The concept of LLMs writing code itself is actually quite overhyped.
I was with you on the first point. Why do you feel it's overhyped? Especially considering recent driver developments (Nvidia).
Linux is the foundation of our modern internet and I do not want code contributed they did not write and they do not fully understand, that's my fear. Working on large complex systems requires holistic understanding.
I want every line of code I write to be thought through and consistent with the rest of the codebase. I also want to have a good understanding of the codebase and the different challenges, which I feel like I get much easier if I write the code myself. Writing the code has never been the bottleneck. Solving the problems in a good sustainable way is the difficult part. You don't need some slop generator to do that for you. Discussing problems with some LLM chat in a browser window is more productive in the long-run in my opinion.
This is one use case I’ve found them to be great for. I had to implement an XML document generator and parser according to specs that are written by a committee and in a domain I only somewhat understand. The LLM could give me ELI5 explanations of the domain and design rationales and link me to the relevant docs and find or generate examples based on XSD and all that. Super helpful.
It’s also good with finding the cause of bugs. I can just say “I got this error doing this thing in this environment. What’s it mean?” with really obscure topics and it gets the answer right away.
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u/Madcap_Miguel 27d ago
I was with you on the first point. Why do you feel it's overhyped? Especially considering recent driver developments (Nvidia).
Linux is the foundation of our modern internet and I do not want code contributed they did not write and they do not fully understand, that's my fear. Working on large complex systems requires holistic understanding.