[stavros]

Agreed, and ever since LLMs started being able to write competent code, I've noticed a massive difference in quality on codebases where I knew the technology, and ones I didn't. This is because I can much more efficiently steer the LLM on e.g. backend code, which is my expertise, vs yoloing everything on mobile, where I have no idea.

The codebases using technologies I have no idea about tend to quickly become unmaintainable and buggy, because the LLM still doesn't make good architectural choices, but the codebases that use technologies I'm familiar with basically never devolve into unmaintainability.

The difference between the two is massive, and that's why I think that a competent engineer steering an LLM in their area of expertise gets two orders of magnitude more productive, whereas someone steering an LLM in an area they know nothing about are basically producing tech debt at the speed of thought.

[maest]

> two orders of magnitude more productive

Shipping 100x more features per day?

[Cthulhu_]

100x faster towards becoming an email client

[stavros]

Yes.

[Avicebron]

Do you have specifics? It would be interesting to see what kind of improvements are possible.

[stavros]

I just see in my usage that I can release tens of features a day, whereas I'd be able to release one or two a day usually. I don't know if it's 100x, but it's definitely more than 10x.

I've written up my process here:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-i-write-software-with-llms/

The biggest thing to get right is to let the LLMs do what they're great at (code implementation from very detailed specs, and code review), and you do what humans are great (architecture and making sure the high level of the implementation is sane). That way, you get the best of both worlds, and a lot of speed at high quality.

[wasabi991011]

Thanks for the detailed explanation of your process, I think I'll try it out.

[what]

Can you show us the 10s of features you’re releasing daily now?

[stavros]

I made this in two days:

https://www.writelucid.cc/