[imiric]

> Being able to type quickly and accurately reduces

LLMs can generate code quickly. But there's no guarantee that it's syntactically, let alone semantically, accurate.

> I feel that I'm learning faster because I'm not tripping over silly little things.

I'm curious: what have you actually learned from using LLMs to generate code for you? My experience is completely the opposite. I learn nothing from running generated code, unless I dig in and try to understand it. Which happens more often than not, since I'm forced to review and fix it anyway. So in practice, it rarely saves me time and energy.

I do use LLMs for learning and understanding code, i.e. as an interactive documentation server, but this is not the use case you're describing. And even then, I have to confirm the information with the real API and usage documentation, since it's often hallucinated, outdated, or plain wrong.

[lordnacho]

> I'm curious: what have you actually learned from using LLMs to generate code for you?

I learn whether my design works. Some of the things I plan would take hours to type out and test. Now I can just ask the LLM, it throws out a working, compiling solution, and I can test that without spending my waking hours on silly things. I can just glance at the code and see that it's right or wrong.

If there are internal contradictions in the design, I find that out as well.

[baq]

> LLMs can generate code quickly. But there's no guarantee that it's syntactically, let alone semantically, accurate.

This has been a non-issue with self-correcting models and in-context learning capabilities for so long that saying it today highlights highly out of date priors.

[imiric]

You're referring to tools that fetch content from the web, read my data on disk, and feed it to the models?

I can see how that would lead to a better user experience, but those are copouts. The reality is that the LLM tech without it still has the same issues it has had all along.

Besides, I'll be damned if I allow this vibe coded software to download arbitrary data from the web on my behalf, scan my disk, and share it with companies I don't trust. So when, and if, I can do so safely and keep it under my control, I'll give it a try. Until then, I'll use the "dumb" versions of these models, feed them context manually myself, and judge them based purely on their actual performance.

[baq]

The 'copouts' are what the frontier models are designed to do. If you aren't using the tool as they're intended to, you'll get poor results, obviously.

[imiric]

If in order to use a product as intended I have to punch myself in the face, I'll take the poor results, obviously.

[baq]

You can trade punching yourself in the face for shaving with an angle grinder if you want these kinds of analogies.