I think a big part of this discussion lost for a lot is a lot of people are trying to copy/paste how we’ve been developing software over the past twenty years into this new world which simply doesn’t work effectively.
The differences are subtle but those of
us who are fully bought in (like myself) are working and thinking in a new way to develop effectively with LLMs. Is it perfect? Of course not - but is it dramatically more efficient than the previous era? 1000%. Some of the things I’ve done in the past month I really didn’t think were possible. I was skeptical but I think a new era is upon us and everyone should be hustling to adapt.
My favorite analogy at the moment is that for awhile now we’ve been bowling and been responsible for knocking down
the pins ourselves. In this new world we are no longer the bowlers, rather we are the builders of bumper rails
that keep the new bowlers from landing in the gutter.
To be a little less vague - I think the biggest difference I’ve seen is where time is spent. In the past since I know what I’m doing I’d go straight into dev mode pretty quickly
.
Going straight into dev mode with an LLM pretty much always goes wrong - a lot more time is spent in planning and in setting up constraints for how an agent can operate before letting it loose so that once you set it free it can run.
The differences are subtle but those of us who are fully bought in (like myself) are working and thinking in a new way to develop effectively with LLMs. Is it perfect? Of course not - but is it dramatically more efficient than the previous era? 1000%. Some of the things I’ve done in the past month I really didn’t think were possible. I was skeptical but I think a new era is upon us and everyone should be hustling to adapt.
My favorite analogy at the moment is that for awhile now we’ve been bowling and been responsible for knocking down the pins ourselves. In this new world we are no longer the bowlers, rather we are the builders of bumper rails that keep the new bowlers from landing in the gutter.