Miguel Afonso Caetano on Nostr: "I am typically curious about new technology. It took very little experimentation ...
"I am typically curious about new technology. It took very little experimentation with LLMs for me to want to see if I could extract practical value. There is an allure to a technology that can (at least some of the time) craft sophisticated responses to challenging questions. It is even more exciting to watch a computer attempt to write a piece of a program as requested and make solid progress.
The only technological shift I have experienced that feels similar to me happened in 1995, when we first configured my LAN with a usable default route. I replaced the shared computer in the other room running Trumpet Winsock with a machine that could route a dialup connection, and all at once, I had the Internet on tap. Having the Internet all the time was astonishing and felt like the future. Probably far more to me in that moment than to many who had been on the Internet longer at universities because I was immediately dropped into high Internet technology: web browsers, JPEGs, and millions of people. Access to a powerful LLM feels like that.
So I followed this curiosity to see if a tool that can generate something mostly not wrong most of the time could be a net benefit in my daily work. The answer appears to be "yes"—generative models are useful for me when I program. It has not been easy to get to this point. My underlying fascination with the new technology is the only way I have managed to figure it out, so I am sympathetic when other engineers claim LLMs are “useless.” But as I have been asked more than once how I can possibly use them effectively, this post is my attempt to describe what I have found so far."
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-i-program-with-llms/
#AI #GenerativeAI #Chatbots #LLMs #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment
The only technological shift I have experienced that feels similar to me happened in 1995, when we first configured my LAN with a usable default route. I replaced the shared computer in the other room running Trumpet Winsock with a machine that could route a dialup connection, and all at once, I had the Internet on tap. Having the Internet all the time was astonishing and felt like the future. Probably far more to me in that moment than to many who had been on the Internet longer at universities because I was immediately dropped into high Internet technology: web browsers, JPEGs, and millions of people. Access to a powerful LLM feels like that.
So I followed this curiosity to see if a tool that can generate something mostly not wrong most of the time could be a net benefit in my daily work. The answer appears to be "yes"—generative models are useful for me when I program. It has not been easy to get to this point. My underlying fascination with the new technology is the only way I have managed to figure it out, so I am sympathetic when other engineers claim LLMs are “useless.” But as I have been asked more than once how I can possibly use them effectively, this post is my attempt to describe what I have found so far."
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/how-i-program-with-llms/
#AI #GenerativeAI #Chatbots #LLMs #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment