I’ve tried a lot of scenarios and languages with various LLMs. The biggest takeaway I have is that AI can get you started on something or help you solve some issues. I’ve generally found that anything beyond a block or two of code becomes useless. The more it generates the more weirdness starts popping up, or it outright hallucinates.
For example, today I used an LLM to help me tighten up an incredibly verbose bit of code. Today was just not my day and I knew there was a cleaner way of doing it, but it just wasn’t coming to me. A quick “make this cleaner: <code>” and I was back to the rest of the code.
This is what LLMs are currently good for. They are just another tool like tab completion or code linting
If you use LLMs in your professional work, you’re crazy. I would never be comfortably opening myself up to the legal and security liabilities of AI tools.
If you use LLMs in your professional work, you’re crazy
Eh, we use copilot at work and it can be pretty helpful. You should always check and understand any code you commit to any project, so if you just blindly paste flawed code (like with stack overflow,) that’s kind of on you for not understanding what you’re doing.
Maybe for people who have no clue how to work with an LLM. They don’t have to be perfect to still be incredibly valuable, I make use of them all the time and hallucinations aren’t a problem if you use the right tools for the job in the right way.
The last time I saw someone talk about using the right LLM tool for the job, they were describing turning two minutes of writing a simple map/reduce into one minute of reading enough to confirm the generated one worked. I think I’ll pass on that.
We already have those near constantly. And we still keep asking queries.
People assume that LLMs need to be ready to replace a principle engineer or a doctor or lawyer with decades of experience.
This is already at the point where we can replace an intern or one of the less good junior engineers. Because anyone who has done code review or has had to do rounds with medical interns know… they are idiots who need people to check their work constantly. An LLM making up some functions because they saw it in stack overflow but never tested is not at all different than a hotshot intern who copied some code from stack overflow and never tested it.
This is already at the point where we can replace an intern or one of the less good junior engineers.
This is a bad thing.
Not just because it will put the people you’re talking about out of work in the short term, but because it will prevent the next generation of developers from getting that low-level experience. They’re not “idiots”, they’re inexperienced. They need to get experience. They won’t if they’re replaced by automation.
First a nearly unprecedented world-wide pandemic followed almost immediately by record-breaking layoffs then AI taking over the world, man it is really not a good time to start out as a newer developer. I feel so fortunate that I started working full-time as a developer nearly a decade ago.
Dude the pandemic was amazing for devs, tech companies hiring like mad, really easy to get your foot in the door. Now, between all the layoffs and AI it is hellish
Take all you want, it will only take a few hallucinations before no one trusts LLMs to write code or give advice
People keep saying this but it’s just wrong.
Maybe I haven’t tried the language you have but it’s pretty damn good at code.
Granted, whatever it puts out needs to be tested and possibly edited but that’s the same thing we had to do with Stack Overflow answers.
I’ve tried a lot of scenarios and languages with various LLMs. The biggest takeaway I have is that AI can get you started on something or help you solve some issues. I’ve generally found that anything beyond a block or two of code becomes useless. The more it generates the more weirdness starts popping up, or it outright hallucinates.
For example, today I used an LLM to help me tighten up an incredibly verbose bit of code. Today was just not my day and I knew there was a cleaner way of doing it, but it just wasn’t coming to me. A quick “make this cleaner: <code>” and I was back to the rest of the code.
This is what LLMs are currently good for. They are just another tool like tab completion or code linting
We should already be at that point. We have already seen LLMs’ potential to inadvertently backdoor your code and to inadvertently help you violate copyright law (I guess we do need to wait to see what the courts rule, but I’ll be rooting for the open-source authors).
If you use LLMs in your professional work, you’re crazy. I would never be comfortably opening myself up to the legal and security liabilities of AI tools.
Eh, we use copilot at work and it can be pretty helpful. You should always check and understand any code you commit to any project, so if you just blindly paste flawed code (like with stack overflow,) that’s kind of on you for not understanding what you’re doing.
Maybe for people who have no clue how to work with an LLM. They don’t have to be perfect to still be incredibly valuable, I make use of them all the time and hallucinations aren’t a problem if you use the right tools for the job in the right way.
The last time I saw someone talk about using the right LLM tool for the job, they were describing turning two minutes of writing a simple map/reduce into one minute of reading enough to confirm the generated one worked. I think I’ll pass on that.
Because none of us have ever blindly pasted some code we got off google and crossed our fingers ;-)
We already have those near constantly. And we still keep asking queries.
People assume that LLMs need to be ready to replace a principle engineer or a doctor or lawyer with decades of experience.
This is already at the point where we can replace an intern or one of the less good junior engineers. Because anyone who has done code review or has had to do rounds with medical interns know… they are idiots who need people to check their work constantly. An LLM making up some functions because they saw it in stack overflow but never tested is not at all different than a hotshot intern who copied some code from stack overflow and never tested it.
Except one costs a lot less…
This is a bad thing.
Not just because it will put the people you’re talking about out of work in the short term, but because it will prevent the next generation of developers from getting that low-level experience. They’re not “idiots”, they’re inexperienced. They need to get experience. They won’t if they’re replaced by automation.
First a nearly unprecedented world-wide pandemic followed almost immediately by record-breaking layoffs then AI taking over the world, man it is really not a good time to start out as a newer developer. I feel so fortunate that I started working full-time as a developer nearly a decade ago.
Dude the pandemic was amazing for devs, tech companies hiring like mad, really easy to get your foot in the door. Now, between all the layoffs and AI it is hellish