My jobs have been filled with people misusing tools for 40 years, particularly new tools and computer oriented tools - the current trend is just an extension…
They accelerate making a ton of code that is impossible to maintain, update, etc.
When used improperly, sure, see above.
If you know what the software is, it was never writing it that was the hard part.
I’ll agree, but still say that LLM agents accelerate the setup of toolchains, the learning of new languages, and many other things which do accelerate the writing part so instead of having to carve out 2 weeks of quiet time to get a good proof of concept ready from concept to ready for others to give feedback on, that can now be done in a day or two.
reading over extremely verbose LLM bullshit from colleagues to tell them every single thing the LLM said incorrectly. That didn’t happen before LLMs.
Your incompetent colleagues have been given a steamshovel for their bullshit, my condolences. It’s not the steamshovel’s fault it can work faster than a man with a spade on a stick.
LLMs don’t have a mind,
Correct.
they cannot check their work.
Incorrect. They’re actually better at finding fault than they are at creating fault-free work. But they do require direction to keep looking for faults, they’ll tell you they didn’t find any (true statement) but when you tell them to look again (with a clean context window), unlike people, they’ll look again just as carefully as the first time - and find more faults. I went bug hunting on a nice meaty module and found and corrected over 12 rounds of faults - they were getting rather trivial toward the end, and I had to direct to fix through removal rather than addition of code whenever possible - repeatedly, but after that it was actually clean and solid.
it sure is a problem tools can cause! And that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Tools aren’t causing the problem here, managers are causing the problem. Any excuse for rank and yank will be gleefully embraced to its fullest potential.
My jobs have been filled with people misusing tools for 40 years, particularly new tools and computer oriented tools - the current trend is just an extension…
When used improperly, sure, see above.
I’ll agree, but still say that LLM agents accelerate the setup of toolchains, the learning of new languages, and many other things which do accelerate the writing part so instead of having to carve out 2 weeks of quiet time to get a good proof of concept ready from concept to ready for others to give feedback on, that can now be done in a day or two.
Your incompetent colleagues have been given a steamshovel for their bullshit, my condolences. It’s not the steamshovel’s fault it can work faster than a man with a spade on a stick.
Correct.
Incorrect. They’re actually better at finding fault than they are at creating fault-free work. But they do require direction to keep looking for faults, they’ll tell you they didn’t find any (true statement) but when you tell them to look again (with a clean context window), unlike people, they’ll look again just as carefully as the first time - and find more faults. I went bug hunting on a nice meaty module and found and corrected over 12 rounds of faults - they were getting rather trivial toward the end, and I had to direct to fix through removal rather than addition of code whenever possible - repeatedly, but after that it was actually clean and solid.
Tools aren’t causing the problem here, managers are causing the problem. Any excuse for rank and yank will be gleefully embraced to its fullest potential.