I see extra complexity every time I try to get coding help.
For background, I’m not much of a programmer. The biggest project I’ve made is a ~1000 line script that almost runs in a straight line from start to finish. It’s enough to turn a week of constant work into five minutes of careful checking, or a few minutes of skilled labor into a single button press, but nothing compared to True Software(TM).
Whenever I would look up how to do something (open a file, create a folder, play a sound), I’d find a 20-line monstrosity given as a minimal example on Stack Overflow, or something worse on Copilot (I’ve since graduated to Claude). After picking apart which sections actually matter, I’d add the two important lines to my code and go on to the next problem.
If LLM code was only 10% more complex than necessary, they’d be obviously superhuman.
Whenever I would look up how to do something (open a file, create a folder, play a sound), I’d find a 20-line monstrosity given as a minimal example on Stack Overflow
I had a similar experience trying to find something useful about Java. Some things are used together so often that I suspect most people don’t even know how to use them separately. You ask about one thing, and their shortest example is 500 lines of project setup, dependency injection, and whatever else, where 5 lines would perfectly address your question.
It’s like asking “how can I change a light bulb”, and getting answers like “here is how to renovate your entire house (includes replacing all the light bulbs)”.
Makes me suspect that most people do not understand their craft as deeply as I would prefer. IT development used to be a job for people who were obsessed with technical details; now there are many people who are happy just to put something things together and collect a salary.
That said, in my experience AIs are a huge improvement over Stack Overflow, because you can ask them additional questions and often get the answer you want (where SO would be like “just accept the correct answer, this is not a place for discussion”).
I see extra complexity every time I try to get coding help.
For background, I’m not much of a programmer. The biggest project I’ve made is a ~1000 line script that almost runs in a straight line from start to finish. It’s enough to turn a week of constant work into five minutes of careful checking, or a few minutes of skilled labor into a single button press, but nothing compared to True Software(TM).
Whenever I would look up how to do something (open a file, create a folder, play a sound), I’d find a 20-line monstrosity given as a minimal example on Stack Overflow, or something worse on Copilot (I’ve since graduated to Claude). After picking apart which sections actually matter, I’d add the two important lines to my code and go on to the next problem.
If LLM code was only 10% more complex than necessary, they’d be obviously superhuman.
I had a similar experience trying to find something useful about Java. Some things are used together so often that I suspect most people don’t even know how to use them separately. You ask about one thing, and their shortest example is 500 lines of project setup, dependency injection, and whatever else, where 5 lines would perfectly address your question.
It’s like asking “how can I change a light bulb”, and getting answers like “here is how to renovate your entire house (includes replacing all the light bulbs)”.
Makes me suspect that most people do not understand their craft as deeply as I would prefer. IT development used to be a job for people who were obsessed with technical details; now there are many people who are happy just to put something things together and collect a salary.
That said, in my experience AIs are a huge improvement over Stack Overflow, because you can ask them additional questions and often get the answer you want (where SO would be like “just accept the correct answer, this is not a place for discussion”).
To be fair who in their right mind answers SO questions for Java for fun? I’d only code in Java for a job if I had 0 alternatives. ;)