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0 pointsphilipwhiuk9mo ago0 comments

> Though, people who don't know the codebase as well as I do have reported it helped them a lot.

My problem I guess is that maybe this is just Dunning-Kruger esq. When you don't know what you don't know you get the impression it's smart. When you do, you think it's rubbish.

Like when you see a media report on a subject you know about and you see it's inaccurate but then somehow still trust the media on a subject you're a non-expert on.

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throwaway3141559mo ago

I think most of this just amounts to the same old good developers vs. bad developers situation that we've been in for decades.

giantrobot9mo ago

> Like when you see a media report on a subject you know about and you see it's inaccurate but then somehow still trust the media on a subject you're a non-expert on.

Gell-Mann Amnesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

motorest9mo ago

> My problem I guess is that maybe this is just Dunning-Kruger esq. When you don't know what you don't know you get the impression it's smart. When you do, you think it's rubbish.

I see your point. Indeed there are two completely different points of view regarding the output of LLMs:

* Hey, I managed to vibecode my way into a fully working web service with a React SPA after a couple of prompts, and a full automated test suite to boot.

* This project is nowhere as clean as I would have written it, and doesn't even follow my pet coding conventions.

One side lauds LLMs, the other complains they output mainly crap.

The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of software engineers write crap code, as the definition of "crap code" is "something I would have done differently". Opinionated engineers look at the output of LLMs and accuse it of being crap code. Eppur si muove.

phatskat9mo ago

> The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of software engineers write crap code, as the definition of "crap code" is "something I would have done differently".

This is certainly a part of it, but I do wonder that even if an LLM “learned” the conventions and preferences of an engineer and spit out “perfectly styled” code, would it be treated as such? I’d wager (a small amount) that it wouldn’t, because part of enjoying the code - for me - is _knowing_ the code. “I wrote it this way because I tried X, then Y, then saw I could do Z, and now I’m familiar with the code in a way that’s more intimate.” Unfamiliar code rarely looks like _really good_, in my opinion.

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