alt Hacker NewsFeels like a false equivalency. It's just my experience, but I've completely ignored crypto and the metaverse, and I don't get the sense I'm missing out on much. In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life. Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose, but I'm really enjoying it so far.
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> In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life.
Feels like a false dichotomy.
Have I become faster with LLMs? Yes, maybe. Is it 10x or 1000x or 10,000x? Definitely not. I think actually in the past I would have leaned more on senior developers, books, stack overflow etc. but now I can be much more independent and proactive.
LLM-based tools are a wide spectrum, and to argue that the whole spectrum is worth exploring because one sliver of it has definite utility is a bit wonky. Kind of like saying $SHITCOIN is worth investing in because $BITCOIN mooned as a speculative asset:
- I’m bullish on LLMs chat interfaces replacing StackOverflow and O’Reilly
- I could not be more bearish on Agents automating software engineering
Crypto and the Metaverse were solutions in search of a problem. LLMs kind of felt like that until tooling arrived that enabled doing a lot more than copying + pasting chat conversations.
Sure, maybe crypto changed some lives, but an entire industry? I think ALL of software dev is going under a transformation and I think we're past the point of "wait it out" IMO.
Or I'm wrong, but right I'm being paid to develop a new skill professionally. Maybe the skill ends up not being useful - ok, back to writing code the old way then.
> In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation
It may have reduced the time to an implementation, based on my experiences I sincerely doubt the veracity of applying the adjective "working".
> Transformative for the better? Time will tell I suppose
That's the point of the blog post. If you can't even say right now whether it's for the better, then there's no reason to rush in.
> In contrast, LLMs in their current state have (for me) dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working implementation, which has been legitimately transformative in my software dev life.
I can't really agree. I've never seen anything from an LLM that I would consider even helpful, never mind transformative.
How are you supposed to use them?
> Feels like a false equivalency.
It's clearly a textbook example of survivorship bias.
In the 90s the same argument was directed at this new thing called the internet, and those who placed a bet on it being a fad ended up being forgotten by history.
It's rather obvious that this AI thing is a transformative event in world history, perhaps more critical than the advent of the internet. Take a look at traffic to established sites such as Stack Overflow to get a glimpse of the radical impact. Even in social media we started to see the dead internet theory put to practice in real time.
And coding is the lowest of low hanging fruits.
This depends very much on your line of work.
As a freelancer I do a bit of everything, and I’ve seen places where LLM breezes through and gets me what I want quickly, and times where using an LLM was a complete waste of time.