I personally see the LLM as a (considerably better) alternative to StackOverflow. I ask it questions, and it immediately has answers for my exact questions. Most often I then write my own code based on the answer. Sometimes I have the LLM generate functions that I can use in my code, but I always make sure to fully understand how it works before copy-pasting it into my codebase.

But sometimes I wonder if pushing a +400.000 lines PR to an open-source project in a programming language that I don't understand is more beneficial to my career than being honest and quality-driven. In the same way that YoE takes precedence over actual skill in hiring at most companies.

Unlike stack overflow, if it doesn’t know the answer it’ll just confidently spit out some nonsense and you might fall for it or waste a lot of time figuring out that it’s clueless.

You might get the same in Stack Overflow too, but more likely I’ve found either no response or, or someone pretty competent actually does come out of the woodworks.