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Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

(martinfowler.com)
416 points floverfelt | 1 comments | 28 Aug 25 18:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.233s | source
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dionian ◴[28 Aug 25 19:59 UTC] No.45056389[source]▶
> I’ve often heard, with decent reason, an LLM compared to a junior colleague. But I find LLMs are quite happy to say “all tests green”, yet when I run them, there are failures. If that was a junior engineer’s behavior, how long would it be before H.R. was involved?

A junior engineer can't write code anywhere nearly as fast. It's apples vs oranges. I can have the LLm rewrite the code 10 times until its correct and its much cheaper than hiring an obsequious jr engineer

replies(2): >>45056625 #>>45056650 #
1. xmprt ◴[28 Aug 25 20:22 UTC] No.45056625[source]▶
Junior engineers get better and learn from their mistakes. An LLM will happily make then same mistake 10 times if you try asking it to do something similar in 3 months. In the long term, I don't think LLMs actually save you time considering the amount of extra time spent reviewing/verifying its code and fixing tech debt.