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by njovin 34 days ago
Have you tried drilling into the reasoning when this happens? This is why I usually leave it in "Plan Mode" and when it proposes a solution that seems unusual or unexpected, I point out why I think it is and ask it to justify it's position.

Sometimes I get the "you're right!" response, but often it will also explain why it made the decision it did, and it's rational enough that I accept the new approach.

It's still very much like a junior dev in this way - pretty good at 'just make it work', pretty good at monkey-see-monkey-do, and occasionally surprises you with something novel (to you).

2 comments

> Sometimes I get the "you're right!" response, but often it will also explain why it made the decision it did, and it's rational enough that I accept the new approach.

I think this is kind of what I’m worried about. Referencing Karpathy, an LLM can basically convince any one of anything. Doing this enough times and your opinions just become the LLM opinion. Same with problem solving approaches. I see this for myself so I reserve time to formulate my own solutions. Maybe my solutions are worse but at least I’m training the muscle that may lead to me outperforming the LLM in specific spaces

> LLM can basically convince any one of anything This and revision to the mean I think are real problems

I've found myself on more than one occasion just stepping away and needing to really sit down and think and to not ask an LLM until I have a clear idea of what I want to do

The one thing that bothers me is that one process I really used to run is thinking in code, slowly sketching out a solution until it had the properties I wanted it to have

I find myself not really engaging with this at present and it really bothers me, I've been trying to figure out how to get back into doing it again because I think the most differentiated and interesting ideas and thinking I had were usually shaped by going through that process

However so far I've found working with LLM's just doesn't jive with that thought process and several months into using them I'm still figuring out how to go back to doing that

How much time do I want to spend on this vs. just writing the old-fashioned way?