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by 20k 466 days ago
Every test I've ever tried with an LLM to get it to generate code has produced a complete unworkable mess. I have no idea what people are generating with them, but its always far less work to write something that I understand, rather than spend the time trying to fix up a complete disaster that barely even begins to touch the problem I asked it to solve
1 comments

I'm not saying this is you but I have to ask as someone who has had success using LLM's but originally had this same mentality - what is the most recent model and tool you used to try to generate workable code?

If you tried it even just 3-6 months ago, in just this small amount of time tooling has had such a massive improvement that maybe you haven't tried it recently. I had your same experience when I tried before, but I have readily been able to get LLM's generate thousands of lines of actually useful and readable code for my job.

I tried generating code before and dismissed it because I had similarly bad experiences. But having generated myself now entire apps where I barely wrote any code that were actually usable and productive, including internal tooling, personal apps, and code that is client facing in production today, I don't think this really applies anymore. LLM's are more than capable of producing lots of high quality code given the right tools.