Hacker News Reader

> because you're essentially the new guy on your own project.

Wow! Lol. One sentence to rule them all.

and the problem is the LLM is also the new guy on the next prompt lmao, the guy(LLM) that wrote the original code is long gone

Looking forward to amnesiac LLM coder memes!

https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/...

One of my favorite ways to use AI is to get me started on things. I tend to drag my feet when starting something new, but LLMs can whip up something quick. Then I look at what it did and usually hate it. Maybe it structured the code in way that doesn't mesh with the way I think or it completely failed to use some new/esoteric library I rely on.

That hate fuels me to just do the work myself. It's like the same trick as those engagement-bait math problems that pop up on social media with the wrong answer.

I do the same thing, except if I hate something, I just ask the LLM to fix it. I can usually get to a starting point I'm pretty happy with, then I take over.

After that, I may ask an LLM to write particular functions, giving it data types and signatures to guide it.

Does this sound like a fulfilling career to literally anyone?

I’m enjoying it - I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. Perhaps you misunderstood me - I’m using it to automate things that are easy enough to do but time-consuming and generally uninteresting. It’s a useful assistant.

You could make the same comment about managers - does management sound like a fulfilling career to literally anyone (to some, it doesn’t!) Or about working on a team, where colleagues do work that you depend on.

It’s also very similar to the situation with compilers and interpreters for high level languages. An assembly language or machine language programmer might ask “does writing in a high level language sound like a fulfilling career to literally anyone?”

This all makes me suspect that your comment is coming from a place where you’ve already reached a conclusion and are now looking for excuses to justify it. Typical change resistance, essentially.

The same. It’s mostly an example generator, where you know what to do, but can’t take the time to build a model of the language/framework/library. Then you look at the code and retain only the procedure and the symbols used.

ahahah, I've said the same thing about how I used AI recently. The "hate fuel" part is really true.

Breaking writers block, it's a starting point.

> you're essentially the new guy on your own project

Holy shit that's the best description of this phenomenon I've heard so far. The most stark version of this I've experienced is working on a side project with someone who isn't a software engineer who vibe coded a bunch of features without my input. The code looked like 6-8 different people had worked on it with no one driving architecture and I had to untangle how it all got put together.

The sweet spot for me is using it in places where I know the exact pattern I want to use to solve a problem and I can describe it in very small discrete steps. That will often take something that would have taken me an hour or two to hand code something tedious down to 5-10 minutes. I agree that there's no going back, even if all progress stopped now that's too huge of a gain to ignore it as a tool.

I have found that you can't let the LLM do the thinking part. It's really fast at writing, but only writes acceptable code, if the thinking has been done for it.

In some cases, this approach might even be slower than writing the code.

Really good thoughts here. You do become like the "new guy" on the project. It's becoming a black box. I think that should be some sort of signal to people...but my dear is people not caring or being complacent with this or not taking the time to review, read and learn. That's where the danger is.

I have retreated into only accepting small snippets from it. Asking it to write print functions, that sort of thing, or a specific loop that I hand-review. For the same reason.

“ I'm finding that developing prompts, managing context, controlling pace, staying organized and being able to effectively review the LLM's work are required skills for LLM-assisted coding “

Did you not need all these skills / approaches / frameworks for yourself / coding with a team?

This is , I think, the key difference in those (such as myself) who find LLMs to massively increase velocity / quality / quantity of output and those who don’t.

I was already highly effective at being a leader / communicator / delegating / working in teams ranging from small , intimate , we shared a mental model / context up to some of the largest teams on the planet.

If someone wasn’t already a highly effective IC/manager/leader pre LLM, an LLM will simply accelerate how fast they crash into the dirt.

It takes substantial work to be a highly effective contributor / knowledge worker at any level. Put effort into that , and LLMs become absolutely indispensable, especially as a solo founder.

> If someone wasn’t already a highly effective IC/manager/leader pre LLM, an LLM will simply accelerate how fast they crash into the dirt.

Quite the selling point.

> I was already highly..

I stopped reading right here. Presumably other people did too. I don't think you're aware of the caliber of your hubris. About howitzer sized.

Needs/more/slashes.

> mental model / context

I can't can't read that but 'mental model' and 'mental context' and need to backtrack.

Atleast overuse of parentheses is balanced and nestable.