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by sxg 758 days ago
This isn’t the use case for the majority of people. Most are amateur developers who copy/paste the first thing they see on StackOverflow without understanding what they’re doing or reading the explanation because they just want to move forward on whatever project they’re actually working on (ex: building a REST API but they can’t install the necessary Python packages the YouTube tutorial they’re following uses). LLM-powered guidance here is tremendously useful, and if the person is curious, they can ask the LLM to explain the command, which it’s actually very good at based on my experience with GPT-4 and GPT-4o.

I think saying there’s “no confidence in the answer provided by an AI” is an overstatement and underestimates the value AI can have for the majority of users because that statement overestimates the value of “a reputable source that provides not only the command I’m looking for, but an explanation of the syntax” for the majority of users. Reputable sources and thorough explanations are great in theory, but very few have the patience to go through all that for a single CLI command when they want to make visible progress on the bigger picture project they actually care about.
2 comments
Nullabillity 757 days ago
StackSort was supposed to be a joke.

> I think saying there’s “no confidence in the answer provided by an AI” is an overstatement and underestimates the value AI can have for the majority of users because that statement overestimates the value of “a reputable source that provides not only the command I’m looking for, but an explanation of the syntax” for the majority of users. Reputable sources and thorough explanations are great in theory, but very few have the patience to go through all that for a single CLI command when they want to make visible progress on the bigger picture project they actually care about.

These are exactly the people who shouldn't be running code written by a random number generator.

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sxg 757 days ago
> These are exactly the people who shouldn't be running code written by a random number generator.

The beauty of technology and the internet is that there's near-zero gatekeeping. Anyone with enough interest and time can learn to build anything without seriously harming anyone. Dismissing LLMs as a random number generator is very clearly an overstatement for the value they're already able to provide. Ideally, how would you suggest a new developer learn to build something such as a REST API in Python?

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rideontime 757 days ago
That's why I was explicit in calling it "my personal problem" in the very beginning of my comment, and specified that I don't have confidence in the answer returned by AI. I apologize if I inadvertently appeared to speak for anybody but myself.
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sxg 757 days ago
No worries—and it's clear that it's your personal problem. I think it's always valuable to present a counterpoint in these comment threads so that less-informed readers know the issue isn't totally clear and that the truth likely lies somewhere between your point and mine. I apologize if I came across as argumentative—my goal is to expand the scope of the discussion.
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