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by xantronix 39 days ago
> One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about coding with LLMs is I have greater control over how I want the code to work and be designed.

I don't get it. Writing code yourself is the best way to control how the code functions and is designed. If LLMs were to disappear tomorrow, how would one lose control over the degree and specificity of the code produced that one could not simply compensate for with a bit more time and skill investment up front?

The author only hints at the notion that developers who do not use LLMs are like painters upon the advent of photography, but does not go on to suggest who these developers analogous to painters might be today, nor to whom their works might be valued.

If we're going to torture visual media into being a good analogy for LLM versus hand coding, I think writing code oneself is more like having a inkjet printer that one controls manually. You get a great deal of explicit control and theoretically unlimited expressiveness but at the cost of a greater time investment. Comparatively, painting might not give you that same degree of precision. Photography surrenders that control but puts a great significance on capturing fleeting moments in time.