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The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

lewiscampbell.tech

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Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#41

Post by wild_egg »

rudedogg wrote: post #3

Hearing people on tech twitter say that LLMs always produce better code than they do by hand was pretty enlightening for me. LLMs can produce better code for languages and domains I’m not proficient in, at a much faster rate, but damn it’s rare I look at LLM output and don’t spot something I’d do measurably better. These things are average text generation machines. Yes you can improve the output quality by writing a…

After a certain experience level though, I think most of us get to the point of knowing what that difference in quality actually matters.

Some seniors love to bikeshed PRs all day because they can do it better but generally that activity has zero actual value. Sometimes it matters, often it doesn't.

Stop with the "I could do this better by hand" and ask "is it worth the extra 4 hours to do this by hand, or is this actually good enough to meet the goals?"

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#42

Post by lbrito »

jraph wrote: post #14

This doesn't feel completely right. Simon Wilson (known for Django) has been doing a lot of LLM evangelism on his blog these days. Antirez (Redis) wrote a blog post recently with the same vibe. I doubt they are not good programmers. They are probably better than most of us, and I doubt they feel insecure because of the LLMs. Either I'm wrong, or there's something more to this. edit: to clarify, I'm not saying Simon a…

You seem to be mistaking set and members here. The piece's critique is against the set (LLM Evangelists), not against specific members of the set (the ones you mentioned). One can agree with the point of the piece while still acknowledging there are good programmers who are also LLM evangelists.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#43

Post by lijok »

Turskarama wrote: post #20
duendefm wrote: post #18

Until some days / weeks ago, LLM's for coding was more hype than actually real code producing. That is gone now. They clearly leveled up, things will not be the same anymore. And of course this is not just for coding, this is just the beginning. A month ago it really seemed that the models were hitting a complexity wall and that the architecture would need to be improved. Not anymore.

I have seen people say something along these lines what feels like every month for the past year.

And they’re right every single time. It’s only getting crazier and crazier. Look around. Pay attention.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#44

Post by jordwest »

jimbo1167 wrote: post #25
rudedogg wrote: post #3

Hearing people on tech twitter say that LLMs always produce better code than they do by hand was pretty enlightening for me. LLMs can produce better code for languages and domains I’m not proficient in, at a much faster rate, but damn it’s rare I look at LLM output and don’t spot something I’d do measurably better. These things are average text generation machines. Yes you can improve the output quality by writing a…

How are you judging that you'd write "better" code? More maintainable? More efficient? Does it produce bugs in the underlying code it's generating? Genuinely curious where you see the current gaps.

For me the biggest gaps in LLM code are:

- it adds superfluous logic that is assumed but isn’t necessary

- as a result the code is more complex, verbose, harder to follow

- it doesn’t quite match the domain because it makes a bunch of assumptions that aren’t true in this particular domain

They’re things that can often be missed in a first pass look at the code but end up adding a lot of accidental complexity that bites you later.

When reading an unfamiliar code base we tend to assume that a certain bit of logic is there for a good reason, and that helps you understand what the system is trying to do. With generative codebases we can’t really assume that anymore unless the code has been thoroughly audited/reviewed/rewritten, at which point I find it’s easier to just write the code myself.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#46

Post by abighamb »

rudedogg wrote: post #3

Hearing people on tech twitter say that LLMs always produce better code than they do by hand was pretty enlightening for me. LLMs can produce better code for languages and domains I’m not proficient in, at a much faster rate, but damn it’s rare I look at LLM output and don’t spot something I’d do measurably better. These things are average text generation machines. Yes you can improve the output quality by writing a…

This has been my experience as well.

It's let me apply my general knowledge across domains, and do things in tech stacks or languages I don't know well. But that has also cost me hours debugging a solution I don't quite understand.

When working in my core stack though it's a nice force multiplier for routine changes.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#47

Post by lbrito »

I think it goes further than this. Some people - some developers, even - do not _like_ programming computers. In fact, many hate it. Those people welcome the LLM agent stuff because it delivers the end product without going through the necessary pain (from their pov) of programming.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#48

Post by Cornbilly »

Terr_ wrote: post #7

> And then, inevitably, comes the character evaluation, which goes something like this: I saw a version of this yesterday where a commenter framed LLM-skepticism as a disappointing lack of "hacker" drive and ethos that should be applied to making "AI" toolchains work. As you might guess, I disagreed: The "hacker" is not driven just by novelty in problems to solve, but in wanting to understand them on more than a surf…

I share your fear.

We have a hard enough time finding juniors (hell, non-juniors) that know how to program and design effectively.

The industry jerking itself off over Leetcode practice already stunted the growth of many by having them focus on rote memorization and gaming interviews.

With ubiquitous AI and all of these “very smart people” pushing LLMs as an alternative to coding, I fear we’re heading into an era where people don’t understand how anything works and have never been pushed to find out.

Then again, the ability of LLMs to write boilerplate may be the reset that we need to cut out all of the people that never really had an interest in CS that have flocked to the industry over the last decade or so looking for an easy big paycheck.

Re: The insecure evangelism of LLM maximalists

#49

Post by perfmode »

This is a fun piece to dissect because it's self-aware about being uncharitable, yet still commits the very sin it's criticizing.

The author's central complaint is that LLM evangelists dismiss skeptics with psychological speculation ("you're afraid of being irrelevant"). Their response? Psychological speculation ("you're projecting insecurity about your coding skills").

This is tu quoque dressed up as insight. Fighting unfounded psychoanalysis with unfounded psychoanalysis doesn't refute anything. It just levels the playing field of bad arguments.

The author gestures at this with "I am still willing to admit I am wrong" but the bulk of the piece is vibes-based counter-psychoanalysis, not engagement with evidence.

It's a well-written "no u" that mistakes self-awareness ("I know this isn't charitable") for self-correction.

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