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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Is this really that diffferent from the "average" programmer, especially a more junior one?

> LLMs get endlessly confused: they assume the code they wrote actually works; when test fail, they are left guessing as to whether to fix the code or the tests; and when it gets frustrating, they just delete the whole lot and start over.

I see this constantly with mediocre developers. Flailing, trying different things, copy-pasting from StackOverflow without understanding, ultimately deciding the compiler must have a bug, or cosmic rays are flipping bits.

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The article explicitly calls out that that’s what they are looking for in a competent software engineer. That incompetent developers exist, and that junior developers tend to not be very competent yet, doesn’t change anything about that. The problem with LLMs is that they’re already the final product of training/learning, not the starting point. The (in)ability of an LLM to form stable mental models is fixed in its architecture, and isn’t anything you can teach them.

I just (re) read the article and the word "competent" doesn't appear in it. It doesn't discuss human developer competency at all, except in comparison to LLMs.

Yes, I replaced “effective” by “competent” in my response, because I found that word slightly preferable in the context discussed.

I feel like something is wrong where you are, maybe your juniors do not feel incentivized or encouraged to learn, code reviews might not be strict enough, quality may not be valued enough, and immense pressure to move tickets might be put on people, or all of the above in various doses.

I feel this way because at my company our interns on a gap year from their comp sci degree don't blame the compiler, cosmic bits, or blindly copy from stack overflow.

They're incentivized and encouraged to learn and absolutely choose to do so. The same goes for seniors.

If you say 'I've been learning about X for ticket Y' in the standup people basically applaud it, managers like us training ourselves to be better.

Sure managers may want to see a brief summary or a write-up applicable to our department if you aren't putting code down for a few days, but that's the only friction.

I find it impressive that LLMs can so closely mimic the behaviour of a junior dev. Even if that's not a desirable outcome it's still impressive and interesting.

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