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by pfannkuchen 508 days ago
I am using it like stack overflow in the sense that I’m solving a problem and I’m using it to answer questions when I’m in an unfamiliar or non-obvious place in the problem space.

If I have a question about a first order language or framework feature or pattern, it works great. If I have a question about a second order problem, like an interaction between language or framework features, or a logical inconsistency in feature behavior, then it usually has no idea what’s going on, unless it turns out to be a really common problem such as something that would come up when working through a tutorial.

For code completion, I’ve just turned it off. It saves time on boilerplate typing for sure, but the actual content pieces are so consistently wrong that on balance I find it distracting.

Maybe I have a weird programming style that doesn’t mesh well with the broader code training corpus, not sure. Or maybe a lot of people spend more time in the part of problem-space that intersects with tutorial-space? I am not very junior these days.

That being said I definitely do use LLMs to engage with tutorial type content. For that it is useful. And outside of software it is quite a bit better for interfacing with Wikipedia type content. Except for the part where it lies to your face. But it will get better! Extrapolating never hurt anyone.

1 comments

Same. I use it to bootstrap my writing a react native app from pretty low familiarity with React.

It's pretty good at writing screens in broad strokes. You will have to fill in some details.

The exact details of correctly threading data through; or prop drilling vs alternatives; the rules around wrapping screens to use them in React Navigation? It's terrible at them.