If this were another industry...

I don't know why people build houses with nail guns, I like my hammer... Whats the point of building a house if you're not going to pound the nails in yourself.

AI tooling is great at getting all the boiler plate and bootstrapping out of the way... One still has to have a thoughtful design for a solution, to leave those gaps where you see things evolving rather than writing something so concrete that you're scrapping it to add new features.

▲ zwnow 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

You can pick apart a nail gun and see how it exactly works pretty easily. You cant do that with LLMs. Also a nail gun doesn't get less accurate the more nails you shoot one after another, a LLM does get less accurate the more steps it goes through. Also a nail gun shoots straight and not in random directions as that would be considered dangerous. A LLM does shoot into random directions. The same prompt will often yield different results. With a nail gun you can easily pull the plug and you wont have to verify if the nail got placed correctly for an unreasonable amount of time, with LLM output you have to verify everything which takes a lot of time. If an LLM really is such a great tool for you I fear you are not verifying everything it does.

If the boilerplate is that obvious why not just have a blueprint for that and copy and paste it over using a parrot?

Also I dont have a nail gun subscription and the nail gun vendor doesnt get to see what I am doing with it.

▲ stavros 4 days ago | parent [-]

You mention a thousand ways the analogy breaks when you take it too far, but you didn't address the actual (correct) point the analogy was making: Some people don't enjoy certain parts of the creative process, and let an LLM handle them. That's all.

▲ exceptione 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

  > Some people don't enjoy certain parts of the creative process,

Sure

  >  and let an LLM handle them.

This is probably the disputed part. It is not a different way of development, and as such it should not be presented like that. In software, we can use ready-made components, choose between different strategies, build everything in a low-level language etc. The trade-offs coming with each choice is in principle knowable; the developer is still in control.

LLMs are nothing like that. Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development. On the surface, it might look like you get ready-made components by outsourcing it to them, but there is no contract about any standard, so you have to check everything.

Now if people would present it like "I rather manage an outsourcing process than doing the creative thing" we would have no discussion. But hammers and nails aren't the right analogies.

▲ mlrtime 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

>LLMs are nothing like that. Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development.

You're going to have to tell us your definition of 'Using a LLM' because it is not akin to outsourcing (As I use it).

When I use clause, I tell it the architecture, the libraries, the data flows, everything. It just puts the code down which is the boring part and happens fast.

The time is spent mostly on testing, finding edge cases. The exact same thing if I wrote it all myself.

I don't see how this is hard for people to grasp?

	▲	exceptione 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		`> 'Using a LLM' because it is not akin to outsourcing (As I use it).` The things you do with an LLM are precisely what many other IT-firms do when outsourcing to India. Now you might say that this would be bonkers, but that is also why you hear so often that LLM's are the biggest threat to outsourcing instead of software development in general. The feedback cycle with an LLM is much faster. `> I don't see how this is hard for people to grasp?` I think I understand you, and I think you have/had something else in mind when hearing the term outsourcing.

▲ stavros 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think people use an LLM and say "I wrote some code", but they do say "I made a thing", which is true. Even if I use an LLM to make a library, and I decide the interfaces, abstractions, and algorithms, it was still me who did all that.

▲ jason_oster 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Using a LLM is more akin to management of outsource software development.

This is a straw man argument. You have described one potential way to use an LLM and presented it as the only possible way. Even people who use LLMs will agree with you that your weak argument is easy to cut down.

▲ zwnow 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

An analogy doesnt work if it has thousands of flaws.

▲

stavros 4 days ago | parent [-]

You can't stretch it until it breaks and then say "see? It broke, it wasn't perfect". It works for the purpose it was made, and that's all it needed to work for.

▲

zwnow 3 days ago | parent [-]

So the analogy is okay if it supports your argument but a counter analogy isn't okay if it doesn't support your argument, got it.

	▲	stavros 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		This 4D reading comprehension chess is too much for me, sorry.

▲ andy99 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This appears to misunderstand both construction and software development, nail guns and LLMs are not remotely parallel.

You’re comparing a deterministic method of quickly installing a fastener with something that nondeterministically designs and builds the whole building.

▲ Shog9 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nail guns are great. For nails that fit into them and spaces they fit into. But if you can't hit a nail with a hammer, you're limited to the sort of tasks that can be accomplished with the nail guns and gun-nails you have with you.

This is the way with many labor-saving devices.

	▲	nosianu 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's the problem with solving a casually made metaphor instead of sticking to the original question. Since when is AI assisted coding only when you do 100% AI and not a single line yourself? That is only the extreme end! Same with the nails actually. I doubt the builders don't also have and use hammers. > This is the way with many labor-saving devices. I think that's more the problem of people using only the extremes to build an argument.