Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Al Sweigart (alsweigart@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2025 00:32:44 JST Al Sweigart

   There are a few different reasons I advise people learning to code to just stay away from LLMs entirely.

   I used to say, "As long as you double check everything it says..." but I know that this is the far more likely outcome:

   • Embed this notice
     Thomas Lockney (tlockney@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2025 00:41:09 JST Thomas Lockney

     in reply to

     @AlSweigart To be fair, this is functionally identical to any other form of not doing the work (aka, cheating). There are many reasons to criticize LLMs, but this is essentially the same kind of argument that was frequently made against calculators and computers when it came to their use in education.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2025 00:41:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Thomas Lockney

     @tlockney @AlSweigart It's far less like using a calculator and far more like copying out of the answer key in the teacher's edition.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2025 01:37:15 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Becca Cotton-Weinhold

     @rlcw @AlSweigart
     What I keep hearing from really experienced devs matches my own experiences: the cost of reviewing and fixing the AI-generated code is so high that it’s at best a wash vs just writing it yourself time-wise — and that process replaces “the code is making me think more deeply about my problem” with “spot the hidden code screw-up that has nothing to do with the project’s underlying problem,” which is not a great tradeoff.

     I do think there’s potentially some utility for people learning new languages/tools who are in the “I don’t even know where to start” phase of learning. In that situation, it could be useful to ask “Show me some BS that would be typical here, so that I know what to even start learning about.”

     But this vibe coding business? I see a lot of people thinking they can replace plumbers because somebody showed them how to build a toilet out of cardboard.

   • Embed this notice
     Becca Cotton-Weinhold (rlcw@ecoevo.social)'s status on Tuesday, 08-Apr-2025 01:37:16 JST Becca Cotton-Weinhold

     in reply to

     • Paul Cantrell

     @AlSweigart
     I do use #AI, but I am not a dev by profession, I do review all of the code anyway and I do use the AI to build my understanding of programming - in addition to other sources.
     But I also have a "fun" story of a professional dev vibecoding hashing a bunch values - the AI wrote a program which replaced the values with made up values that looked like hashes, and deployed that code. 🍿You do have a choice in how you use this tech.
     @inthehands