I'd assume the person giving the praise is at least a bit of all 3.
> It’s a weird catch-22 giving praise like that to LLMs.
It's a bit asymmetrical though isn't it -- judging quality is in fact much easier than producing it.
> you might be able to intuit and fill in the gaps left my the LLM and not even know it
Just because you are able to fill gaps with it doesn't mean it's not good. With all of these tools you basically have to fill gaps. There are still differences between Cline vs Cursor vs Aider vs Codebuff.
Personally I've found Cline to be the best to date, followed by Cursor.
> judging quality is in fact much easier than producing it
There’s still a skill floor required to accurately judge something.
A layman can’t accurately judge the work of a surgeon.
> Just because you are able to fill gaps with it doesn't mean it's not good.
If I had to fill in my sysadmin’s knowledge gaps I wouldn’t call them a good sysadmin.
Not saying the tool isn’t useful, mind you, just playing semantics with calling a tool a “good sysadmin” or whatever.