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The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

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Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#211

Post by Aurornis »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #208
Aurornis wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a saying that the intelligence of an average prehistoric cave man should be, in general, higher than a modern day human simply because the lack of technology required stone age humans to be far more intelligent then we are today. Now you can survive by working as a clerk in McDs, but in the stone age you needed to be on your toes and smart af. This is a funny twist on the glorification of the past. Modern h…

1. No IQ tests for prehistoric humans. 2. IQ is going down in the US.

> 2. IQ is going down in the US.

Flynn effect research says otherwise.

If you think prehistoric humans were geniuses because They could survive in the wild, by that measure monkeys and gorillas must be geniuses too.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#212

Post by threethirtytwo »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #195
threethirtytwo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no force pushes. And probably not an intern. But code that never gets looked at and only tested? Yes. And as AI gets better this will be happening in all companies... more and more.

Anyone who lets the LLM put out unreviewed code is shockingly negligent and bad at his job. It certainly might be the case that many people are bad in such a way, but that doesn't make it acceptable.

I accept it. You will too. Eventually. As AI improves, the reviews will just become more and more just time wasting blockers.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#213

Post by what »

westurner wrote: post #184
coldtea wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been seeing such trivial shit getting submitted and deleting them from the test suites, but it's disheartening to see that the devs didn't have the better taste to see those LLM "tests" are so trivial they border on noop before submitting them...

What new or existing metric would better assess test coverage than line coverage and branch coverage? I wrote a tool called tert - I guess it's called an agent harness now - to run various test runners and log test output and coverage output to disk. FWIU stripping spaces from JSON does save tokens. It seems like feeding coverage lines-missing maps into the prompt results in better output, better LLM-authored tests.…

You can write tests that cover every line/branch without actually verifying the code does what it’s supposed to. Relying on (unreviewed?) LLM written tests that provide coverage may not be a great idea.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#214

Post by jagenabler2 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #93
adamas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that logic, you would let an intern force push his way to prod, that's not a smart move.

no force pushes. And probably not an intern. But code that never gets looked at and only tested? Yes. And as AI gets better this will be happening in all companies... more and more.

How do you know your testing is complete if you're not sure what the underlying code does?

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#216

Post by deadbabe »

jdjdkfhbeb wrote: post #185
deadbabe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers are cashing in on the productivity gains. Meaning instead of using the increased productivity to do more work, they just become lazier or do fun irrelevant side projects instead, where as before there was just not much time for such things. I have definitely procrastinated on work simply because I know I can swoop in with an LLM and do it all in 15 minutes, whereas before I would have spent a few hours. Th…

I would frame it differently ... Last year I was burning the fuck out hard. This year I am not. My gain is that I produce good work in a normal workday and I am absolutely not writing code to 4 am anymore... Overall for me it is a win for me and my company.

Odd, it was the opposite for me. Last year, no burnout. But then agents got good and everyone wanted more code more features faster and faster. I got burnt to a crisp. Now? I don’t give a fuck. Ok people want to push tons of code straight to prod? Go ahead, looks good to me… no need to review it if it’s with the latest frontier models right?

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#217

Post by aakresearch »

grayhatter wrote: post #57
msdz wrote: post #2

> LLM’s amplify what you already have: opinions, structure, frameworks. So far, so agreeable, but… > If you have thoughts, they come out sharper and faster. I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles. Actual muscles need exercise to stay in shape (let alone grow), so does the brain. Can we really be sure that thou…

> Conversely, I also am a user of LLMs (true shocker these days, I know), and am noticing a speedup in areas I was already familiar with, and a quicker introduction to new ones. The obvious benefit cannot be denied, and doing so regardless makes you look uninformed. [Excluding people who don’t want anything to do with LLMs out of moral principle, which curiously just like the overarching topic I also both respect and…

Beautifully put. Agree to the last letter.

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#218

Post by [deleted] »

qsort wrote: post #62
Diogenesian wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will just point out the benefit is not as obvious as you think. Developers have consistently overestimated LLM productivity gains, which still seems true for agentic AI: https://metr.org/blog/2026-05-11-ai-usage-survey/ It is particularly striking how similar the results are to LLMs before agents. Along with the total absence of long-term data, I think the benefit can be (weakly) denied. Maybe not in the employmemt…

> I will just point out the benefit is not as obvious as you think. Developers have consistently overestimated LLM I think there are two different claims here: - developers overestimate productivity gains, which is a solid finding in many of these studies. Skepticism of extremely large productivity gains is warranted and I flatly disbelieve "10x uplift" claims. - LLMs give no productivity uplift at all, which is much…

[deleted]

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#219

Post by [deleted] »

deadbabe wrote: post #216
jdjdkfhbeb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would frame it differently ... Last year I was burning the fuck out hard. This year I am not. My gain is that I produce good work in a normal workday and I am absolutely not writing code to 4 am anymore... Overall for me it is a win for me and my company.

Odd, it was the opposite for me. Last year, no burnout. But then agents got good and everyone wanted more code more features faster and faster. I got burnt to a crisp. Now? I don’t give a fuck. Ok people want to push tons of code straight to prod? Go ahead, looks good to me… no need to review it if it’s with the latest frontier models right?

[deleted]

Re: The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

#220

Post by Grombobulous »

jdjdkfhbeb wrote: post #185
deadbabe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers are cashing in on the productivity gains. Meaning instead of using the increased productivity to do more work, they just become lazier or do fun irrelevant side projects instead, where as before there was just not much time for such things. I have definitely procrastinated on work simply because I know I can swoop in with an LLM and do it all in 15 minutes, whereas before I would have spent a few hours. Th…

I would frame it differently ... Last year I was burning the fuck out hard. This year I am not. My gain is that I produce good work in a normal workday and I am absolutely not writing code to 4 am anymore... Overall for me it is a win for me and my company.

Some unsolicited, probably obvious advice for you for the future: never do that again.

Managers will abuse you if you expand your workday to make sure deadlines don't slip. They will see that the work is getting done and see no urgency to hire more help.

You have to surface capacity issues to management, learn to say "no" diplomatically, and/or "I have capacity for 2 things out of these 5, prioritize which ones you want first."

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