[righthand]

I am senior developer and have easily and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years. Nothing has changed for me and my team mates who do use it are slower than me and often don’t know what the Pr actually does.

You chose to invest in the downward career slope. That’s why your opinion has changed. If you continued to resist it you wouldn’t be looking to remove yourself from the auditing/coding position.

[AstroBen]

How is investing in something that improves my productivity and output quality a downward career slope? Continuing to use a hand saw when there are power tools available seems like the downward slope..

If AI gets to a point where I'm fully able to be removed from auditing/coding positions.. well there won't be any coding positions left for anyone

> often don’t know what the Pr actually does

this is on them for being lazy. I thoroughly review the code AI produces. I don't commit it if I don't understand it

[nunez]

Analogizing AI to power tools is like analogizing building an IKEA bookshelf to outsourcing the job to a TaskRabbit.

Power tools automate manual hand movements, but you still need to follow the manual and know what fits where. Or you can spend money on a contractor from TaskRabbit to do it for you, perhaps badly.

LLMs make it faster to generate code, sure. Automating boilerplate code isn't too unlike using a drill to fit a screw.

But witting software writ large still requires thinking, something that the companies providing these services are heavily incentivized to remove.

[righthand]

> How is investing in something that improves my productivity and output quality a downward career slope?

> I'm not sure how long we'll need someone in the middle to actually review the code

You don’t think relying on a system you yourself are predicting will replace you isn’t investing in a downward slope. Wait until you find out Llms are helping suppress your wages.

> this is on them for being lazy.

Just like you gave into Llms you became lazy about writing code. That is the trend with Llms, to do less work as you’ve been pointing out.

You saving time the same thing as being lazy.

[AstroBen]

Not using LLMs doesn't make them go away. Whether they suppress wages or replace anyone is completely out of my control. Avoiding them just means I'd be producing below my potential

> you became lazy about writing code

I haven't, though. I still do the same amount of work except now I get more done. Now more of my energy goes into architecture, testing, specs, making sure it's built well instead of the lower level wiring things together

I use them for their perfect memory and as a creativity buddy, not for them to think for me

[ethics13]

>I haven't, though. I still do the same amount of work except now I get more done.

And the expectations will exceed you getting more done. You don't think your employer will try and squeeze even more out of you because of AI?

[AstroBen]

I'd rather be unemployed than work for someone like that

[righthand]

I have no goal to make them go away. My goal is to not use them because I don’t have to. Using Llms removes your agency to not use them. You become more reliant on using them.

[Sebb767]

> and successfully avoided using Llm development these last few years.

I'm not sure that's much of an achievement, to be honest. If you tried it and it turned out to be not useful for you, fine, I'm on your side. But refusing to try for the sake of it seems backwards. I mean, then why use CI, version control and those fancy IDEs anyway? Notepad is a perfectly cromulent text editor (and what is code, if not text, anyway?) and my local build.bat and deploy.bat do their job nicely and quickly.

[yubblegum]

> what is code, if not text, anyway?

Poetry is text too. It is a misleading categorization.

> I mean, then why use CI, version control and those fancy IDEs anyway?

CI, version control, and IDEs do not think for you.

Resisting using LLMs to do the code that you know perfectly well how to do is like resisting using maps to tell you to make "now make a left turn" to travel from A to B, when you have gone from A to B a zillion fucking times. It is perfectly sensible, specially if you want to retain your skills and mental acuity.

Anecdotally, I know individuals (ok, Dad /g) who can no longer negotiate even the most simple routes without the stupid map thing walking them through all the turns. Routes that were taken for years without these gizmos now require the gizmo.

This is an unfortunate 'experiment' we are conducting in this field. The actual lasting results (or damages) are unknown as of yet. We have some idea though.

[righthand]

I never said I didn’t try it. You said that.

[JeremyNT]

I used to be like you and then I decided to get up to speed on where things stand a couple of months ago.

I hate using it but I can write issues in gitlab, send them to aider, and it will spit out working solutions complete with test coverage.

Right now I think I'm maybe still faster just writing things myself but this feels incredibly tenuous. I'm certain that in a year vibe driven development will be faster.

There is no programmer's union. When the industry decides it's time to get rid of developers because vibe coding is faster than mid level developers, there is no counter.

The only developers left will be either true 100x geniuses or vibe coders. I'm not the former so I am trying to make sure I can become the latter long enough to last a few extra years.

Regardless of how much you personally want to resist, this is what is going to happen.

[righthand]

I didn’t say I don’t invest or use automation or other AI. I said I don’t use Llms. There’s a huge difference.