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by 20after4 345 days ago
I have a working theory that it's mostly bad programmers who are achieving massive productivity gains. Really good programmers will probably have trouble getting the LLM tools to perform as well as their normal level of output.

This could be cope but I don't think it is.
3 comments
steveklabnik 345 days ago
I have seen good programmers, ones I respect a lot, get good results with AI.

I don't think this is it, personally.

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glouwbug 345 days ago
My approach has always been to consult 3 different models to get my understanding on the right path and then do the rest myself. Are we really just doing blind copy pastes? As an example, I recently was able to prototype several different one dimensional computational fluid dynamic GLSL shaders. Claude outputted everything with vec3s, and so the flux math matched what you’d see in the theory. It’s rapid iteration and a declutterred search engine for me with an interactive inline comment section, though I do understand some would disagree that statement, especially since it’s lacking any sort of formal verification. I counter with the old adage that anyone can be a dog on the internet
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bluefirebrand 345 days ago
> My approach has always been to consult 3 different models to get my understanding on the right path and then do the rest myself. Are we really just doing blind copy pastes

For me, if I spent the time testing 3 different models I would definitely be slower than writing the code myself

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glouwbug 345 days ago
But I'm not writing code. It's research with iteration. Punching out manual CFD is time consuming
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bluefirebrand 345 days ago
I'm not sure if it is cope, but I sort of feel the same

The quality of LLM code is consistently average at best, and usually quite bad imo. People say it is like a junior, but if a junior I hired produced such code consistently and never improved I would be recommending the company PIP them out.

Having output like a Junior would be fine, if I didn't have to fix it myself. As it stands, I've never been able to get it to produce code of the quality I want so I have to spend more time fixing it than I would just writing it.

I dunno. It sucks man

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