> I'm just not familiar enough with the solution space

Neither is the LLM

(Trying to find where you might still see this)

I've read the thread and in my mind you're missing that LLMs increase the surface area of visibility of a thing. It's a probe. It adds known unknowns to your train of thought. It doesn't need to be "creative" about it. It doesn't need to be complete or even "right". You can validate the unknown unknown since it is now known. It doesn't need to have a measured opinion (even though it acts as it does), it's really just topography expansion. We're getting in the weeds of creativity and idea synthesis, but if something is net-new to you right now in your topography map, what's so bad about attributing relative synthesis to the AI?

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jimbokun 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, this is the kind of thing LLMs are very good at. Knowing the specifics and details and minutiae about technologies, programming languages, etc.

	▲	bandrami 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh Lord, no. Not at all. That's what they're terrible at. They are ok-ish at superficial overviews and catastrophically bad at specific minutiae

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satvikpendem 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oftentimes it is though, good enough for my purposes.

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bandrami 6 hours ago | parent [-]

If you're not familiar with the problem space, by definition you don't know whether or not that's the case. The problem spaces I do know well, I know the LLM isn't good at it, so why would I assume it's better at spaces I don't know?

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satvikpendem 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I said familiar enough, not familiar. For example, let's say I'm building an app I know needs caching, the LLM is very good at telling me what types of caching to use, what libraries to use for each type, and so on, for which I can do more research if I really want to know specifically what the best library out of all the rest are, but oftentimes its top suggestion is, like I said, good enough for my purpose of e.g. caching.

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bandrami 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I still don't get what you're saying. If you possess enough information to accurately judge the LLM's suggestions you possess enough information to decide on your own. There's not really a way around that.

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satvikpendem 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Of course I'm deciding on my own, I'm not letting the LLM decide for me (although some people do). But the point is whatever the suggestion is is merely an implementation detail that either solves my problem or not, not sure what part of that is confusing. Replace LLM with glorified Google and maybe it's less confusing.

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bandrami 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No, Google (at least back when it worked) ranked results based on the feedback of other users, so it was a useful signal.

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satvikpendem 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Theoretically the LLM would weight more popular suggestions more too. Regardless you're reading too much into this, either use the LLM or don't, I'm not sure if someone else can convince you. As I said for my purposes of getting shit done it works perfectly fine and works more like a research tool than anything else, especially if it can understand my specific use case unlike general research tools like Google or Stack Overflow.

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bandrami 4 hours ago | parent [-]

IDK man this sounds a lot like my junior devs saying "it works fine for me" as they hand in PRs that break prod

	▲	satvikpendem 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you don't review the code it generates then that's still on you. There isn't an excuse for handing in breaking PRs like your juniors. It's a tool at the end of the day and it's the responsibility of the user to utilize it correctly.

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jimbokun 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you use search engines or do you just memorize all the world’s information?

	▲	bandrami 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't use search engines for much of anything nowadays (does anybody still?) At work I read documentation if I need to learn something.