LLM Inevitabilism

Right now, I’m noticing how my colleagues who aren’t very comfortable using LLMs for most of their work are getting sidelined. It's a bit sad seeing them struggle by not keeping pace with everyone else who is using it for ~90% of our tasks. They seem to really care about writing code themselves, but, if they don't pivot, things are probably not going to end well for them.

So is LLM inevitable? Pretty much if you want to remain competitive.

Can I take a guess and say that you and your colleagues are all pretty inexperienced? I'll wager less than 4 years experience max, working in a regimented structure, mostly closing tickets for well-understood features? Because I do not know anyone with >10 years experience working in a well-understood language but a relatively unexplored domain that uses LLMs to create any code. I only see LLMs being widely used by inexperienced programmers (or just new to the language) -- which sucks, because we need inexperienced programmers writing code by hand in order to get more experienced programmers.

The “use LLMs or you will fall behind” narrative is pearl clutching.

I don’t see anywhere in the near future our profession becoming something other than knowledge work.

So, at the end of the day training your brain is what matters.

Over-reliance on LLM is like skipping the brain gym.

Under utilizing LLM may make you slower. There’s a good optimum of putting in the work so you learn and asking LLM

If it’s mostly a social phenomenon in your company that non believers are pushed out, that does not seem like a fun place to work.

AGI is not inevitable. we have the choice to stop it.

I have been working in software for about 6 years and we are working in a new startup building our product. LLM's have been fundamental and it makes things so much faster.

> If it’s mostly a social phenomenon in your company that non believers are pushed out, that does not seem like a fun place to work.

It's not really intentional. It's just that he's slower than the rest of the team and it is noticeable.

if you refused to learn excel during the PC revolution because you preferred doing the calculations by hand, you would have quickly found yourself unemployable.

You can choose not to develop AGI but that won't stop someone else from doing it.

we collectively have the option of not doing it

Hi, someone with over 10 years of experience here. I finally got around to reading this thread and just saw your comment. Thanks for the sanity.