Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 – an update

I'm going a little offtopic here, but I disagree with the OPs use of the term "PhD-level knowledge", although I have a huge amount of respect for antirez (beside that we are born in the same island).

This phrasing can be misleading and points to a broader misunderstanding about the nature of doctoral studies, which it has been influenced by the marketing and hype discourse surrounding AI labs.

The assertion that there is a defined "PhD-level knowledge" is pretty useless. The primary purpose of a PhD is not simply to acquire a vast amount of pre-existing knowledge, but rather to learn how to conduct research.

If you understand that a PhD is about much more than just knowledge, it's still the case that having easy access to that knowledge is super valuable. My last job we often had questions that would just traditionally require a PhD-level person to answer, even if it wasn't at the limit of their research abilities. "What will happen to the interface of two materials if voltage is applied in one direction" type stuff, turns out to be really hard to answer but LLMs do a decent job.