I’m seeing so much about LLMs in my feed today.

[mnmlst@indieweb.social]

@jensimmons RESIST

[lukesutton@mastodon.au]

@jensimmons can’t wait for the bubble to pop and for us to — potentially — salvage the really valuable stuff after. Lots of hype, little evidence.

I’m generally disappointed with contemporary web dev. There is a lot of JS slop all ready — slow, bloated, brittle — and I only see LLM accelerating that.

The next few years are gonna be rough.

[mvsde@mastodon.social]

@jensimmons Even though I’m not using LLMs at all, the constant onslaught of news and tech bro boosters has beaten me into a state, where I’m loosing interest in web development altogether.

Right now I’m hoping that I can just survive a little bit longer than the AI hype bubble. But the fun is already not there anymore. Doing my job feels like slowly getting sucked down a quicksand hole.

[beeps@social.beeps.gay]

@jensimmons Not a fan of the plagiarism machine, no. I can only imagine it’s already stolen things I’ve made before.

A lot of experienced developers I know are tempted to just quit the industry. They’re sick of organisations trying to force genAI tools on them, in turn devaluing their work and taking away the joy derived from making things and solving problems yourself.

I’ve used it for non-dev tasks before, mainly collating things or transforming data formats, but every bit of code I’ve gotten out of an LLM has been buggy or broken in some form, even really basic shit. I don’t trust it to write code at all.

[idiomatic@mastodon.social]

@jensimmons There are plenty of good reasons not to incorporate LLM code gen into one's workflow, but one I haven't seen mentioned here is that I fear that relying on such tools will, over time, make me a worse developer.

Like, I crochet as a hobby. If I used a magic machine that did most of the crocheting for me, my skills would plateau and inevitably atrophy.

Programming is a craft like any other, requiring deep, consistent practice to get good and stay good. LLMs hinder that practice (imo).

[adactio@mastodon.social]

@jensimmons It gives me the ick.

[db@typo.social]

@jensimmons https://typo.social/@db/116056507371498997

[wortwart@social.vivaldi.net]

@jensimmons I'd wish it would go away, for several reasons. But it won't.

I don't think hate and refusal is a useful reaction to it, though. We got a tool based on VS Code and Claude which turns out to be actually helpful and creates reasonable code. I use it sometimes for boring stuff and then I check the code. It also helped me when I was stuck with an issue once (which was a bit humiliating).

I think it will have a devastating effect on developers who start now. Still, the effects on our jobs are less horrible than LLMs producing crap texts, fake images and disinformation.

[hdv@front-end.social]

@jensimmons interesting as a subject of philosphical enquiry. Tiring as its current iteration is intertwined with late stage capitalism and ethics constantly waved away, politely or consciously.

Not using it much. Sometimes find it helpful to find stuff, or a word or phrase via natural language description. It's ok.

I expect people will use it (and they are), and that it, in most hands, will lead to more bloat and to less trustworthy and less accessible sites/apps.

[emma@orbital.horse]

@jensimmons big nope, and it's driving me out of the industry

[mrchrisadams@mastodon.social]

@jensimmons I see it as a perceived threat to many web developers who have enjoyed the status and high wages their profession has previously offered, particularly relative to other professions that require more formal training & are more tightly regulated.

I research the environmental impact of AI, and write about it at work & on my personal blog. There’s a lot more there. I expect it to eventually become the norm for commercial work. Particularly with Claude/OpenCode adoption

[mrchrisadams@mastodon.social]

@jensimmons finally I think being able to avoid the use of AI and GenAi specifically, will end up being used as a status signifier, to show that you are more authentic, above the grubby commercial constraints that affect your more compromised and lower status peers, and have enough positional power to reject external pressure to use it.

A bit like people who make handmade, high-end, expensive goods, instead of having to work in factories that focus on volume output.

[bfordham@infosec.exchange]

@jensimmons My employer is pushing pretty hard for us to use it. Despite my misgivings - mostly ethical - I decided to make an honest attempt.

Started well, ended up taking me much more time to fix things in the end. And that was that.

Unfortunately the ethical and environmental concerns get hand waved, so I tend to talk about actual results.

The short version: If I have a saw than randomly just cuts something entirely wrong, I don't figure out how to work around it. I throw the saw away. Unreliable tools are useless.