I’ve seen a few articles saying that instead of hating AI, the real quiet programmers young and old are loving it and have a renewed sense of purpose coding with llm helpers (this article was also hating on ed zitiron, which makes sense why it would).
Is this total bullshit? I have to admit, even though it makes me ill, I’ve used llms a few times to help me learn simple code syntax quickly (im and absolute noob who’s wanted my whole life to learn code but cant grasp it very well). But yes, a lot of time its wrong.
My favorite use is actually just to help me name stuff. Give it a short description of what the thing does and get a list of decent names. Refine if they’re all missing something.
Also useful for finding things quickly in generated documentation, by attaching the documentation as context. And I use it when trying to remember some of the more obscure syntax stuff.
As for coding assistants, they can help quickly fill in boilerplate or maybe autocomplete a line or two. I don’t use it for generating whole functions or anything larger.
So I get some nice marginal benefits out of it. I definitely like it. It’s got a ways to go before it replaces the programming part of my job, though.
Reverse dictionary lookup, more or less.
Now, that is something LLMs should be actually good at, unlike practically any other thing they’re being sold as being good at.