alt Hacker NewsThese machines are doing some crazy things to get to the result. That said, I can't help but feel like this is the compilers argument all over again. Are the methods used to get to the result good? No. Is the code that it generates good? No. Does it achieve the goal. Yes. Is it likely to get better with time. Also yes. In my use cases, jobs that would have taken weeks to months are being done in minutes to hours. Involving complex testing and reasoning and experimentation. I'm no fanboy, but I can't argue against the speed gains. I'm sure we'll still have artisans who hand weave incredible code. But for me, I'm switching to the weaving loom for speed and efficiency.
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Similar for me, I don't like the development for many reasons, but that's another discussion. I also can't deny the capabilities.
I use the tools with this "risk analysis":
- If performance doesn't improve I can just always switch back to whatever I've done for the past 10 years, so it's not really a risk to start exploring.
- If performance does improve, then I'm already familiar with it.
> But for me, I'm switching to the weaving loom for speed and efficiency.
Poor analogy - the loom was deterministic. LLMs are not, they are probabilistic. I made a page I can point anyone to because I keep seeing this "LLMs are the next level of abstraction" argument.
The compiler argument is great, if we turn it on its head.
To create professional products, compilers are great, when used by professionals or passionate and technical amateurs. They're useless if you're neither.
LLMs are the next step up. They are quite useful if you are neither, and you can get a lot farther with them, which means that low quality software is much easier to create. But if, for whatever reason, you need to create higher quality software (like most software that's actually sold directly or through subscriptions or ads), you're back to the "be a professional or passionate and technical amateur".
> Is it likely to get better with time. Also yes.
There are no signs to show that. If anything, the new models produce worse code, only significantly faster
It seems like we're not supposed to care about the code quality then? I guess that's the compilers argument. But I'm not ready to give up the code just yet.. These LLMs don't even have a stable interface, they change every few months in how they interpret our prompts and tasks.