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Human coders are still better than LLMs

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Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#371

Post by vFunct »

skydhash wrote: post #292
vFunct wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No guarantee that will happen. LLMs are still statistically based. It's not going to give you edgier ideas, like filling a glass of wine to the rim. Use them for the 90% of your repetitive uncreative work. The last 10% is up to you.

The pain of that 90% work is how you get libraries and framework. Imagine having many different implementation of sorting algorithms inside your codebase.

OK now we have to spend time figuring out the framework.

It's why people say just write plain Javascript, for example.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#373

Post by karn97 »

danielbln wrote: post #156
jaccola wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found LLMs particularly bad for anything beyond basic styling since the effects can be quite hard to describe and/or don't have a universal description. Also, there are often times multiple ways to achieve a certain style and they all work fine until you want a particular tweak, in which case only one will work and the LLM usually gets stuck in one of the ones that does not work.

Multi modal LLMs to the rescue. Throw a screenshot or mockup in there and tell the LLM "there, like this". Gemini can do the same with videos.

Still terrible result. Multi modal = actually understands the image

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#375

Post by ben-schaaf »

garciasn wrote: post #223
xhevahir wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is depressingly common in lots of professional, white-collar industries I'm afraid. I just came from the /r/law subreddit and was amazed at the kneejerk dismissal there of Dario Amodei's recent comments about legal work, and of those commenters who took them seriously. It's probably as much a coping mechanism as it is complacency, but, either way, it bodes very poorly for our future efforts at mitigatin…

This is the response to most new technologies; folks simply don't want to accept the future before the ramifications truly hit. If technology folk cannot see the INCREDIBLE LEAP FORWARD made by LLMs since ChatGPT came on the market, they're not seeing the forest through the trees because their heads are buried in the sand. LLMs for coding are not even close to imperfect, yet, but the saturation curves are not flatten…

Friendly reminder that people like you were saying the exact same thing about metaverse, VR, web3, crypto, etc.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#376

Post by ilamont »

cogogo wrote: post #273
foxyv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. When I'm teaching coding I've noticed that LLMs will confuse the heck out of students. They will accept what it suggests without realizing that it is suggesting nonsense.

I’m self taught and don’t code that much but I feel like I benefit a ton from LLMs giving me specific answers to questions that would take me a lot of time to figure out with documentation and stack overflow. Or even generating snippets that I can evaluate whether or not will work. But I actually can’t imagine how you can teach someone to code if they have access to an LLM from day one. It’s too easy to take the easy…

> I’m self taught and don’t code that much but I feel like I benefit a ton from LLMs giving me specific answers to questions that would take me a lot of time to figure out with documentation and stack overflow

Same here. Combing discussion forums and KB pages for an hour or two, seeking how to solve a certain problem with a specific tool has been replaced by a 50-100 word prompt in Gemini which gives very helpful replies, likely derived from many of those same forums and support docs.

Of course I am concerned about accuracy, but for most low-level problems it's easy enough to test. And you know what, many of those forum posts or obsolete KB articles had their own flaws, too.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#377

Post by olddustytrail »

dwattttt wrote: post #327
eptcyka wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some humans are the same.

We also don't aim to elevate them. We instead try not to give them responsibility until they're able to handle it.

Unless you're an American deciding who should be president.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#378

Post by quantadev »

gerad wrote: post #52
mattnewton wrote: post #5

This matches my experience. I actually think a fair amount of value from LLM assistants to me is having a reasonably intelligent rubber duck to talk to. Now the duck can occasionally disagree and sometimes even refine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging I think the big question everyone wants to skip right to and past this conversation is, will this continue to be true 2 years from now? I don’t kno…

It's like chess. Humans are better for now, they won't be forever, but humans plus software is going to better than either alone for a long time.

Your information is quite badly out of date. AI can now beat humans at not only chess but 99% of all intellectual exercises.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#379

Post by Buttons840 »

mattnewton wrote: post #5

This matches my experience. I actually think a fair amount of value from LLM assistants to me is having a reasonably intelligent rubber duck to talk to. Now the duck can occasionally disagree and sometimes even refine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging I think the big question everyone wants to skip right to and past this conversation is, will this continue to be true 2 years from now? I don’t kno…

LLMs aren't my rubber duck, they're my wrong answer.

You know that saying that the best way to get an answer online is to post a wrong answer? That's what LLMs do for me.

I ask the LLM to do something simple but tedious, and then it does it spectacularly wrong, then I get pissed off enough that I have the rage-induced energy to do it myself.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#380

Post by sixQuarks »

foobar83 wrote: post #183
sixQuarks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! We’ve been seeing more and more posts like this, saying how AI will never take developer jobs or will never be as good as coders. I think it’s some sort of coping mechanism. These posts are gonna look really silly in the not too distant future. I get it, spending countless hours honing your craft and knowing that AI will soon make almost everything you learned useless is very scary.

Nobody knows what the future holds, including you.

Yes, but we can see current progress and extrapolate into the future. I give it 2/3 years before AI can code as well as a senior level coder
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