Comment by gerdesj

Comment by gerdesj 4 days ago

20 replies

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An LLM is a tool and its just as mad as slide rules, calculators and PCs (I've seen them all although slide rules were being phased out in my youth)

Coding via prompt is simply a new form of coding.

Remember that high level programming languages are "merely" a sop for us humans to avoid low level languages. The idea is that you will be more productive with say Python than you would with ASM or twiddling electrical switches that correspond to register inputs.

A purist might note that using Python is not sufficiently close to the bare metal to be really productive.

My recommendation would be to encourage the tutor to ask the student how they use the LLM and to school them in effective use strategies - that will involve problem definition and formulation and then an iterative effort to solve the problem. It will obviously involve how to spot and deal with hallucinations. They'll need to start discovering model quality for differing tasks and all sorts of things that look like sci-fi to me 10 years ago.

I think we are at, for LLMs, the "calculator on digital wrist watch" stage that we had in the mid '80s before the really decent scientific calculators rocked up. Those calculators are largely still what you get nowadays too and I suspect that LLMs will settle into a similar role.

They will be great tools when used appropriately but they will not run the world or if they do, not for very long - bye!

Krssst 4 days ago

> Remember that high level programming languages are "merely" a sop for us humans to avoid low level languages.

High-level languages are deterministic and reliable, making it possible for developers to be confident that their high-level code is correct. LLMs are anything but deterministic and reliable.

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  • seanmcdirmid 3 days ago

    You keep saying this but have you used an LLM for coding before? You just don’t vibe code up some generated code (well, you can, but it will suck). You are asking it to iterate on code and multiple artifacts at the same time (like tests) in many steps, and you are providing feedback, getting feedback, providing clarifications, checking small chunks of work (because you didn’t just have it do everything at once), etc. You just aren’t executing “vibecode -d [do the thing]” like you would with a traditional shoot once code generator.

    It isn’t deterministic like a real programmer isn’t deterministic, and that’s why iteration is necessary.

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  • tvshtr 4 days ago

    Not all code written by humans is deterministic and reliable. And properly guard-railed LLM can check its output, you can even employ several, for higher consensus certainty. And we're just fuckin starting.

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    • Krssst 4 days ago

      Unreliable code is incorrect thus undesirable. We limit the risk through review and understanding what we're doing which is not possible when delegating the code generation and review.

      Checking output can be done by testing but test code in itself can be unreliable and testing in itself is no correctness guarantee.

      The only way reliable code could be produced without human touching it would be using formal specifications, having the LLM write the formal proof at the same time as the code and using some software to validate the proof. The formal specification would have to be written using some kind of programming language, and then we're somewhat back to square one (but with maybe a new higher level language where you only define the specs formally rather than how you implement them).

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galaxyLogic 4 days ago

But, we as humans still have a need to understand the outputs of AI. We can't delegate this understanding task to AI because then we wouldn't understand AI and thus we could not CONTROL what the AI is doing, optimize its behavior so it maximizes our benefit.

Therefore, I still see a need for highlevel and even higher level languages, but ones which are easy for humans to understand. AI can help of course but challenge is how can we unambiguously communicate with machines, and express our ideas concisely and understandably for both us and for the machines.

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ethmarks 4 days ago

> My recommendation would be to encourage the tutor to ask the student how they use the LLM and to school them in effective use strategies

It's obviously not quite the same as programming, but my English professor assigned an essay a few weeks ago where we had to ask ChatGPT a question and then analyze its response, check its sources, and try to spot hallucinations. It was worth about 5% of our overall grade. I thought that it was a fascinating exercise in teaching responsible LLM use.

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JumpCrisscross 4 days ago

> My recommendation would be to encourage the tutor to ask the student how they use the LLM and to school them in effective use strategies

This reminds me of folks teaching their kids Java ten years ago.

You’re teaching a tool. Versus general tool use.

> Those calculators are largely still what you get nowadays too and I suspect that LLMs will settle into a similar role

If correct, the child will be competent in the new world. If not, they will have wasted time developing general intelligence.

This doesn’t strike me as a good strategy for anything other than time-consuming babysitting.

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bgwalter 4 days ago

> Coding via prompt is simply a new form of coding.

No, it isn't. "Write me a parser for language X" is like pressing a button on a photocopier. The LLM steals content from open source creators.

Now the desperate capital starved VC companies can downvote this one too, but be aware that no one outside of this site believes the illusion any longer.

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  • ben_w 3 days ago

    > The LLM steals content from open source creators.

    Not according to court cases.

    Courts ruled that machine learning is a transformative use, and just fine.

    Pirating material to perform the training is still piracy, but open source licenses don't get that protection.

    A summary of one such court case: https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/06/us-federal-judge-makes-l...

    > "Write me a parser for language X" is like pressing a button on a photocopier.

    What is the prompt "review this code" in your view? Because LLM-automated code review is a thing now.

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    • tjr 3 days ago

      Maybe pointless, but I for one disagree with such rulings. Existing copyright law was formed as a construct between human producers and human consumers. I doubt that any human producers prior to a few years ago had any clue that their work would be fed into proprietary AI systems in order to build machines that generate huge quantities of more such works, and I think it fair to consider that they might have taken a different path had they known this.

      To retroactively grant propriety AI training rights on all copyrighted material on the basis that it's no different from humans learning is, I think, misguided.

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      • ben_w 3 days ago

        > Maybe pointless, but I for one disagree with such rulings.

        That's a fair position: laws are for the nation (and in a democracy, that's supposed to mean the people), and the laws we make are not divine or perfect.

        But until the laws change, it is what it is.

        > To retroactively grant propriety AI training rights on all copyrighted material on the basis that it's no different from humans learning is, I think, misguided.

        I would say it's not retroactive, it's the default consequence of what already is. Changing the law so this kind of thing is no longer allowed in the future is one thing, but it would be retro-active to say it had always been illegal.

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        • tjr 3 days ago

          I say retroactive not because the law changed, but because the law was never written with AI training in mind. I don't think existing copyright laws fit this situation, and I feel applying this interpretation to works already under copyright, when the creators of those works surely never envisioned this outcome, is an unfair interpretation.

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  • bdangubic 4 days ago

    there isn’t a company in the united states of 50 or more people which doesn’t have daily/weekly/monthly “ai” meetings (I’ve been attending dozens this year, as recently as tuesday). comments like yours exist only on HN where selected group of people love talking about bubbles and illusions while the rest of us are getting sh*t done at pace we could not fathom just year or so ago…

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    • bgwalter 4 days ago

      I am sure that "AI" is great for generating new meetings and for creating documentation how valuable those meetings are. Also it is great at generating justifications for projects and how it speeds up those projects.

      I am sure that the 360° performance reviews have never looked better.

      Your experience is contradicted by the usually business friendly Economist:

      https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/26/i...

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      • bdangubic 4 days ago

        this is same as polling data when Trump is running - no one wants to admit they will vote for DJT much like no one wants to admit these days that “AI” is doing (lots of) their work :)

        jokes aside I do trust economist’s heart is in the right place but misguided IMO. “the investors” (much like many here on HN) expected “AI” to be magic thing and are dealing with some disappointment that most of us are still employed. the next stage of “investor sentiment” just may be “shoot, not magic but productivity is through the roof”

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