[Workaccount2]

I don't know why software engineers think that LLM coding ability is purpose made for them to use, and because it sort of sucks at it, it therefore useless...

It's like listening to professional translators endlessly lament about translation software and all it's short comings and pitfalls, while totally missing that the software is primarily used for property managers wanting to ask the landscapers to cut the grass lower.

LLMs are excellent at writing code for people who have no idea what a programming language is, but a good idea of what computers can do when someone can speak this code language to them. I don't need an LLM to one-shot Excel.exe so I can track the number of members vs non-members who come to my community craft fair.

[Nevermark]

> LLMs are excellent at

Writing hint: Your last paragraph stands well on its own. Especially if this is, in fact, your actual experience.

Nothing in that paragraph requires the negativity or inaccuracies of the preceding two paragraphs.

There should be a name for the human tendency (we have all done/do it) to weigh down good points with unnecessary and often inaccurate contrast/competition.

[abletonlive]

I struggle with this a lot so thanks for the hint. I don't entirely agree that good points stand on their own. It's often easy to anticipate the criticism to your point. When arguments are text-based and responses have a tendency to span hours or days, it can be useful to short circuit the argument by just calling out the anticipated criticism. This of course can sometimes lead to comments such as yours, where we go off into a meta side-argument. Or, if you anticipate badly, you unintentionally put even more focus on the anticipated criticism than your original point.

[Nevermark]

> It's often easy to anticipate the criticism to your point.

You can head off a lot of criticism by not making your point competitive with other reasonable points. I.e. additive to understanding, not subtractive.

Otherwise, you are actually creating the competition between points that you wanted to avoid. And creating your own distractions from your own point.

[abletonlive]

But ideas are not always additive. It's okay that ideas are competitive and it's okay to try and shut down bad ideas. Easy to find examples. If someone was proposing to extinguish a group of people, would you try to "add" to the conversation?