LLMs can write a large fraction of the tedious code a developer will ever need to write, and most code on most projects is tedious.

First recorded here 2 Jun 2025 · How quotes work

Where this collides

• In tension with

  Effective use of AI coding tools requires domain expertise: the tool should be used as an assistant, not as a replacement for the engineer.

  Ptacek’s fraction is large enough to reshape the job. Hashimoto’s condition is that the human already holds the domain expertise the tool is assisting. Both can be true of different developers, and which one is typical is the disagreement.

Related korrents

• Because an LLM can argue almost any direction competently, the right way to use one for forming an opinion is to make it argue every side. LLMs
• Build for the model six months from now, not the model of today. LLMs
• Even if all progress on LLMs stopped today, LLMs would remain the second most important development in a software career spanning the mid-1990s to now. LLMs
• Large language models could still plateau, and that possibility should be held open even though no evidence of it has appeared. LLMs
• LLM memory as currently built is a distraction to the model: one old question keeps resurfacing as if it were a lasting interest. LLMs
• LLMs reverse the usual pattern of technology diffusion: they benefit ordinary individuals far more than they benefit corporations and governments. LLMs

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