[netruk44]

When it comes to programming, when an LLM hallucinates something in an area I'm not familiar with, it's usually very obvious that it is not correct because it just does not work at all. For me, programming hallucinations have never fallen into the case where it appears like everything is working but actually isn't doing the correct thing.

So then I just forward that back to the model, or in the very worst case use my own brain to fix the problem the LLM generated.

In either case, I'm still better off than had the LLM not existed, because even an incorrect solution is closer to the correct solution than nothing at all.

I now have something that's close to solving my problem that I wouldn't have been able to come up with solely on my own. It just needs a little tweaking to be correct, which I can muster my way through with a little help from the LLM or Google.

[dgroshev]

You are talking about most obvious hallucinations such as inventing a non-existent API.

However, those are indeed trivial. What's not trivial is not using APIs that exist for your particular problem; using obsolete patterns; not recognising that a particular approach is a dead end; not recognising potential future problems. All those problems fall in the same bucket of not knowing what you don't know, yet having a (seemingly fine) solution, which is worse than not having a solution, because that would force you to go and figure things out yourself (presumably reading recent documentation, etc).

I recognise that some people approached programming in the same way before LLMs, copying stuff from SO and adjusting till it works without ever understanding what they're doing. I guess LLMs can be seen as a neat extension of that "learning style" (which btw is precisely what OP warns against), but it does seem somewhat dysfunctional.

[netruk44]

I don't think copying and pasting from stack overflow then fudging things until it works is always quite the same thing as using an LLM to help write code.

I've just spent the month of August learning to use Godot 4.0 with C#. Resources for this topic on the internet are scarce, Google only wants to show me the official Godot documentation and YouTube videos (which I don't watch because I don't like to learn in this way).

Sure, I could spend my time reading the official docs cover to cover, but I much prefer to get my hands dirty. I'm not a novice game programmer, I've written my own game engines, used Unity and published games. I've got the underlying knowledge of how Godot might work, but I'm unclear as to how to accomplish specific goals I'm trying to achieve.

And absolutely, I could just put everything into Google, and probably find correct documentation for what I need. Or I could just write "// Interpolate from current position to camera" and have Copilot spit out "transform3d.interpolate_with" along with supporting code specific to the code I have right here, which also references functions I don't even know existed. This way, I'm learning the "API landscape" in a sense.

Godot 4.0 is new enough (and C# used with Godot used so infrequently in online resoures) to the point where Copilot literally can not produce the correct output basically ever. The API changed and everything it outputs is subtly incorrect, either generating code that is now obsolete, or that the code it's generating no longer functions because of the API change.

When this happens, I just dive into the docs as a backup strategy. But never as my first choice.

Is this worse than not having Copilot? I don't think so, but it seems like we probably won't agree on that. I still feel like I've 'learned' Godot (I at least know more now than I did on August 1st). I'm able to synthesize the code more easily on my own thanks to the starting points provided by the LLM. And I'm also writing tutorials on how to use Godot, further solidifying the things the LLM showed me in my own mind.

I'm not saying LLM's are a "one stop shop" for learning. I'm just saying it's another tool. One that I think is a little shortsighted to just completely disregard because it's sometimes incorrect.

[mhdi_kr99]

I'm on board with your point here