[palmotea]

> For example, using ChatGPT to get a response to a random question like "How do I do XYZ" is much more convenient than googling it, but the time savings are often not that relevant for your overall productivity. Before LLMs you were usually already able to find the information quickly and even a 10x speed up does not really have too much of an impact on your overall productivity, because the time it took was already negligible.

I'd even question that. The pre-LLM solutions were in most cases better. Searching a maintained database of curated and checked information is far better than LLM output (which is possibly bullshit).

Ditto to software engineering. In software, we have things call libraries: you write the code once, test it, then you trust it and can use it as many times as you want forever for free. Why use LLM generated code when you have a library? And if you're asking for anything complex, you're probably just getting a plagiarized and bastardized version of some library anyway.

The only thing where LLMs shine is a kind of simple, lazy "mash this up so I don't have to think about it" cases. And sometimes it might be better to just do it yourself and develop your own skills instead of use an LLM.

[neilalexander]

One advantage with LLMs is that they are often more able to find things that you can roughly explain but don't know the name of. They can be a good take-off point for wider searches.

[davkan]

I was able to find a decade old video via llm with the prompt “YouTube video of a french band on a radio station with a girl wearing orange jumpsuit”. I had tried many google searches without success trying to remember the video but the llm came right out with the correct video of The Dø on KEXP first try. 99 times out of 100 I prefer normal search though.

[mountainriver]

Why not have the LLM generate the library?

[javcasas]

Because every time you run the LLM it will generate a new library, with new and surprising bugs.

It's better to take an existing, already curated and tested library. Which, yes, may have been generated by an LLM, but has been curated beyond the skill of the LLM.

[techblueberry]

The value of a library is not in the code it’s in the operations. It’s been curated and tested by multiple people in multiple environments. One of the ways to code at a high level is to delegate the cognitive load.

If you really can one shot it and it’s simple(left-pad). Great. But most things aren’t my that simple, the third time you have to think about it, it’s probably a net loss.