@plexus In the end, software engineering is about creating solutions to problems other people have. The solutions are not a byproduct, but the primary purpose. To the majority of users, the inner workings and the creation process of software is opaque. The qualities that software exposes on the outside are largely independent of its inner workings.

This means that for most people in the software industry, adapting to the new tooling that makes the creation process more efficient is 1/

@grishka Right on, and then consider that with the traditional mode of writing software, the cost of creating something that is good is very high.

I'd argue that with faster (machine assisted) software creation, it is easier to meet the need of users because the cost of change is drastically reduced. I'm experiencing that with those system that I'm currently writing that way.

The whole argument that software written by humans is better does not bear any merit for me.

@hanshuebner What does "software is better" even mean in this context?

I wonder if this entire "LLM generated code is good enough and it's creation is much more efficient" argument will stand the test of time when a lot of code is generated on the same product / project by many people. We do not know the answer to this yet.
@grishka

@schaueho @hanshuebner @grishka

1/2

> "LLM generated code is good enough and it's creation is much more efficient" argument will stand the test of time when a lot of code is generated on the same product / project by many people. We do not know the answer to this yet.

I do suspect that some of the divide we see in the debate on Mastodon relates to the fact that some of the people arguing against it have not used LLMs to assist in writing Very Good Software At Scale using the methodologies available today.

I ship software to ~6 million monthly active users, with confidence, using Claude Code. I haven't written code by hand in ~10 months.

So, to the "We do not know the answer to this yet.", I think that we do.

We know that LLMs, used naively, make mistakes. And a craftsperson who knows the limitation of their tools (LLMs) can mitigate and verify in a number of ways.

Concession: LLMs were not ethically trained. Data centers are having awful impact on the energy grid + water use. I will never begrudge a person's choice to boycott.

Counterpoint: today, LLMs running on e.g. Apple Silicon approach the performance of the SOTA models. We're gonna see more of this, which will mitigate the individual's environmental impact as well as the need to pay forever-rent to big tech.

@schaueho @hanshuebner @grishka

I will never begrudge a person's decision to boycott LLM usage.

But I do grow weary of folk on Mastodon earnestly insisting that "the flaws in LLMs will somehow all be laid bare, and handcrafted, artisanal code is somehow inherently superior"

Y'all cheering for John Henry without understanding that this is a job that's actually very well suited for a machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)