I came crossed a GH thread related to chess motor development that made maine deliberation of why hobby programming communities are progressively dispute toward LLM development. While the thread doesn’t springiness a batch of penetration into answering the question, it prompted maine to deliberation astir it a bit. I’ve seen akin sentiments expressed successful different niche hobby programming communities for illustration OSDev, LangDev, TxtDev, EmuDev, RLDev, the demoscene, and codification golfers. The general statement seems to beryllium that the knowledge that these communities work successful is hard-fought and the usage of LLMs is simply a shape of missing the point entirely. In these communities (keep successful mind that location is an implicit “not all…” throughout) the process of mastering a difficult field itself is the product, and thing that runs is mostly a nice-to-have.
Further, I’ve noticed that moreover successful the instances wherever location was earnest early engagement pinch LLMs successful immoderate of these niche communities, the good was quickly poisoned by a operation of a deficiency of a deep understanding by the LLM practitioners, and a vitriolic subset of those communities that position the LLM endeavor arsenic a shape of cheating. Granted these communities have, successful general, historically been characterized by feverish gatekeeping and painstakingly slow progress, truthful it makes sense that location mightiness beryllium a desire to drawback immoderate easy cachet by bursting onto the segment for illustration the Kool-Aid man. OH YEAH…. OH NO!
In accepted niche dev circles, respect is earned slow through years of activity successful their respective fora, sharing elegant code, displays of genuine curiosity, and done sharing heavy domain knowledge along the way. At the extremity of the day, these communities don’t attraction if your codification useful astatine all, but alternatively attraction that you cognize why and really it works. To me, an LLM functions champion arsenic a unit multiplier, not a surrogate. In the hands of an master who already understands a domain deeply, it could enactment for illustration a lever.1 But successful these niche communities, the full workout is successful the learning. Using an LLM to generate the vanished portion doesn’t make america craftsmen; it conscionable robs us of the craft.
:F
This is the latest successful my evolving thoughts connected LLMs. Also see: LLMe and Mind the van Emden Gap
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