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Human coders are still better than LLMs

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Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#491

Post by abletonlive »

kweingar wrote: post #484
abletonlive wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if it doesn't and you're not using it now then you're gonna be behind and part of the group getting laid off the people that are good at using these tools now will be better at it later too. you might have closed the gap quite a bit but you will still be behind using LLMs are they are now requires a certain type of mindset that takes practice to maintain and sharpen. It's just like a competitive game. The more in…

If the "meta" changes so quickly, then that sets an upper bound as to how far behind you are, no? Unless you are doing low-autonomy, non-specialized work or are applying to fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants startup jobs, no hiring manager is going to care if you have three months less experience with Codex than the other candidate.[1] > so much of using LLM right now is context management That is because the tooling is i…

> If the "meta" changes so quickly, then that sets an upper bound as to how far behind you are, no?

No, the top players when the meta changes in competitive games remain the top players. They also figure out the new meta faster than the casual players.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#492

Post by codr7 »

wvenable wrote: post #461
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are a decent search engine a la Google circa 2005. Statistical text (token) generation made from an unknown (to the user) training data set is not the same as a keyword/faceted search of arbitrary content acquired from web crawlers. > The problem is that the conversational interface, for some reason, seems to turn off the natural skepticism that people have when they use a search engine. For me, my skepticism…

I almost never bother using Google anymore. When I search for something, I'm usually looking for an answer to question. Now I can just ask the question and get the answer without all the other stuff. I will often ask the LLM to give me web pages to look at it when I want to do further reading. As LLMs get better, I can't see myself going back to Google as it is or even as it was.

You get an answer.

If that's the answer, or even the best answer, is impossible to tell without doing the research you're trying to avoid.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#493

Post by codr7 »

drob518 wrote: post #479
wvenable wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never bother using Google anymore. When I search for something, I'm usually looking for an answer to question. Now I can just ask the question and get the answer without all the other stuff. I will often ask the LLM to give me web pages to look at it when I want to do further reading. As LLMs get better, I can't see myself going back to Google as it is or even as it was.

It’s only a matter of time before Google merges search with Gemini. I don’t think you’ll have to wait long.

Once search engines merge fully with AI, the Internet is over.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#494

Post by pixl97 »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #457
bsder wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are a decent search engine a la Google circa 2005. It's been 20 years since that, so I think people have simply forgotten that a search engine can actually be useful as opposed to ad infested SEO sewage sludge. The problem is that the conversational interface, for some reason, seems to turn off the natural skepticism that people have when they use a search engine.

> LLMs are a decent search engine a la Google circa 2005. Statistical text (token) generation made from an unknown (to the user) training data set is not the same as a keyword/faceted search of arbitrary content acquired from web crawlers. > The problem is that the conversational interface, for some reason, seems to turn off the natural skepticism that people have when they use a search engine. For me, my skepticism…

Search engines can be really good still if you have a good idea what you're looking for in the domain you're searching.

Search engines can suck when you don't know exactly what you're looking for and the phrases you're using have invited spammers to fill up the first 10 pages.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#495

Post by codr7 »

eszed wrote: post #317
chucksmash wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, there's a phase of learning to code where everything is pretty much an incantation you learn because someone told you "just trust me." You encounter "here's how to make the computer print text in Python" before you would ever discuss strings or defining and invoking functions, for instance. To get your start you kind of have to just accept some stuff uncritically. It's hard to remember what it was like to be in…

Yeah, and accepting the LLM uncritically* is exactly what you shouldn't do in any non-trivial context. But, as a sibling poster pointed out: for now .

More like forever as long as it's an LLM.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#497

Post by codr7 »

sanderjd wrote: post #428
wanderingstan wrote: post #7

“Better” is always task-dependent. LLMs are already far better than me (and most devs I’d imagine) at rote things like getting CSS syntax right for a desired effect, or remembering the right way to invoke a popular library (e.g. fetch) These little side quests used to eat a lot of my time and I’m happy to have a tool that can do these almost instantly.

Yeah, this is what I really like about AI tools though. They're way better than me at annoying minutia like getting CSS syntax right. I used to dread that kind of thing!

And you will keep dreading it for as long as you use them, since you learn nothing from solutions served on a silver plate.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#498

Post by kweingar »

abletonlive wrote: post #491
kweingar wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the "meta" changes so quickly, then that sets an upper bound as to how far behind you are, no? Unless you are doing low-autonomy, non-specialized work or are applying to fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants startup jobs, no hiring manager is going to care if you have three months less experience with Codex than the other candidate.[1] > so much of using LLM right now is context management That is because the tooling is i…

> If the "meta" changes so quickly, then that sets an upper bound as to how far behind you are, no? No, the top players when the meta changes in competitive games remain the top players. They also figure out the new meta faster than the casual players.

This is why devs who started with J2ME are the holy grail of app developers, since they started making apps years before iPhone devs

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#499

Post by fatata123 »

zachlatta wrote: post #417
nssnsjsjsjs wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#500

Post by ehnto »

schwartzworld wrote: post #181
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…

For me it's like having a junior developer work under me who knows APIs inside and out, but has no common sense about architecture. I like that I delegate tasks to them so that my brain can be free for other problems, but it makes my job much more review heavy than before. I put every PR through 3-4 review cycles before even asking my team for a review.

To me delegation requires the full cycle of agency, with the awareness that I probably shouldn't be interrupted shortly after delegating. I delegated so I can have space from the task and so babysitting it really doesn't suit my needs. I want the task done, but some time in the future.

From my coworkers I want to be able to say, here's the ticket, you got this? And they take the ticket all the way or PR, interacting with clients, collecting more information etc.

I do somewhat think an LLM could handle client comms for simple extra requirements gathering on already well defined tasks. But I wouldn't trust my business relationships to it, so I would never do that.

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