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Human coders are still better than LLMs

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Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#411

Post by BirAdam »

loudmax wrote: post #83

Companies that leverage LLMs and AIs to let their employees be more productive will thrive. Companies that try to replace their employees with LLMs and AIs will fail. Unfortunately, all that's in the long run. In the near term, some CEOs and management teams will profit from the short term valuations as they squander their companies' future growth on short-sighted staff cuts.

By the time AI hype dies down and hurts the bottom line, AI systems might be good enough to do the jobs.

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” — Warren Buffett

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#412

Post by dughnut »

asdff wrote: post #175
npteljes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carteling doesn't work bottom-up. When changes begin (like this one with AI), one of the things an individual can do is to change course as fast as they can. There are other strategies as well, not evolving is also one, but some strategies yield better results than others. Not keeping up just worsens the chances, I have found.

It does when it is called unionizing, however for some reason software developers have a mental block towards the concept.

The reason might be that union members give a percentage of their income to a governing body which is barely distinct from organized crime in which they have no say in. The federal government already exists. You really want more boots on your neck?

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#413

Post by nssnsjsjsjs »

willmarch wrote: post #118
pknerd wrote: post #36

Let's not forget that LLMs can't give a solution they have not experienced themselves

This is objectively not true.

So LLMs have sweated to debug a production issue, got to the bottom of it, realised it is worth having more unit tests so values that and then produces a solution that has more unit tests. So when you ask the LLM to write code it is opinionated and always creates a test to go with it?

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#414

Post by Affric »

Buttons840 wrote: post #379
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.

Yep.

I like maths, I hate graphing. Tedious work even with state of the art libraries and wrappers.

LLMs do it for me. Praise be.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#415

Post by bawolff »

Epa095 wrote: post #94
marcosdumay wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why state the same arguments everybody has been repeating for ages? LLMs can only give you code that somebody has wrote before. This is inherent. This is useful for a bunch of stuff, but that bunch won't change if OpenAI decides to spend the GDP of Germany training one instead of Costa Rica.

First, how much of coding is really never done before? And secondly, what you say are false (at least if taken literally). I can create a new programming language, give the definition of it in the prompt, ask it to code something in my language, and expect something out. It might even work.

> First, how much of coding is really never done before?

Lots of programming doesn't have one specific right answer, but a bunch of possible right answers with different trade-offs. The programmers job isn't just to get working code neccesarily. I dont think we are at the point where llm's can see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#416

Post by ehansdais »

mywittyname wrote: post #307
gherkinnn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found it to be good at things I am not very strong at (SQL) but terrible at the things I know well (CSS). Telling, isn't it?

Ironically, I find it strong at things I don't know very well (CSS), but terrible at things I know well (SQL). This is probably really just a way of saying, it's better at simple tasks rather than complex ones. I can eventually get Copilot to write SQL that's complex and accurate, but I don't find it faster or more effective than writing it myself.

Actually, you've reinforced their point. It's only bad at things the user is actually good at because the user actually knows enough in that domain to find the flaws and issues. It appears to be good in domains the user is bad at because the user doesn't know any better. In reality, the LLM is just bad at all domains; it's simply whether a user has the skill to discern it. Of course, I don't believe it's as black and white as that but I just wanted to point it out.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#417

Post by zachlatta »

nssnsjsjsjs wrote: post #410
zachlatta wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes… I did?

I think by context they meant context as in common usage not context window size.

Yeah, I’m saying that I expect us to have a world where we can cram almost all business knowledge into the context window for coding LLMs and we can get an early glimpse of that today by pasting in the full contents of 50+ files into Gemini 2.5 and only using 10% of its context window today, which is the worst it’ll ever be.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#418

Post by dgfitz »

AYBABTME wrote: post #400
ben-schaaf wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The value of these was always a far fetch, and requires a critical mass adopting it before becoming potentially useful. But LLMs value is much more immediate and doesn't require any change in the rest of the world. If you use it and are amplified by it, you are... simply better off.

In my small-minded opinion, llms are the better version of code-completion. Search and time-savings on an accelerated course.

They can’t write me a safety-critical video player meeting the spec with full test coverage using a proprietary signal that my customer would accept.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#419

Post by Jarwain »

crazygringo wrote: post #272
p1necone wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the duck can occasionally disagree This has not been my experience. LLMs have definitely been helpful, but generally they either give you the right answer or invent something plausible sounding but incorrect. If I tell it what I'm doing I always get breathless praise, never "that doesn't sound right, try this instead."

That's not my experience. I routinely get a polite "that might not be the optimal solution, have you considered..." when I'm asking whether I should do something X way with Y technology. Of course it has to be something the LLM actually has lots of material it's trained with. It won't work with anything remotely cutting-edge, but of course that's not what LLM's are for. But it's been incredibly helpful for me in figu…

I find it very much depends on the LLM you're using. Gemini feels more likely to push back than claude 3.7 is. Haven't tried claude 4 yet

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#420

Post by BirAdam »

am17an wrote: post #67

All the world's smartest minds are racing towards replacing themselves. As programmers, we should take note and see where the wind is blowing. At least don't discard the possibility and rather be prepared for the future. Not to sound like a tin-foil hat but odds of achieving something like this increase by the day. In the long term (post AGI), the only safe white-collar jobs would be those built on data which is not…

Nah. As more people are rendered unemployed the buying market and therefore aggregate demand will fall. Fewer sales hurts the bottom line. At some point, revenues across the entire economy fall, and companies cannot afford the massive datacenters and nuclear power plants fueling them. The hardware gets sold cheap, the companies go under, and people get hired again. Eventually, some kind of equilibrium will be found or the world engages in the Butlerian Jihad.
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