The Rise of Whatever

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.

> Looks like I was the inspiration for this post then.

You were not, as is patently obvious from the sentence preceding your quote (emphasis mine):

> Another Bluesky quip I saw earlier today, and the reason I picked up writing this post (which I’d started last week)

The post had already been started, your comment was simply a reason to continue writing it at that point in time. Had your comment not existed, this post would probably still have been finished (though perhaps at a later date).

> 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.

Despite your restating, your point still reads to me as the opposite as what you claim to have intended. Inventing the table saw is a poor analogy because the problem with the LLM hype has nothing to do with their invention. It’s the grifts and the irresponsible shoving of it down everyone’s throats that’s a problem. That’s why the comparison fails, you’re juxtaposing things which aren’t even slightly related. The invention of a technology and the hype around it are two entirely orthogonal matters.

For your benefit I will make two minor edits to things I have said.

> Looks like I was the inspiration for this post then

I replace that with:

> Looks like I was the inspiration for finishing this post then

And this:

> 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.

I can rephrase as:

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