Those of us that consider software engineering to be “engineering” do not like LLMs, you are correct. Engineering requires that you face reality, evaluate the problem, and choose a solution in a deterministic way, then later return to evaluate the efficacy of the solution, changing the solution if required.
Those of us that consider software development to be “typing until you more or less get the outcome that you want” love LLMs. Non-deterministic vibes all around.
This is also why executives love LLMs; executives speak words and little people do what was asked of them, generally, sometimes wrong, but are later corrected. An LLM takes instructions and does what was asked, generally, sometimes wrong, and is later corrected, but much faster than unreliable human plebs who get sick all the time and demand vacation and time to mourn deaths of other plebs.
Curious. Do you write deterministic code? Because I don't think I can write the same code for any non-trivial task twice. Granted, I would probably remember which algorithm or design pattern I used before, and I can try and use the same methods, but you can also prompt that information to an LLM.
Another question: Can you hire software developers who write code in a deterministic way? If you give the same task to multiple developers with the same seniority level, do you always get the same output?
> "typing until you more or less get the outcome that you want”
For the record, I don't use LLMs for anything that is beyond auto-completion, but I think you are being unfair to them. They are actually pretty good at getting atomic tasks right when prompted properly.
Yes, I write deterministic code. Given the same input, I work hard to make sure the functions I write do the same work and give the same output every time.
Now, if you’re going to hold me to some comp-sci definition of “deterministic” then I don’t know if I do or not but I can tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever come across a problem in recent times where randomness was a desirable property.
Do I write code deterministically? I don’t know. I approach problems that look alike in like ways, though. LLMs definitely give you different results for the same problem on different days, which says that LLMs are not fully aware of the context of what you’re doing, or they are ignoring that context.
Any solution which does what is needed of it is going to be fine, so long as the solution doesn’t consume too much RAM, CPU, or time to implement, which is why we see a lot of distinct bridges in the world. And I would not trust an LLM to design a safe bridge. I would like for software engineering to adopt practices of other engineering fields. I want performance and reliability of the software I use to go WAY up. As long as we are using LLMs to author things, we will never get there, because they have no idea what they are doing. LLMs are made to make you think they know what they’re doing.
I am not sure what you're implying. The first sentence makes no sense. LLMs aren't giving you non-deterministic code. The code is shown to you and have complete control over how it looks and operates. Not understanding the mechanics of how the code is generated by the LLM doesn't make the output non-deterministic.
If you choose to accept bad code, that's on you. But I am not seeing that in practice, especially if you learn how to give quality prompts with proper rules. You have to get good at prompts - there is no escaping that. Now programmers do suck at communicating sometimes and that might be an issue.
But in my experience, it can write far higher quality code than most programmers if used correctly.
It all makes sense. You just don’t understand what I am saying, probably because I am not being 500% obviously clear on the internet, and without that no one knows what you’re getting at.
Those of us that consider software development to be “typing until you more or less get the outcome that you want” love LLMs. Non-deterministic vibes all around.
This is also why executives love LLMs; executives speak words and little people do what was asked of them, generally, sometimes wrong, but are later corrected. An LLM takes instructions and does what was asked, generally, sometimes wrong, and is later corrected, but much faster than unreliable human plebs who get sick all the time and demand vacation and time to mourn deaths of other plebs.