New blog post: I got tired of having repetitive arguments explaining why I think it’s OK to be skeptical of LLMs for coding, so I wrote six and a half thousand words on the topic that I will be referring people to from now on.

https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2026/apr/09/llms/

Let’s talk about LLMs

Everybody seems to agree we’re in the middle of _something_, though what, exactly, seems to be up for debate. It …

James Bennett
@ubernostrum why do you even have to make the case for being sceptical? I haven't heard a single valid argument why it is ethical to use LLMs. There is not a single thing that can be done with LLMs, but can't be done without them. Why do we even have to argue against something, when there is no good argument in favor of it?
@stefanie @ubernostrum I hear a lot of claims like "I work so much faster with AI!" and "Without AI, I would just not have managed to do this" etc. - So I'm afraid this case has to be made...
@ditsch42 @ubernostrum on the one hand, there is already a study that shows while people report feeling more productive, they are in fact less productive.
But besides that, it's not even about being faster.
A chisel is a tool, it allows you to carve stone, which you can't do without it.
Is there anything that AI allows you to do that couldn't be done without it?
The answer is: no.