• HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    LLMs helped me with coding and debugging A LOT. I’d much rather use AI than have to try and parse stack exchange and a bunch of other web forums or developer documentation directly. AI is incredible when i get random errors and paste them in to say “fix this” and it does and tells me HOW and WHY it did what it did.

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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      3 months ago

      I keep seeing programmers use this as an example of what LLMs are good for, and I’ve seen other programmers say that the people who do that are bad programmers. The latter makes sense because trusting an LLM to do this is to fundamentally misunderstand what your job is and how the LLM works.

      The LLM can’t tell you HOW or WHY because it doesn’t know those things. It can only give you an approximation of words that sound like someone explaing HOW and WHY. LLMs have no fidelity.

      It could be completely wrong, and you wouldn’t know because you’ve admitted you’re using the LLM instead of reading the documentation and understanding yourself.

      That is so irresponsible. Just RTFM like good programmers have done forever. It’s not that much work if you get into the habit of it. Slow down, take the time to understand HOW and WHY to do things yourself, and make quality code rather than cranking out bigger volumes of crap that you don’t understand. I’m sure it feels very productive in the moment but you’re probably just creating more work for whoever has to clean up your large quantities of poorly thought out code.

    • pedz@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      And it only consumes the equivalent in electricity of what an American house uses for a few tears.