I find LLMs very efficient in a lot of things except writing big chunks of code that require some organization. They’re good at closing knowlwdge gaps, finding strategies to solve problems, writing code for defined scopes and even reviewing large PRs. However, as others said they can easily alienate you from your own project.
I'm dialing back my LLM usage
231–240 of 252 posts
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#232[dead]
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ I'm finding that developing prompts, managing context, controlling pace, staying organized and being able to effectively review the LLM's work are required skills for LLM-assisted coding “ Did you not need all these skills / approaches / frameworks for yourself / coding with a team? This is , I think, the key difference in those (such as myself) who find LLMs to massively increase velocity / quality / quantity of o…
Needs/more/slashes.
> mental model / context
I can't can't read that but 'mental model' and 'mental context' and need to backtrack.
Atleast overuse of parentheses is balanced and nestable.
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of all the things I think AI shouldn’t be used for AI is one of them (unless you’re like completely illiterate). Whenever I get a “project status update” and the section header emojis show up I instantly just want to throw that garage in the trash.
That usage of emoji predates LLMs.
Woah
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#235Am I spending too much time on HN or is every post/comment section filled with this same narrative? Basically, LLMs are exciting but they produce messy code for which the dev feels no ownership. Managing a codebase written by an LLM is difficult because you have not cognitively loaded the entire thing into your head as you do with code written yourself. They're okay for one-off scripts or projects you do not intend t…
I use LLM's for my developments constantly, so I have a pretty good grasp of what works and doesn't work.
Github copilot really gets it, as in: it's a "co-pilot", and you are the "pilot".
LLM's are able to generate code way faster than me, so in a lot of cases, writing a prompt, letting the LLM's generate a diff and me quickly reviewing, is faster than me writing/shuffling all the code. This is basically a "I know what has to be done, I just have to do it".
But let's be clear: LLM's are useful in small steps, not huge steps. Huge steps are only possible if you have a blank page.
I have code that was written by an LLM and I never really reviewed it: It's a visual effect in shaders that works, I quickly glanced over the code and it seemed complicated and fine. Since this is not crucial code, it works, and I don't have to touch it, it's fine for me.
Also an observation: once the LLM gets it wrong, it will continuously get it wrong after different instructions. After 1 or 2 failures, quickly decide to write it yourself.
The least amount of benefit any developer should get out of it is an "apply stack overflow suggestion". In the "old" days you searched google for your issue, read Stack Overflow comments, and try to apply it. LLM's let you shortcut this by going straight from prompt to diff suggestion.
You can push it a bit further than a "Stack Overflow on steroids", but don't expect it to maintain a codebase by itself.
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need to do something for a thousand times, why don't you write a template?
Templates aren't as flexible as LLMs especially when seeing and utilizing the context of certain files.
Macros? Default parameters? I don't see why you'd want to write the same prompt a thousand times.
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you better link to a good article instead. Good grief, what a horror . A talking head rambling on for 60 minutes. --- disclaimer: if low information density is your thing, then your mileage may vary. Video's are for documentaries, not for reading out an article in the camera.
Okay, so you didn't even bother to take a few seconds to step through the video to see if there was anything other than the talking head (I'll help you out a bit, there is). Either way, it's a step-by-step walk through of the ideas of the original article that introduced Conway's Law and a deeper inspection into ideas about _why_ it might be that way. If that's not enough then my apologies but I haven't yet found an…
(I didn't downvote you btw)
But anyways, I did step through. And even in the section he should make his point, he couldn't. I rage quit this stuff.
Don't take it personally, you might have found great insight from it. But if you want to see my POV: I can scan, like most humans, a large text in seconds, processing it with a massive parallel network. When I find an anchor of interest, I can scan around for more context. I can go back to sections, to read it deeper.
A video is Gigabyte of download to convey a few bytes of information, dripping slowly over the span of an hour. A text is a few kilobytes, downloaded in an instant, and then it takes a few seconds to scan it, a minute to read some things deeper, and then I can decide if it is worth it to mine deeper. Even then the additional cost will be like 3 minutes.
But, to be fair, I know quite some people that do not have this ability. They struggle to dissect a text, to chop it apart and quickly pull out the information. But that could also be an issue of not being able to give full bandwidth to an information source. Some people can't focus on a text, but like to listen to books while driving for example.
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you described it much more succinctly than most people do. It's been my exact experience as well. The LLM can develop much faster than I can build a mental model. It's very easy to get to a point where you don't know what's going on, a bunch of bugs have been introduced and you can't easily fix them or refactor because you're essentially the new guy on your own project. I find myself adjusting by committing c…
One of my favorite ways to use AI is to get me started on things. I tend to drag my feet when starting something new, but LLMs can whip up something quick. Then I look at what it did and usually hate it. Maybe it structured the code in way that doesn't mesh with the way I think or it completely failed to use some new/esoteric library I rely on. That hate fuels me to just do the work myself. It's like the same trick a…
ahahah, I've said the same thing about how I used AI recently. The "hate fuel" part is really true.
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#239Am I spending too much time on HN or is every post/comment section filled with this same narrative? Basically, LLMs are exciting but they produce messy code for which the dev feels no ownership. Managing a codebase written by an LLM is difficult because you have not cognitively loaded the entire thing into your head as you do with code written yourself. They're okay for one-off scripts or projects you do not intend t…
I'm somewhere between the two extremes.. it's not so bad that I want to put it down, and it is also not as good as what some claim. On average, it's better than hand coding everything though, and even for digging into code written by others
Re: I'm dialing back my LLM usage
#240Am I spending too much time on HN or is every post/comment section filled with this same narrative? Basically, LLMs are exciting but they produce messy code for which the dev feels no ownership. Managing a codebase written by an LLM is difficult because you have not cognitively loaded the entire thing into your head as you do with code written yourself. They're okay for one-off scripts or projects you do not intend t…
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