this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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As a programmer I have yet to see evidence that LLMs can even achieve that. So far everything they product is a mess that needs significant effort to fix before it even does what was originally asked of the LLM unless we are talking about programs that have literally been written already thousands of times (like Hello World or Fibonacci generators,...).
I find LLM's great for creating shorter snippets of code. It can also be great as a starting point or to get started with something that you are not familiar with.
Even asking for an example on how to use a specific API has failed about 50% of the time, it tends to hallucinate entire parts of the API that don't exist or even entire libraries that don't exist.
I've seen a junior developer use it to more quickly get a start on things like boiler plate code, configuration, or just as a starting point for implementing an algorithm. It's kind of like a souped up version of piecing together Stack Overflow code snippets. Just like using SO, it needs tweaking, and someone who relies too much on either SO or AI will not develop the proper skills to do so.
I'm not a programmer, more like a data scientist, and I use LLMs all day, I write my shity pretty specific code, check that it works and them pass it to the LLM asking for refactoring and optimization. Some times their method save me 2 secs on a 30 secs scripts, other ones it's save me 35 mins in a 36 mins script. It's also pretty good helping you making graphics.