning the underlying reasoning why.

It was so wrong that I wonder what version of the C standard it was even hallucinating.

Re: I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project

#30

Post by appleorchard46 »

latexr wrote: post #21
tanseydavid wrote: post #3

I 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?

Obviously, it depends on context. When talking to someone live you can pick up on subtle hints such as tone of voice, or where they look, or how they gesticulate, or a myriad other signals which give you a hint to their knowledge gaps. If you're communicating via text, the signals change. Furthermore, as you interact with people more often you understand them better and refine your understanding of them. LLMs always…

Interestingly your description of social cues you expect to pick up on are the exact sort of social cues I struggle with. If someone says something, generally speaking I expect it to be true unless there is an issue with it that suggests otherwise.

I suppose the wide range of negative and positive experiences people seem to have working with LLMs is related to the wide range of expectations people have for their interactions in general.

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