I was nodding along enthusiastically right up until LLMs and that point we sharply diverge.

For me, part of creating "perfect" software is that I am very much the one crafting the software. I'm learning while creating, but I find such learning is greatly diminished when I outsource building to AI. It's certainly harder and perhaps my software is worse, but for me the sense of achievement is also much greater.

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anon7000 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s really not the point of the post!

The author is saying that “perfect software” is like a perfect cup of coffee. It’s highly subjective to the end user. The perfect software for me perfectly matches how I want to interact with software. It has options just for me. It’s fine tuned to my taste and my workflows, showing me information I want to see. You might never find a tool that’s perfect for you because someone else wrote it for their own taste.

LLMs come in because it wildly increases the amount of stuff you can play around with on a personal level. It means someone finally has time to put together the perfect workflow and advanced tools. I personally have about 0 time outside of work that I can invest in that, so I totally buy the idea that LLMs can really give people the space to develop personal tools and workflows that work perfectly for them. The barrier to entry and experimentation is incredibly low, and since it’s just for you, you don’t need to worry about scale and operations and all the hard stuff.

There is still plenty of room for someone to do it by hand, but I certainly don’t have time to do that. So I’ll never find perfect software for some of my workflows unless I get an assist from LLMs.

I agree with you about learning and achievement and fun — but that’s completely unrelated to the topic!

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analogpixel 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I find that most of the time, programming is just procrastination, and having the LLM there breaks through that procrastination and lets me focus on the idea I was thinking on without going into the weeds.

A lot of the time, the LLM outputs the code, I test my idea, and realize I really don't care or the idea wasn't that great, and now I can move on to something else.

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resonious 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I hope at some point people don't feel the need to justify using or not using LLMs. If you feel like using them, use them. If you regret doing that, delete the code and write it yourself. And vice versa - if you are in a slog and an LLM can get you out, just use it.

	▲	meysamazad 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I love this answer I really do

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dotancohen 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm now using an LLM to write a voice note organisation application that I have been dreaming about for two decades.

I did vibe code the first version. It runs, but it is utterly unmaintainable. I'm now rewriting it using the LLM as if it were a junior or outsourced programmer (not a developer, that remains my job) and I go over every line of application code. I love it, I'm pushing out decent quality code and very focused git commits. I write every commit message myself, no LLM there. But I don't even bother checking the LLM's unit and integration tests.

I would have never gotten to this stage of my dream project without AI tooling.

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grugagag 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can still create what you already know how to, by hand, but also extend to areas you previously where shy about with the help of LLMs.

	▲	dotancohen 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just today I gave an LLM the task of porting some Python modules to rust. I then went back and learned enough rust to understand these modules. This would have taken me days without the LLM. And I learned a lot.

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sigmarule 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you writing software for the sense of accomplishment or to create software you wish you had?

	▲	Lyngbakr 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The two aren't mutually exclusive.

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5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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browningstreet 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IMO LLMs/AI alone neither make nor break anything.