←back to thread

627 points cratermoon | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
Show context
simonw ◴[] No.44461833[source]
Looks like I was the inspiration for this post then. https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3lt2xbayttk2...

> Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw.

The reaction to that post has been interesting. It's mainly intended to be an argument against the LLM hype! I'm pushing back against all the people who are saying "LLMs are so incredible at programming that nobody should consider programming as a career any more" - I think that's total nonsense, like a carpenter quitting because someone invented the table saw.

Analogies like this will inevitably get people hung up on the details of the analogy though. Lots of people jumped straight to "a table saw does a single job reliably, unlike LLMs which are non-deterministic".

I picked table saws because they are actually really dangerous and can cut your thumb off if you don't know how to use them.

replies(4): >>44461877 #>>44461949 #>>44462734 #>>44464002 #
1. rcxdude ◴[] No.44462734[source]
Also, if you don't have a table saw, just cutting a straight line efficiently and accurately is a fairly important baseline skill for doing carpentry, something which becomes a lot less of an issue with a table saw, and that makes some of the skillset of carpentry less important for getting good results (especially if you then make things that only consist of straight lines and so you also don't need to be able to do more complex shapes well). I think it's a pretty decent analogy.