> but like, if someone doesn't know how to manually configure their git remotes and what exact command to use to amend/squash their commits into the shape needed and instead has an agent prepare all that and use the GitHub CLI to open the PR, why should I care?

Because LLMs aren't a reason to not learn your tools. A determinist CLI command vs using a statistical machine for it. It's just a waste of tokens at the very least.

▲ saghm 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, the reason not to learn your tools is if they're not your tools anymore, and something else is. I don't spend time trying to manually invoke filesystem APIs to create files in my work projects and instead will often just have my LSP do it when I declare a module and the file isn't found. I could memorize the exact sequence of system calls needed, but my employer would prefer I spend time on things that are more worthwhile to them.

I don't disagree that having a deterministic CLI is useful, but I'd argue that's not the question here, because the CLI is what the statistical machine will be using. The question is whether the time spent doing it manually is worthwhile compared to the tokens spent on it. I'd further argue that if you instead learn how to pick the right model for the right job so that you don't use something way more expensive than needed for the task at hand, the token overhead will be extremely minimal for stuff like git operations; knowing that you can use something cheaper than like, Astra or Opus if all you want to do is a quick git cleanup and push is going to save your employer a lot more money in the long run than if you insist on doing every messy rebase by hand.

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StrangeWill 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The point of knowing your tools is to stop escalating to other people every time something doesn't work with them.

Even if an LLM can hold your hand through everything, the disruption I've had because people don't understand what the LLM tool is doing, and ultimately does damage (we've had repos corrupted, systems taken offline, systems brought their knees, numerous data security incidents... it's been a fucking nightmare) is immense.

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nightdeployboy 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While using LLMs is a great idea, it has become crucial to put safeguards in place to ensure that their use doesn't deviate from team practices or compromise security.

	▲	saghm 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'd argue that these are not really specific to git (or even LLMs honestly); in terms of security, don't put company data into anything that your company hasn't given you explicit permission to put it into. In terms of team practices, that basically seems like a code review thing. If my team has conventions around git, and a PR doesn't fit them, that's something I would point out regardless of how the PR was generated. If a team member is repeatedly not meeting the expectations we've all agreed upon, I would deal with it in the same way I always have; reach out and offer guidance for how to do things the way they're supposed to, notify my manager if they continue having trouble with it, and eventually just not bother looking at their PRs if they absolutely refuse to do things the way everyone else on the team has agreed they should be done.

▲ bawolff 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the before time, this is the sort of thing people would just google.

One time setup commands are the sort of thing people do once when setting up the repo, but dont use day to day. its understandable that people dont have that memorized and will reach for a man page, google or an AI.

▲ tempfile 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I happen to have memorised how to add new remotes a long time ago, but I would 100% not care if someone I worked with googled it every time. That's how it was for me for several years. I don't think that has anything to do with "learning the tools". And getting claude to do it is not that much different from copy-pasting from google.

▲ wtetzner 7 hours ago | parent [-]

TBH I usually just search my shell history for the last time I added a remote and edit it.

	▲	saghm 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's also not particularly hard to write a shell function to avoid needing to care about the syntax, e.g.: `add_github_remote() { git remote add $1 git@github.com:$2/$3.git }`

▲ sokoloff 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's just a waste of tokens at the very least.

Some 6-figure per year developer spending a quarter’s worth of tokens to do something they do once a month or so is not something I’ll ever care to optimize away…

▲ marssaxman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Tokens are cheaper than brain power. Why waste my time trying to recall the details of git's byzantine, ill-begotten command line interface when I can delegate that boring task to a robot?