> LLMs are interesting but on their own are a dead end.
I don't think that anyone is advocating for LLMs to be used "on their own". Isn't it like saying that airplanes are useless "on their own" in 1910, before people had a chance to figure out proper runways and ATC towers?
If so, I quite enjoyed that as a way of considering how LLM-driven exploratory coding has now become feasible. It's not quite there yet, but we're getting closer to a non-technical user being able to create a POC on their own, which would then be a much better point for them in engaging an engineer. And it will only get better from here.
All previous examples have been of the "no code" variety, where you press buttons and it controls presets that the creators of the authoring tool have prepared for you. This is the first time where you can talk to it and it writes arbitrary code for you. You can argue that it's not a good idea, but it is a novel development.
A no code solution at its most basic level is nothing more or less than a compiler.
You wouldn’t argue that writing in a high level language doesn’t let you produce arbitrary code because the compiler is just spitting out presets its author prepared for you.
There are 2 main differences between using an LLM to build an app for you and using a no code solution with a visual language.
1. The source code is English (which is definitely more expressive).
2. The output isn’t deterministic (even with temperature set to 0 which is probably not what you want anyway)
Both 1 and 2 are terrible ideas. I’m not sure which is worse.
I just outright disagree. What this Vibe Coding is a substitute for is to finding a random dev on Fiverr, which inherently suffers from your "1 and 2". And I'd argue that vibe coding already offers you more bang for your buck than the median dev on Fiverr.
Low code/no code solutions were already a substitute for finding a random dev on Fiverr, which was almost always a terrible way to solve almost any problem.
The median dev on Fiverr is so awful that almost anything is more bang for your buck.
I don't think that anyone is advocating for LLMs to be used "on their own". Isn't it like saying that airplanes are useless "on their own" in 1910, before people had a chance to figure out proper runways and ATC towers?