I can feel the LLM dulling my brain 🫠
It's so easy to ask it for some code or a concept and get an immediate response, even though I know I could do better by just thinking it through myself.
Discussion
The LLMs are doing to coders what audiobooks have done to readers.
Can relate. Got a bit lazy and had an LLM do something simple for me only to then spend 30 minutes debugging the shit out of it when it would've taken me 5 minutes to do it myself. 🫠
It's such a double edged sword.
But a lot of the time it's just a regular sword with the edge pointed at me.
I had this same feeling earlier this year. Stopped using it for the day and have been limiting it as much as I can 😂
It feels like some kind of weird vague thought police. Putting the immediate response in my head, making that the seed from which I'm then allowed to think from.
My more successful interactions with LLMs happen when I put it in a cage and have it work within specific bounds.
That's the thing, right? Will you account for better results, better ways of doing things, or just go the unthinking route? Few people are low time preference enough to do the former.
I feel terrible when I go the unthinking route 😫
The former path just feels so much better even though it's more work.
This era is making it very hard to be a learner... I'm stoked that I can make something add & spell words out of the alphabet now, as rudimentary is that may be, but damn. All these people who are saying "look what I made 😇" and at the same time, a bunch the great discussions among people who actually know what they're doing, that I would quietly learn from, have turned into "vibe 😎". I'm really grateful for the ones who still talk it out, even if 99% of it is over my head.
it's a fad
their attitude only shows how much they have to pretend the thing is great to disguise the fact that they have made the wrong bet
cognitive dissonance
Maybe it is, may it's not. Time will tell. I was initially inspired to help, at a time when there clearly was not enough help. The need for help is disappearing & I'm at this point of trying to change my mindset around it now. I have no need or hope of a career in tech, and I doubt any of my ideas would be great create fundamental change. So, I'll learn to keep my knowledge growing & try to help where people will let me help, even though they probably don't really need it. 😅
great enough to* ... maybe I should just take typing classes instead lol
It's like they've become ensnared in some kind of trap. Like seeing your community get addicted to heroin. Working with an LLM is addicting as hell if you're not careful.
And with fewer talented devs thinking on their own, free to start their thoughts wherever they want, there are fewer devs who are worth listening to. Whatever they say is influenced by the LLM they use.
What a time.
Haha, I get that. I made a silly little thing & it worked. It's very tempting to do it again. I can see why it would get addicting, especially having the security of knowledge. I'd like to make something less silly, but I'd also like to understand how it works & _maybe_ how to fix it if something goes sideways. That has worked out well in other aspects of life, so I think it's a solid play.
We don't remember directions to places because of gps, we don't remember phone numbers because we don't dial them, and kids aren't learning how to write with a pen because everything must be typed. Read a book once about how technology is dumbing us down because it does everything for us 🤷♀️
For reeeeaaaaalllll tho.
Especially for maps, people look at me funny when I say I use OSMand on my phone instead of Google maps. Yeah it gives me directions, but in the most barebones way possible. I have to be way more engaged when I drive using that than when I used to use Google maps, cause it basically drives for you. And in doing so, I remember the routes better and don't need it after a few trips to the same place.
That's how I feel technology should be. But most technology isn't, like you said.
We had discussions with the kid about the early days of gps, mapquest, and how a key map was a necessity for driving around downtown Houston. I love the convenience of it all but I do get irritated when I can't remember how to get somewhere.
And also, how do kids who never learned cursive sign their names 🤔
Limiting it works well for me. Strict parameters.
It does really well when I'm telling it to refactor existing code. But it's nearly unusable when you ask it to generate freeform code.
So now I made a prompt that forces me to write up a first draft myself, then work with the AI to refactor.
I saw someone say something about how AI is great to get you started, but has diminishing returns. I'm going to try and see if not using AI much in the beginning will give it more value in the long run.
Interesting. So you use it to optimize as opposed to give you a starting point
Yeah basically. And instead of having it vomit code when it has nothing to go off, I've taught it Composite Design, which is a software design framework from the 70s, and it just plans out the program and its functions instead.
It's a tool. I ask it questions not ask for code.
e.g. I've never have to deal with raw bytes in python vs java. where python represents it as unsigned (by default) ints and java as signed.
llm was great at pointing it to me, saved me tons of doc reading...
It's really great for things like that. Cause it can read code and error messages way faster than me 😅
I'm hearing physicians say the same of residents and med students.
In my experience with doctors, I can feel the years they've spent rote memorizing symptoms and treatments. It's like they're just trained like diagnosis machines. And they forget that there's a real person in front of them and not an exam sheet.
That's a different known problem and it tends to be present in some people from day one (most meds schools try to balance this out in various ways). Different personalities enter medicine. Differential diagnostic skills are fairly standardardized in process, but are like any skill that should improve over time.
But one's ability to interact personably with other humans is entirely contextual, depending on the provider, patient, situation, branch of medicine, and even combination of those things. We all know at least one who lacks many social skills. But that's probably true in most professions and isn't necessarily a product of any procedure or methodology.
But there's also many issues that need to be addressed. I've been so overworked that I have to become basically an assembly line robot just to serve every patient in the ED. I want to take more time for pleasantries but I literally can't. And many primary care providers and staff are experiencing this. And that's the worst setting to have this issue because it's supposed to be the hub of healthcare. Like that is THE place people are supposed to have the time to explore and really spend time with providers.
The way you describe it almost sounds like a story from a battlefield medic, where injured folks are coming in so fast you can hardly treat them all properly.