Using LLMs at Oxide

A measured, comprehensive, and sensible take. Not surprising from Bryan. This was a nice line:

> it’s just embarrassing — it’s as if the writer is walking around with their intellectual fly open.

I think Oxide didn't include this in the RFD because they exclusively hire senior engineers, but in an organization that contains junior engineers I'd add something specific to help junior engineers understand how they should approach LLM use.

Bryan has 30+ years of challenging software (and now hardware) engineering experience. He memorably said that he's worked on and completed a "hard program" (an OS), which he defines as a program you doubt you can actually get working.

The way Bryan approaches an LLM is super different to how a 2025 junior engineer does so. That junior engineer possibly hasn't programmed without the tantalizing, even desperately tempting option to be assisted by an LLM.

I remember in the very first class I ever took on Web Design the teacher spent an entire semester teaching "first principles" of HTML, CSS and JavaScript by writing it in Notepad.

It was only then did she introduce us to the glory that was Adobe Dreamweaver, which (obviously) increased our productivity tenfold.

I miss Dreamweaver. Combining it with Fireworks was a crazy productive combo for me back in the mid 00’s!

My first PHP scripts and games were written using nothing more than Notepad too funnily enough