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Comment by risyachka | Hacker News Reader

This.

If someone says "Most of my code is AI" there are only 3 reasons for this 1. They do something very trivial on daily basis (and its not a bad thing, you just need to be clear about this). 2. The skill is not there so they have to use AI, otherwise it would be faster to DIY it than to explain the complex case and how to solve it to AI. 3. They prefer to explain to llm rather than write code themselves. Again, no issue with this. But we must be clear here - its not faster. Its just someone else is writing the code for you while you explain it in details what to do.

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To be honest, I’m more inclined to attribute the rampant use of LLMs just to the dopaminergic effect of using them. It feels productive. It feels futuristic. It feels like an unlock. Quite viscerally. It doesn’t really matter your seniority or skill level, you feel can do whatever is within your wheelhouse, and more, faster.

Like most dopaminergic activities though you end up chasing that original rush, and eventually quit when you can’t replicate it and/or realize it is a poor substitute for the real thing, and likely stunting your growth

I have been coding professionally for 30 years and 10 years as a hobbyist before then writing assembly on four different architectures. The first 12 years professionally bit twiddling in C across multiple architectures.

I doubt very seriously you could tell my code was LLM generated.

I very much rather explain to an LLM than write the code myself. Explaining it to an LLM is like pre rubber ducking.

there is a 4 and 5 and 6… :)

here’s 4 - there are senior-level SWEs who spent their entire career automating every thing they had to do more than once. it is one of core traits that differentiates “10x” SWE from “others”

LLMs have taken the automation part to another level and best SWEs I know use them every hour of every day to automate shit that we never had tools to automate before

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