We would be doing a disservice to our users and our downstream fellow developers in the same way that a visual artist would be doing a disservice to their viewers or a musician would be doing a disservice to their listeners if they served them auto-generated filler instead of their own creative output.
You can personally select and fell all the trees used to build your house. You can cut and sculpt each 2x4 with chisels and a hand plane like a true artisan.
Or you could just buy lumber in bulk, toss the boards that have flaws, and build your house that way. What’s great about that is that as long as you follow building codes your home won’t just collapse at the first storm. It won’t just burn down with the drop of a match. It won’t leak and ruin your stuff.
Using LLMs to code is like buying lumber in bulk. Some of the boards that come off the truck will have flaws. Sometimes they’re so bad you can break the 2x4 over your knee! But the job of the builder/framer is to make sure those bad boards don’t get used. They’re spotted, marked, and replaced.
Code can be art! Absolutely! But not all code needs to be art. Not only that, but your employer doesn’t give a shit about how well-written any given code is so why bother? Just give them the AI output that works/passes tests and collect that paycheck.
The article concludes with this:
You can personally select and fell all the trees used to build your house. You can cut and sculpt each 2x4 with chisels and a hand plane like a true artisan.
Or you could just buy lumber in bulk, toss the boards that have flaws, and build your house that way. What’s great about that is that as long as you follow building codes your home won’t just collapse at the first storm. It won’t just burn down with the drop of a match. It won’t leak and ruin your stuff.
Using LLMs to code is like buying lumber in bulk. Some of the boards that come off the truck will have flaws. Sometimes they’re so bad you can break the 2x4 over your knee! But the job of the builder/framer is to make sure those bad boards don’t get used. They’re spotted, marked, and replaced.
Code can be art! Absolutely! But not all code needs to be art. Not only that, but your employer doesn’t give a shit about how well-written any given code is so why bother? Just give them the AI output that works/passes tests and collect that paycheck.
I have the feeling you only read the first and last few sentences of the article, or maybe used an LLM to give you a false summary?