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ThePrimeagen

What ThePrimeagen thinks about LLMs

@theprimeagen · 31 positions · On ppll ↗

Michael Paulson, known online as ThePrimeagen, a programmer who spent ten years at Netflix and now streams and teaches programming full time on Twitch and YouTube.

ThePrimeagen did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

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Only ThePrimeagen on LLMs. See everyone on LLMs

4 dated positions, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what ThePrimeagen has said — not written or endorsed by them.

4 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

  1. Our readingAI helps exactly as far as the work is predictable and well documented, and stops helping on anything cutting edge.

    Their wordsOkay, my general view is it comes down to something that's pretty simple, which is that if you're doing something in which is very predictable, AI is really nice. When you're doing something that is just not predictable, AI is not very nice to use. If you're using anything that's more cutting edge, AI will not be using it, or AI won't be very good at doing stuff with it.

    ↗ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461youtube.com 22nd of 31 in this recording

  3. Our readingWithout hard skills of your own, your ceiling as a programmer is whatever the LLMs happen to be capable of.

    Their wordsAnd so if you don't have those hard skills and you're not ultimately the driver at the end of the day, you're going to really find some hard times, and your ability to progress will be directly bound to how good the LLMs are.

    ↗ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461youtube.com 24th of 31 in this recording

  5. Our readingWhat an LLM cannot supply is caring about the craft: it completes the task, where a person goes back and makes the thing better.

    Their wordsIt doesn't actually care about the craft. But when you work with an intern or you work with somebody else, they care. When they factor something, they actually go over and go, "Oh yeah, this is actually kind of bad. I'm going to come back to that." They finish this, they go back over here and they make this even better. They actually care about the thing itself.

    ↗ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461youtube.com 28th of 31 in this recording

  7. Our readingThe next attack on open source is denial of attention: LLM-generated fake bug reports that exhaust and demoralise maintainers.

    open source

    Their wordsI think there's this whole idea, I call it a denial of attention. I think there's an entire attack vector that's going to be happening. We're using LLMs to generate fake bug reports, fake all these things to just actually effectively to demotivate and hurt open source maintainers.

    ↗ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461youtube.com 29th of 31 in this recording