To AI or not to AI

How is the cost of an office relative? Llms didn’t destroy offices. You can type `man rsync` without any of that.

> There are a million Linux websites with the same versioning issues and inadequate explanations.

So, instead you ask a magic robot to recite a fuzzily 'remembered' version of those websites?

Bear in mind that an LLM does not _know_ anything, and that, despite some recent marketing, they are not 'reasoning'.

Well, except that (I think I know the scene you're referring to), it ultimately worked. The LLM, on the other hand, will feel no need to stick to its 'promises'.

(Really the genie is closer to the traditional sci-fi AI in that it's legalistic and rules-bound; the LLM very much isn't.)

Bah! Coders need to learn to write documentation. The tldr for rsync was hilarious! Actually, this is one place where LLMs are currently useful! Instead of getting LLMs to write code, get it to write documentation.

What command? Just to clarify there is no example command we’re discussing here. You’re just cherry picking results exclusively from the man page and then arguing that chatgpt is better because it gets to use example documentation from the internet. Well I get to use examples from the internet too.

A search query takes a matter of seconds to type in, select a result and read. No doubt still under 10 minutes.

But still to my original point it’s insanely more expensive to have chatgpt look it up. This doesn’t bother you because you are privileged enough to waste money there. If time is money then IMO the only valuable time I have with my money is when it’s gaining interest and not being spent.

You can abstract away all the “but I had to scroll down the page and click a different result” steps as “time savings” all you want, but no one was wasting a ton of time there for already well established tools. That is a deluded myth.

I’m not sure I even grasped your point. The delete flag is pretty self explanatory and gives you options for more granularity. Why does that take greater than 10 mins? What is the issue with that entry?

Here is what I get when I type `man rsync`:

``` --delete This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wildcard for the directory's contents (e.g. "dir/*") since the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from the transfer are also excluded from being deleted unless you use the --delete-excluded option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side (see the include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).

              Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless
              --recursive was enabled.  Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will
              also occur when --dirs (-d) is enabled, but only for directories
              whose contents are being copied.

              This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very
              good idea to first try a run using the --dry-run (-n) option to
              see what files are going to be deleted.

              If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of
              any files at the destination will be automatically disabled.
              This is to prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS
              errors) on the sending side from causing a massive deletion of
              files on the destination.  You can override this with the
              --ignore-errors option.

              The --delete option may be combined with one of the --delete-
              WHEN options without conflict, as well as --delete-excluded.
              However, if none of the --delete-WHEN options are specified,
              rsync will choose the --delete-during algorithm when talking to
              rsync 3.0.0 or newer, or the --delete-before algorithm when
              talking to an older rsync.  See also --delete-delay and
              --delete-after.

```